Neo-Victorian Fiction on Screen

Even though neo-Victorianism has been theorised as an adaptive phenomenon from the very start of neo-Victorian studies as a field the critical focus has until recently been on neo-Victorian fiction. This reluctance to deal with neo-Victorianism on screen echoes a persistent view that only literature could offer a multifaceted re-visioning of the Victorian era and promotes a belief in historical authenticity in literature. This chapter argues against such a view of neo-Victorianism on screen and shows that screen adaptations of neo-Victorian literature can offer a more complex, critically engaged, and immersive meditation on the themes dealt with in the adapted text. Using the 2018 TV adaptation of Dan Simmons’ The Terror (2007) as an example, this chapter analyses the ways in which the show re-visions and re-writes the problematic aspects of the novel’s use of the supernatural in its portrayal of the colonial Other, reflecting on the show’s deconstruction of the generic features of the costume drama in the process.