The Third Day Autumn, 12-hour livestream review: an unnerving and gorgeously weird tour de force – Telegraph.co.uk

Was it television? Art? Twelve hours of Jude Law torture porn featuring open graves, late night raves and the movie star braving coastal Essex in October in his underpants?

Definitions flew out the window with The Third Day Autumn (Sky Arts), a 12-hour broadcast beamed live from Osea Island in the estuary of the River Blackwater. Billed as a theatrical TV event the 720-minute marathon doubled as a centrepiece for the occult Sky thriller about a community of rural pagans who worship fish and have clearly been swotting up on The Wicker Man and League of Gentlemen.

The Third Day has, to date, proved a bit of a soggy stab at pastoral horror (three concluding episodesfeaturing Naomie Harrisare to follow). Law has impressed as Sam, a hapless dad who is lured to Osea and discovers an ancestral connection to the locality. But the actual plot has been a bleary mash-up of the aforementioned Christopher Lee classic in which a basket-weave colossus is set alight and the more recent Midsommar by Ari Aster. It has managed to be both uniquely baffling and stonkingly derivative.

Yet those flaws melted away during this day-long tour de force, produced by interactive theatre company Punchdrunk. No familiarity with the story thus far was required. All you needed to know was that Sam had been revealed to be the hereditary ruler of Osea. Now he was required to prove his worthiness via a Stations of the Cross-style procession of endurance.

Jude proved obscure through the initial two hours. These largely consisted of steadicam footage of the brooding island and a man laid out in a tractor-trailer, eating a sandwich. The lattermight not sound like essential weekend entertainment, yetit was an early lesson in the mesmerising uncanniness Punchdrunk was conjuring.

Throughout, the drowsy pacing, absence of dialogue and harsh splendour of Osea proved an irresistible blend. This was the high-concept equivalent of watching paint dry. But Punchdrunk made it absorbing and, thanks to the spooky soundtrack, completely unnerving. Minutes ebbed by without anything at all happening. Yet it was impossible to look away from the single-camera tracking shot.

The original plan had been to stage a 10,000 capacity festival on Osea, chuck Law into the mayhem and film the results. Coronavirus put paid to that (it also emerged that the causeway to the mainland couldnt handle the footfall). Instead, Punchdrunks Felix Barrett and Third Day writer Dennis Kelly (Utopia) staged a stripped-to-the-bone plunge into the rustic gothic psychosphere, utilising a quarantined team of 100 performers and 200 crew.

Law eventually turned up, in orange trainers, shaggy jumper and ferocious lockdown beard. Shoes and sweater were soon disposed of as Sam was treated to a day of damp and imaginative punishments. This connected back to Oseas worship of Celtic god Esus, presented, in the shows folklore, as a sort of negative-image Christ.

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The Third Day Autumn, 12-hour livestream review: an unnerving and gorgeously weird tour de force - Telegraph.co.uk

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero