Intruders

Credit Morgan, the original source material of the book (there is some deviation, according to Morgan) and BBC America for crafting an instantaneously addictive piece of television.

Though some of it is effective, much of it is not, for all that it strong-arms the viewer with dark atmosphere and upsetting events. (Watch out for that cat.) It is, in its opening hours at least, a moody muddle.

The show does begin to fill in a few blanks, particularly the immortality angle, in its second episode, but it’s still a slow, sometimes tedious process.

We know very little about any of the characters, and it's hard to care about them as they go about their doings under an ominous cloud of supernatural dread.

It’s bizarrely humorless (other than a cool “The X-Files” reference late in the first episode) and keeps its mysterious plot vague enough that it doesn’t give viewers enough to hold on to.

[A] somewhat violent and tepidly convoluted new thriller.

It takes two episodes to begin to understand it, and once you do, you may not care much, except for the presence of some very respectable actors.