Extrasensory
4.7/5
Critic Rating
Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) hosts a mind-bending real-life story of reincarnation and a spooky tale of family secrets. In 1950s England, milkman John Pollock makes a sensational prophecy: His dead daughters will be reborn. At first, even his own wife says he’s a crank. But then she gives birth to twin girls who have uncanny similarities to their sisters who died. Suddenly, the world sits up and takes notice. Pollock’s prophecy attracts the attention of a serious American scientist who crosses the Atlantic countless times to study the twins. And his conclusion is astonishing. So, what if deat...
Critic Reviews
Score: 4
Patricia Nicol • The Times UK • Dec 8, 2024
"From Apple TV+, this is a big-budget venture. For the sound engineer, it is a bells-and-whistles affair: tyres screech, children sing; if a church gets a mention, chimes peal. As the show’s narrator Sharpe brings some big-star energy, not just telling the story but also commenting on it, embellishing details and namechecking those doing the grunt work...Storywise, I felt this was relatively thin but impressively padded."
Score: 5
Lauren Passell • Podcast The Newsletter • Nov 10, 2024
"...reminded me of cracking open a novel I’ve been looking forward to. the story is even more complicated than you’re thinking, pulling in generations of extended family members. This really is a family drama. The very sexy Will Sharpe (Aubrey Plaza’s girlfriend in White Lotus) is narrating, so at least there’s that even if everything else falls off a cliff."
Score: 5
Daisy Dunn • The Spectator • Nov 6, 2024
"..gripping ...Be warned, though: what begins as spooky becomes increasingly sinister. While Pollock is defended by some of his relatives as a genuine believer in life after death, he is damned by others as a cruel confidence trickster and sexual predator. His quest to prove the immortality of the soul proved costly to everyone but himself."
Score: 5
Stephen O. • Podcast Delivery • Nov 4, 2024
"Extrasensory conjures memories of past lives and hypnotic inclinations and hurdles listeners towards the mysteries of reincarnation in such a way that even the biggest skeptics will have cause for pause. A chilling blend of family secrets, eerie prophecies, and scientific exploration..."
Score: 4
Miranda Sawyer • The Guardian • Nov 2, 2024
"..slickly produced documentary...Will Sharpe of White Lotus fame presents, excellently...an eerie, rather than petrifying listen, and it doesn’t quite sustain the stately pace."
Score: 5
Fiona Sturges • Financial Times • Oct 27, 2024
"...with a sparky script that blends curiosity with scepticism, Sharpe is excellent here. Extrasensory builds to a climax that I won’t spoil. What I will say is that I greedily binged all eight episodes in a day. A spooky seasonal mystery, it is, above all, a family story, one that shows how fiercely held beliefs often come loaded with baggage and that memory is a matter of interpretation."
