BBC Radio 4, October 23, 2020

It seems William Palmer simply wants to donate a painting to a museum – but a chance encounter with a young man leads him to a meeting he doesn’t want.

It’s a welcome return for Sebastian Baczkiewicz’s folk tale series in another two-part special, broadcast in the run up to Halloween. Paul Hilton sounds slightly more gravelly voiced as William Palmer – known as Pilgrim – whose wish to do a good deed (albeit one done ensure that things that are not meant to change don’t do so) ends up with considerably more than he had bargained for.

Baczkiewicz never rushes these dramas, and there’s a gradually building sense of dread as “Rabbit”, an apparently shiftless young man who’s suspected of being involved in a murder, listens to his “aunty”… and when Palmer understands where his aunty lives, knowing its connection to the local woods, he realises that things are about to go very wrong, very quickly. Particularly as it’s nearly Halloween.

There’s plenty of very believable human malevolence and heightened emotion to go alongside anything supernatural, and even if you’ve not caught an episode of Pilgrim before, you are drawn in by the human drama before things start to get too weird…

Verdict: A strong opening half to Pilgrim’s latest outing. 8/10

Paul Simpson