General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Burning Girls

The Burning Girls is a six-part British horror-thriller television series released on Paramount+ in October 2023, adapted by Hans Rosenfeldt and Camilla Ahlgren from C.J. Tudor's 2021 novel of the same name. It stars Samantha Morton as Reverend Jack Brooks, a vicar who moves with her teenage daughter Flo (Ruby Stokes) to the Sussex village of Chapel Croft, where the history of burned Protestant martyrs, two vanished teenagers, and a vicar's recent suicide converge.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Six-part scripted drama, horror and thriller; average runtime about 52 minutes¹
Channel and dates	Paramount+ (UK), all six episodes released October 19, 2023; status ended³
Source	C.J. Tudor's novel The Burning Girls, published January 2021 (Michael Joseph, UK; Ballantine, US)⁴
Developed by	Hans Rosenfeldt, creator of The Bridge and Marcella, with Camilla Ahlgren; produced by Buccaneer Media¹^•⁵
Lead cast	Samantha Morton (Jack Brooks), Ruby Stokes (Flo Brooks), Conrad Khan, David Dawson, Rupert Graves, Jane Lapotaire²
Setting	Chapel Croft, a fictional Sussex village haunted by martyrs burned at the stake in 1552 and the disappearance of two teenage girls 30 years earlier⁶^•⁷
Reception	Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 62% from 4 reviews; IMDb rating 6.8/10⁸^•⁹

Spoilers

Premise

Reverend Jack Brooks, a female vicar and single mother, arrives in Chapel Croft with her 15-year-old daughter Flo hoping for a fresh start after leaving her previous parish under traumatic circumstances. The village's past is dark and turbulent: half a millennium back, Protestant martyrs, among them two young girls, were betrayed and put to death by burning; three decades back, a pair of teenage girls vanished leaving no trace; and only weeks before the family came, the parish vicar hanged himself in the church nave.¹

Jack soon finds the village rife with conspiracies and secrets. She is hostilely received by the church warden Aaron (David Dawson) and by the local landowner Simon Harper (Rupert Graves), and she discovers that her predecessor was obsessed with the case of the missing girls before his death. Flo, a photographer, is plagued by visions of burning girls, and both receive threatening messages. The series keeps its register deliberately unstable: executive producer Tony Wood described it as a story where "you think you're in a thriller and then you realize you're in something supernatural. And then you question whether it's really supernatural."¹⁰^•⁶

The Guardian's review cataloged the genre furniture the series deploys: witchcraft, an exorcism kit sent in a mysterious parcel, bloodied nightgowns, flickering candles, and an extended roadkill motif, alongside hints of sapphism, sexual abuse, and domestic violence.⁶

Source novel

The series adapts C.J. Tudor's third novel. The Burning Girls was published in January 2021 by Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom and in February 2021 by Ballantine in the United States, and it became a Sunday Times bestseller.⁴^•⁵ The novel's protagonist, Jack Brooks, is a widowed mother of a 14-year-old daughter who is instructed to take over an unexpectedly open post in Chapel Croft, a village known for having burned its martyrs under Mary I, among them two young girls; the story also involves two teenage girls who vanished in 1990 without ever being heard from again.⁷ Publishers Weekly called it "a tautly suspenseful mystery" in which Tudor doles out plot twists, "one so shocking that it turns the entire story inside out."⁷

Buccaneer Media secured the rights in a competitive situation in March 2021, and the agency that optioned the book noted it was unusual for a company to option a novel, develop it, and begin filming within 18 months.⁵^•¹¹

Production

The series was written by Hans Rosenfeldt, the Swedish screenwriter behind The Bridge and Marcella, working with Camilla Ahlgren, his longtime co-writer; Tudor was also credited as a screenwriter. Charles Martin directed, with Kieron Hawkes also directing episodes, and Tony Wood, Moreyba Bidessie, and Richard Tulk-Hart served as executive producers for Buccaneer Media.¹²^•¹³

Filming took place at studios in west London and on location in Buckinghamshire and east Sussex. Cinematographer Dale Elena McCready, a BSC and NZCS member, joined after a scheduling clash freed her from The Witcher; she has said the series used little virtual production, relying instead on some compositing and green-screen work, and that she developed the shot design with director Charles Martin during prep.¹⁴^•¹⁵

Cast

Samantha Morton, an Academy Award-nominated actress and 2024 BAFTA Fellowship recipient, leads as Reverend Jack Brooks. Ruby Stokes plays her daughter Flo, and the supporting cast includes Conrad Khan as Lucas Wrigley, David Dawson as Aaron Marsh, Paul Bradley and Janie Dee as the Rushtons, Jane Lapotaire as Joan Hartman, John Macmillan as Mike Sudduth, Elodie Grace Orkin as Rosie Harper, and Rupert Graves as Simon Harper.²^•¹⁶^•¹⁷

Release and reception

All six episodes were released on Paramount+ in the United Kingdom on October 19, 2023, timed for the Halloween season.³^•⁶ The series later appeared on Netflix: the British Board of Film Classification classified all six episodes for Netflix VOD distribution on October 27, 2024, with content warnings for sexual violence references, injury detail, suicide, language, sexual threat, and violence.¹⁸

Critical response was mixed. On Rotten Tomatoes the season holds a 62% Tomatometer from four critic reviews, and the site's audience score is based on fewer than 50 ratings.⁸ The Guardian's Lucy Mangan called it "solid, spooky, sanguinary fare" while noting that its clues and twists arrive more slowly than in the novel; The Times's James Jackson gave it 3/5 and found the outcome "a bit more pulpy than you might have expected for a Samantha Morton drama"; Paste scored it 6.5/10; and The Upcoming gave 2/5, judging the opening two episodes weak at building atmosphere.⁶^•⁸ On IMDb the series holds a 6.8/10 rating from about 2,900 users.⁹ Reviewers repeatedly singled out Morton's performance; a Liverpool Sound and Vision review rated the series 9/10 and praised her ability to "turn her emotion on a sixpence."¹⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026