I watched season 1 of this show a few weeks ago, but wanted to wait a bit to settle my thoughts on it. Season 2 is currently airing, but since it's an anthology and S2 is unrelated to S1, you don't have to concern yourself about spoilers between the two seasons. This review is exclusively for Season 1.

I will get one thing out of the way first: this is a horror show, but it is also a period piece and it can be quite a slowburn. If you don't like either or both of these things in any capacity, do not watch this.

The Terror (S1) is based on two things: the lost John Franklin expedition of 1845, and a heavily fictionalized novel based on that same incident (The Terror, by Dan Simmons). The show, like the novel, can at times be as historical as it is mythical and fictional, so it does play with your expectations quite a bit. History buffs beware.

The show is a big-budget AMC production, so you can expect A-grades in everything ranging from special effects, to acting, to cinematography, etc. It stars Ciaran Hinds from Game of Thrones, Tobias Menzies from Game of Thrones and Outlander, and Jared Harris from Mad Men, The Crown, and Chernobyl as the main players, but the cast is a true ensemble (damn-near-all 100-something crew members of both Franklin Expedition ships are named, per the actual historical ship logs, and most of them have some degree of a role). You do need to pay close attention to it as you watch, not only due to the large cast, but because as they get more and more disheveled throughout, they begin to barely look anything like when they first appeared, i.e. this isn't a show you can talk through; it does demand a certain amount of focus.

One of the things that could give people pause about watching this is the show's pensive tone and at times awkward pacing. Certain scenes are so slow that it feels like you're moving in a dream, but then something will unexpectedly rear its ugly head and the pacing will go full balls-to-the-wall, frenetic, and quick-paced for a long time until things slow down again. I personally loved this, but it could be jarring for some.

I do recommend this if you like slow, creeping dread in your horror stories that explodes into a cacophony of chaos upon its climax. In that sense, it's sort of like The Thing, and not just due to the snowy setting. The men on the expedition face their share of threats throughout: from nature, from themselves, and from something else in equal measure.

You'll notice that I'm hesitating to summarize too much of the plot. This is intentional, because I found the whole season to be extremely spoiler-sensitive. I do recommend not watching so much as a trailer for it in order to get the best effect.

Straight up 10/10 for me (was 8/10 at first due to the slow pace, but I find that certain scenes hold small little secrets that you may fail to notice until you re-watch it, which made it all way better to me). A very well-produced show from what I now consider to be the Golden Age of TV.

I watched the first half of the first season, and I agree that it's actually pretty great. A ton of suspense and even a few unexpected surprises. I'll have to finish the second half soon.

So the 2nd season isn't connected to the first in any way? What's it about then?

From what I understand, S2 takes place in an American internment camp for Japanese-Americans during WWII and includes ghost-like creatures from Japanese mythology, with George Takei in the lead. It's currently airing, so no BR or DVD release yet. Not sure if it's available to stream yet either.

Do expect them to pretty firmly close the book on S1. I was a bit surprised that they went that route, but as S1 was based on a novel I can respect them wanting to keep things fairly faithful to it without dragging it out.