Netflix's 2020 anthology instalment The Haunting of Bly Manor is worth revisiting as autumn approaches, according to a feature highlighting the nine-episode series ahead of Halloween. Directed by Mike Flanagan, who first found major success with The Haunting of Hill House in 2018, the show loosely adapts Henry James's 1898 novella "The Turn of the Screw" and represents a looser, more romance-driven follow-up to its predecessor.

The story relocates the tale to the 1980s, following an American au pair, played by Hill House breakout Victoria Pedretti, who takes a job caring for two orphaned children at a remote English estate haunted by a mysterious presence. Flanagan drew on several other Henry James works beyond the original novella to fill out the nine-episode run, with a standout mid-season episode centred on housekeeper Hannah (T'Nia Miller) inspired by James's "The Altar of the Dead". Flanagan has described the series as fundamentally a gothic love story about strangers forming a found family, in contrast to Hill House's focus on a single blood family.