I still haven't got my head around the new Sky TV thriller Possession, with all five episodes now available to stream.

We follow Claudia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an ambitious biracial lawyer who travels to Jamaica to challenge an inheritance claim made by a local man against a wealthy white aristocrat.

However, she arrives to find the disputed estate is a former plantation that has long haunted her dreams. Cue a terrifying slew of 1800s flashbacks, curses, and misunderstood spiritual connection.

It's colonial horror with a fresh 2020s take, and the supernatural tone might remind you of one of the biggest box office hits of the last five years.

In fact, it's the cast's immediate answer when I ask for their opinion on what would be best to double bill with Possession, but there's one connection that I didn't see coming.

Stream Sinners on HBO Max after binging Possession on Sky TV

"It was being made at the same time we were making this show, so we didn't realise that there was a connection, but Sinners keeps getting brought up," director Storm Saulter tells me when I put the double bill question to him and Mbatha-Raw.

"It's different, but it's also speaking about certain histories: about Afro-spiritualists, voodoo, magic, connection to Obeah (a monster from West African folklore).

"So I think those are two pieces in two different worlds, but they speak to the history, tradition, forward-thinking, and that the past is present."

Once Saulter says this, I don't know why I didn't make the same connection sooner. Though Sinners is more concerned with vampires in a more traditional sense, director Ryan Coogler's vision was so uniquely steeped in cultural history that's usually not done justice in mainstream media — and Possession fits that same criteria.

In fact, I think that Sinners is a much better fit than Belle, Mbatha-Raw's 2013 film critics have already compared to Possession.

She plays the titular character Dido Elizabeth Belle, who was a mixed-race illegitimate daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral raised in 18th Century England.

But does Mbatha-Raw see the connection that everybody else has?

"Obviously, to me, they're very separate projects, but I can see that there's some common themes," she responds. "Belle was a period drama that, was about one of the fewer known biracial aristocrats in England whose uncle was the Lord Chief Justice of England. In Possession, I'm playing the lawyer, so I definitely see, some of the comparisons there.

"It's a privilege to have a canon of work behind me where occasionally you have the privilege to really confront some of these issues in your work. It's not lost on me."

And if watching Possession, Sinners and potentially Belle is too much for some? "Get outside... go for a walk," Mbatha-Raw jokes.

If you like the aesthetic vibes of colonial gothic horror stories such as Jamaica Inn and Wide Sargasso Sea, new Sky TV supernatural thriller Possession is definitely for you. However, a word of warning — the story is going to touch a much more modern nerve.

We're set to follow Claudia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an ambitious bi-racial lawyer who travels to Jamaica to challenge an inheritance claim made by a local man against a wealthy white aristocrat.

However, she arrives to find the disputed estate is a former plantation that has long haunted her dreams. Cue a terrifying slew of 1800s flashbacks, curses, and misunderstood spiritual connection.

On a surface level, you can see why someone might find this frightening. The drama isn't just tense to the level of consistent jump scares, but is often violently disturbing in its commitment to guts and gore (think Evil Dead levels of supernatural horror).

But then there's a secondary layer of discomfort when you consider the role that different countries have played in the history of colonialism and enslaved people. Culturally and historically, we know how abhorrently the Western world behaved during the Transatlantic Slave Trade, but here, we also understand how regularly spirituality and beliefs were misunderstood and chastised.

With such a distinct 2026 twist, Possession left me shaken in the entirely opposite way to what I expected. But according to star Gugu Mbatha-Raw, it's not the cast and crew's job to make the uncomfortable comfortable.

'The power of drama is posing these lofty subjects in an accessible way'

"I don't think it's our job to make the audience comfortable... I think probably it's more our job to take you on a journey," Mbatha-Raw tells me when I ask her if it's possible to make the uncomfortable comfortable.

"Claudia goes on this massive journey and it's a quest to find out about her identity. She's dealing with justice and legacy. But even though there's some weighty themes in the show around the legacy of colonialism and the complexity of reparations, I think that that's the power of drama. Pose these lofty subjects, but in a more accessible way."

"I don't know that 'comfortable' is the word. I think that we celebrate discomfort in this genre, and I think that that's okay. It's okay to have difficult conversations and to not shy away from uncomfortable subject matter. I think there's a place for that in drama and in society."

She continues, "Good stories a place for discovery, and I think we want people to lean in and be like, 'whoa, look at this lush, interesting, rich, vibrant world.' Once they're in, they grapple with some hard truths."

It's certainly an apt way of describing the intense viewing journey that unfolds over just five episodes, each being under an hour long. Simply put, Possession is the kind of TV show that sits with you for days and weeks afterward, leaving you with the kind of internal conversation that unpicks the things that you think you already know.

That's a lot for anybody to take on, particularly when you've simply sat down to unwind with some TV of an evening. But what is art when it doesn't challenge us? If you want my advice: Possession is more than worth a watch — and if you're left feeling disturbed, then that's all the better.