Claire Danes seen in first picture from The Essex Serpent

Homeland star Claire Danes has donned Victorian costume in the first picture from The Essex Serpent, adapted from Sarah Perry’s best-selling novel.

Danes plays Cora Seaborne, a widow who moves to the Essex village of Aldwinter and becomes intrigued by a local superstition about a mythical creature.

The 2016 book is being produced for Apple TV+ and directed by Clio Barnard, whose credits include The Arbor and The Selfish Giant.

Initially, Keira Knightley was cast in the lead role and was among the show’s executive producers.

But last October she pulled out of the project, saying that the pandemic had made it impossible for her to find a comfortable childcare arrangement during the four-and-a-half months required to shoot the drama.

The Essex Serpent was named Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2017, with the judges saying it had “emerged from the dark” to become a smash hit.

The book’s publisher had set a modest sales target of only 5,000 hardback copies but it went on to sell more than 100,000 in hardback and within a year it had sold close to 300,000 copies in total.