The Usher family is never far from controversy. The fortunes of siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher were made through Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, a company whose products are often under scrutiny due to health concerns. Assistant District Attorney C. Auguste Dupin is determined to land a conviction and his case against Fortunato and the Ushers has gone to trial. Now, right in the middle of the trial, Roderick's children are dying under mysterious circumstances.
Having read many of Edgar Allan Poe's works and watched many of Roger Corman's adaptations of them, including "(The Fall of the) House of Usher", I was intrigued by this mini-series. Being a mini-series I didn't expect that it would simply be an 8-part adaptation of the book. However, the episode titles implied that other Poe works would also be adapted as part of the mini-series.
Turns out this series has very little to do with Edgar Allan Poe. Writer-director Mike Flanagan simply abused the name of Edgar Allan Poe to give this series some credibility. The only things Poe-like in this series are the title of the series, the titles of the episodes, the family name and the fact that the Assistant AG is C. Auguste Dupin, the detective in many of Poe's works. The plot has very little semblance to any works of Poe.
Poe non-adaptation aside, this episode, and the start of the series, isn't any good anyway. Slow paced with loathsome, unengaging characters. Flanagan tries to make everyone seem edgy but they're actually just vacuous and despicable.
It gets better: from Episode 3 the tension, action and plot development tick up several notches but I almost didn't get that far - was seriously thinking of giving up during Episode 2.