Tom Hiddleston to explore The White Darkness for Pachinko's Soo Hugh

Tom Hiddleston has reportedly lined up his next post-Loki season one role, with Variety reporting that the British star is set to appear in a new Apple TV+ series entitled The White Darkness. Said show is being written by Soo Hugh, whose current series, Pachinko, is drawing strong reviews for the tech company’s streaming branch.

The White Darkness in question is not, amazingly, any of the hundreds of jokes that have immediately greeted the announcement of the series’ name online; it’s actually a reference to Antarctica, the planet’s least-fucked-up-so-far frontier. Hiddleston will star in the series as Henry Worsley, an adventure-seeking retired British soldier who decided, in 2016, that he was going to cross Antarctica on foot, after a number of previous successful expeditions, and whose Wikipedia page you should probably just go ahead and stay away from if you don’t want to be spoiled on how this particular journey ends.

Hugh is adapting the miniseries from Daniel Grann’s non-fiction book of the same name. Hugh—whose past projects include The Whispers and The Terror—is currently right in the middle of Apple’s release of Pachinko, a sweeping epic exploring the lives of a Korean family living through the tumultuous middle of the 20th century. She’ll be re-teaming on The White Darkness with Pachinko producer Theresa Kang-Lowe; Black Swan screenwriter Mark Heyman will serve as co-showrunner on the series.

As for Hiddleston—still committed to a second season of Loki, in addition to whatever other Marvel obligations he has on his plate—this all feels fairly familiar at this point. He’s made a habit for a few years now—dating back to his Emmy-nominated turn in The Night Manager—of breaking up his larger genre franchise work with more focused, limited-span TV projects. (This is actually his second Apple series this year; The Essex Serpent, with Claire Danes, is out next month.) And it’s hard to deny the acting appeal of Worsley’s story: One man versus a continent, powered by nothing but his own determination to continue? That’s the good, heroic stuff right there, the sort of inspirational story that can light a heart in viewers of all ages and beliefs, as long as, again, they stay well the hell away from that Wikipedia page.