Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Mark Gatiss, Polly Walker, Connor Finch, Elliot Levey, Buket Kömür, Blake Harrison, Tim McInnerny, Paul McGann, Joely Richardson, Daniel Mays, Rosie Cavaliero, Gerard Horan, Anton Antoniadis, Tom Forbes, Amanda Drew, Ella Bruccoleri, Angeliki Papoulia, Jonas Nay, Harry Taurasi, Mark Umbers, Hannah Snow, Amanda Payne, Mark Winstanley, Chris Brooker, Charlie Cattrall, Michael Workeye, Elizabeth Berrington, Amanda Payne, Mariken van Lammeren, Mark Benton, Loveday Smith, Luke Norris, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Shaniqua Okwok, Rina Krasniqi, Isabelle Connolly.
To leave a lasting impression in detective fiction there must a reason for the audience to feel a connection with the protagonist, to feel either empathy, sympathy, or even a kind of pleasure in their failings, only to watch them rise through adversity and solve the puzzle before them; there is after all nothing worse than being unable to feel for the one charged with keeping order, from keeping the forces of human evil from overwhelming society.
It is in the spirit of such reasoning that Gabriel Book holds intrigue as a man who has survived much in his life, including the barbarity of war, and who seeks the truth of humanity’s darker side in his local area of central London as he also portrays calm assurance with his own secrets that few in his select friends group know.
It is rare to show on television a detective drama that is willing to venture into the realm of having a lead investigator, or in the case of Bookish a consultant, who is gay, especially one set in the aftermath of World War Two and the connotations of all that happened to those who loved a person of the same sex under the evil of Nazism, and the gentleness at the heart of the three story series, Slightly Foxed, Deadly Nitrate, and Such Devoted Sisters, counters the dramatic insidiousness of murder and deception that envelops the time period and the guise of ‘respectability’ that was encouraged on gay men and women at the time less they face their own social battles and possible prison terms.
Bookish sees Mark Gatiss and Polly Walker in fine form as the married couple entrenched in solving crimes, and Gabriel and Trottie Book they have found a way to coexist in their own worlds and join forces when needed; it is a comforting reminder that such a deal could be made in a period in British history when to have no one on your side was almost a sentence of loneliness forever etched on the sleeve of life.
The three tales that make up the first series being able to call upon the excellent services of guests such as Tim McInnerny, Paul McGann, Mark Benton, Rosie Cavaliero, Elliot Levey, Joely Richardson, and Blake Harrison to the impressive cast, the atmosphere of repression and being seen as ‘appearing’ in plain clothes suits the temperament of the idea behind the detective drama, that of hiding in plain sight but refusing to bow to the hangover of Victorian attitudes that were still around long after the death of the dour regent.
A wonderfully precise series that adds a different dimension to the private investigator and detective genre, one of powerful persuasion.
Ian D. Hall