Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Mark Gatiss, Polly Walker, Elliot Levy, Connor Finch, Blake Harrison, Jason Watkins, Sarah Crowe, Saffron Coomber, Rosie Cavaliero, Amanda Lawrence, Sorcha Groundsell, Sid Sagar, Nadia Albina, Gerard Horan, Buket Kömür, Youssef Kerkour, Rupert Graves, Nory Goderis, Jan Van Ryckeghem, Rob Oldfield, Simon Callow.
The dead always leave behind something in the dust for others to spoil, to use in their name, and create deeds by the living that leeches off the bereaved as they grieve and grasp any sign of hope that those they have lost might still be found.
It is in this dust and the daily groove of life that the manipulation of emotions take place, and one superbly underlined and investigated by Gabriel Book in the impressive story of Memento Mori.
Spiritualism, the psychic, and the supernatural, it is a scene of the Victoriana, of a time when the gothic crossed over into the public eye, and which continued unabated because the times demanded answers to the unexplained, to the madness of war after war, and the truth of how people died when there was no trace of them to be found; and it was a period where some honest believers and practitioners established decency, integrity, and peace and others took the opportunity to fleece and lie with abandon.
The second series of Bookish starts with a resounding tale of how the end of World War Two left many bereft of their loved ones, and where officialdom couldn’t provide satisfying solutions and people like Harold Sneed became a presence in the lives of the damaged, and in doing so were able to pray on the psyche of moral fortitude that had seen the country defy another charlatan.
It is to the expertise of Mark Gatiss, a writer who understands the thin line between the reality of our existence and the ephemeral and the passing transience of Time, and with Memento Mori that sense of spacious insistence of glee shines through in every scene and through every piece of dialogue, and never better than in the confrontation between the bookseller and the charlatan on Book’s own turf, and then the reveal at the table of the deceitful Harold Sneed. Such scenes as a fan of detective fiction are to be prized and held with lasting affection; and Mark Gatiss presents them with permanence.
With Jason Watkins as Sneed, Sarah Crowe and Amanda Lawrence as the Plumchute sisters, and the ever-gracious Polly Walker inhabiting the soul of Book’s wife Trottie all showing their enjoyment to the script and the persuasion of the tale, so Memento Mori resolutely stands tall in the pantheon of the dark and murky world of nefarious murder.
Ian D. Hall