KEEPING UP WITH…
Matthew d’Ancona
Murder, he read
Mark Gatiss’s star-filled new detective series Bookish is a case of mischievous fun
‘It’s a chaotic world, Jack. I have a system,’ says consulting detective Gabriel Book (Mark Gatiss) to his new employee Jack Blunt (Connor Finch). ‘You can read all sorts of things as well as books.’
It’s 1946, and postwar London is clambering slowly back to its feet. The eccentric, bohemian and brilliant sleuth – whose antiquarian bookshop in Archangel Lane is (of course) called Book’s Books – spends much of his time advising police Inspector Bliss (Elliot Levey), especially on cases that involve suspicious circumstances (‘my favourite kind of circumstances’). When they’re interrogating a witness or suspect, he rings a bell each time Bliss lets slip a cliché: ‘Textbook, quotidian, banal!’
Why has a cluster of skeletons appeared at a bomb site? And who killed local chemist George Harkup with prussic acid? These are the kind of mysteries to be solved in Bookish, which premieres on 16 July on U&Alibi (available via Sky or NOW). Divided into three two-episode cases, the series features a galaxy of guest stars: the likes of Daniel Mays, Joely Richardson, Paul McGann, Tim McInnerny and Rosie Cavaliero. The bookshop is a crucible of adventure, where Jack soon befriends young Nora (Buket Kömür), who’s drawn to the exciting milieu around Gabriel. At its heart is Gabriel’s wife, Trottie (Polly Walker), who met him in a scarlet fever ward when they were 12. Their marriage is fiercely loving – but, we soon learn, platonic, as Gabriel is gay, and homosexuality still strictly criminalised.