Yahoo Lifestyle Mark Gatiss On His Next Chapter: ‘Bookish’ Is Cozy Crime With An Edge
EXCLUSIVE: Mark Gatiss is suitably on-trend with Bookish. He created and stars in the upcoming series as Gabriel Book, an eccentric bookshop owner and expert sleuth who helps the police solve tricky cases. The show has contained stories – one crime plays out over two episodes –and there are lighthearted elements and something comforting about the cluttered antiquarian bookshop, situated in a picture-perfect historic London lane. There is pre-launch buzz and international buyers have already started snapping up the series.
This is cozy crime, but as the show unfolds, Gatiss’ writing reveals layers and wrinkles that give the series teeth.
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“It’s become a bit of an instant cliche, ‘cozy crime’, but I don’t think it has to be,” Gatiss tells Deadline. “It can be welcoming, and this has period elements that people love, and they love a world where you can’t solve crimes with computers. But it’s also a world that’s fractured and dangerous.”
Director Carolina Giammetta adds: “It was all there on the page. It was really important for us that we did keep it warm, but also that we did show that edge.”
Book has a canine companion called Dog, and the cast of human characters includes Polly Walker (Bridgerton) as Book’s wife Trottie, Connor Finch (Everything I Know About Love) as his assistant, Jack. Elliot Levey (Quiz) and Blake Harrison (World on Fire) represent Scotland Yard as Inspector Bliss and Sergeant Morris respectively. The likes of Joely Richardson, Daniel Mays and Paul McGann make guest appearances along the way.
From Baker Street to Archangel Lane
Gatiss’ acting and/or writing credits include fan favorites Dracula, Doctor Who and The League Of Gentlemen. He co-created the BBC series Sherlock with Steven Moffat and wrote several episodes of the Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman-starrer. One lesson learned on that series is to enjoy the genius of the main character’s sleuthing but also ensure they feel human.
“With Sherlock, when we did that, we called it ‘a restoration’ because Sherlock Holmes had become a kind of superman, whereas if you read the original stories he has huge gaps, he’s sometimes doesn’t want to know things that don’t affect him, we loved those [gaps]. I thought we should put that back in.”
Book thusly has vulnerabilities that make him feel real. “I hate the idea of him just being smugly omnipotent or omniscient,” Gatiss says. “He’s got friends around him who do things better; Trottie is much more practical, Jack is like a new member of the team, and Inspector Bliss does the leg work. Otherwise, it’s not very interesting. And he’s a vulnerable man, vulnerable about his sexuality and about his past.
“The first idea I had was that he’d probably seen some terrible things in the war, which had then actually made him generally very optimistic, his attitude to life is quite light because of that.”
Book’s optimism draws on movie star inspiration. “I remember reading into Dirk Bogarde, who was at the liberation of Belsen. It had marked him forever. He was a matinee idol, but he had a darkness that he could never get rid of.”
London: The Wild West
London in the wake of World War Two is something akin to the Wild West in Bookish; Many soldiers have come back from the war with weapons and the city buzzes with danger as well as excitement and opportunity.
“The post-war period fascinates me, and it’s not really done,” Gatiss says. “The world is completely upside down; a lot of people have emerged from the war shattered but there’s also tremendous optimism for what can be built. I thought there’s something really interesting there to put a detective into.”
Book is gay, which in the UK in 1946 is illegal. He is in a lavender marriage – a term describing a union between a heterosexual and a homosexual person, which historically often provided a cover for the sexual orientation of the latter. Book’s wife Trottie lives in an adjoining wallpaper shop.
“It’s sort of based on a lot of relationships I’ve had since I was a teenager with my best female friends,” Gatiss said of the relationship dynamic during a Q+A after a screening at Beta Film’s London TV Screenings event. “It’s kind of protection for them both, both sexually, but also just in terms of how people react.”
The relationship also works for Trottie. “She’s a liberated woman,” Walker explains. She has no children and it’s after the war, during which she has become used to having her independence. “It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, but it’s also based on real love. It’s not just a marriage of convenience,” she tells Deadline.
Book To Screen
Bookish was originally intended as a novel. Its journey to screen came after Jo McGrath and Walter Iuzzolino, from Eagle Eye – the ITV Studios-backed producer that makes the series – approached Gatiss at a party thrown by the UK’s historic TV listings magazine The Radio Times.
“During lockdown I thought I’d write it as a book. I couldn’t get the tone right. I wanted it to be quite light and the darkness just kept coming in. I wrote a chapter, and it was quite bleak, and I thought: ‘I know, I’ll just write a script to get it,” so I wrote episode one. When Jo and Walter approached me, it was like something from a bad biopic. They said: ‘You haven’t got a period detective have you?” And I said: ‘Yes I’ve got a script,’” Gatiss recalls.
“Literally the next day Mark came into the office,” McGrath remembers.
Series one will air on UKTV’s U&Alibi crime channel. PBS Distribution holds the North American rights and Beta Film is across international sales. Bookish was well received in a cinema packed with buyers, which bodes well for international deals. Beta has already made headway, with BBC First in the Benelux and AMC Networks in Latin America among those acquiring the series early.
Gatiss, meanwhile, spies potential to create a Bookish library. If the series lands well, more volumes await. “I’d like to continue,” he says. “If we come back, I’d like to continue 1946 for a lot longer. It’s a very busy year. I wouldn’t like to advance too quickly, that period is so extraordinary, you know, with the Great Freeze of ’47, and lots of stuff. I’ve got hundreds of ideas.”
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