Mark Gatiss is no stranger to mysteries, whether as the co-creator of BBC One's Sherlock (and portraying Sherlock's brother, Mycroft Holmes) or as the writer/director of spine-chilling ghost stories for the BBC at Christmas. But in his new series Bookish, airing on U&Alibi in the UK and coming to the US later on PBS, he's finally living out a lifelong dream of playing a detective.
Set in post-World War Two London, the series stars Mark — who also created the show — as Gabriel Book, a bookshop owner who has a handy sideline consulting for the police on some of their more complicated cases. Book is a gay man living in a time when homosexuality was illegal, but he's married to his childhood best friend Trottie (Bridgerton's Polly Walker) in a marriage of convenience that works for both of them.
As the series begins, ex-prisoner Jack (Everything I Know About Love's Connor Finch) receives a mysterious invitation from a prison reform society upon his release, advising him of a job vacancy at Book's bookshop — but is it just chance that has brought to Jack into Book and Trottie's world, or is it destiny?
Here, Mark tells us more about the series...
Mark Gatiss on the inspiration for Bookish
"I've always wanted to play a detective, and I had this idea about eight years ago on a plane. It arrived sort of fully-formed: a bookshop owner called Book. This is my favourite period; post-war London is not done often, and I thought, yes, he's gay and in a lavender marriage. It's such an interesting time: the whole world's been turned upside down, it's very exciting but kind of frightening. Nobody knows their place any more. That was the genesis of it, and then during lockdown I thought I'd write it as a book.
"I started it, but I couldn't get the tone right — it was too bleak, I think because we were in an international crisis and that sort of leached into it! But what I did manage to do was write a script, literally for something to do, and I really enjoyed it. Then, two years ago, I was introduced to Walter [Iuzzolino] and Jo [McGrath, from production company Eagle Eye Drama] and Walter said, 'you haven't got a period detective in you, have you?' I said, 'I do, and I've got a script!' So I sent it to them, and it was commissioned two weeks later, which was amazing. So it was a long process to a quick commission!"
What specifically inspired the idea of a bookseller who moonlights as a detective?
"I'm a big fan of detective fiction, I always have been, and every detective has to have a 'thing'. When Agatha Christie came up with Poirot, she almost literally drew lines from Sherlock Holmes: she made him short instead of tall, foreign instead of British, and everything echoes from there. Every detective has to have a specialty, and the cleverest of all is Miss Marple, because it's a brilliant idea: she's not really left the village she comes from, but she has a microcosmic view of the universe, so there'll be a strange murder and she says 'oh, this is like that woman at the post office...' — it's a very clever idea, the village is the whole world.
"With Book, I thought of the idea that he can draw on all the world's books, whether physically or in his head, fiction or non-fiction, so you could say 'oh, this is like the plot of [Shakespeare play] The Winter's Tale' or 'this happened in ancient Greece' — the idea that there's nothing new under the sun!"
And how does Jack come into Book's world in the opening episode?
"Hmm, what can I say? Well, he's got a job from a prison reform society, and he doesn't know why he's suddenly landed on his feet. We do discover that it's not all that meets the eye, but I can't really tell you very much!"
What sort of research did you do when you were developing the show?
"I knew a lot about this period anyway, and that's kind of what informed it — I've read loads of books about post-war London and they're full of strange stories of things that happened in the war and had a legacy. There was a massive gun crime epidemic in London after the war because so many soldiers came home with weapons they'd looted from dead German soldiers — as simple as that, no one checked! They had to have an amnesty to turn them in because there were so many guns. So crime rocketed after the war, and all these people came back who didn't have a place any more. Women, particularly, had experienced incredible liberation and then were kind of told to get back behind the sink, and a lot of them didn't want to, a lot of marriages broke up, it's really interesting."
Did you need to do a lot of research into lavender marriages?
"Well, I'm a homosexual, so I know a lot about this as a thing! It was usually a gay man and a gay woman who lived together as a convenience, but there were also a lot of people who just settled together and didn't have children, it was a respectable front. What I've got with Trottie is that she and Book were best friends for many years, then they drifted apart, and then in the 30s when he's at his lowest ebb, she just reappears and they get married. To the world at large, they are Mr and Mrs Book — but it's a very dangerous world, you know..."
The revelation of Book's sexuality could be quite challenging for Jack to deal with. How did you handle that without making Jack an unsympathetic character?
"We tackled it head on. I wanted to, because the other thing I always hate is when we judge the past by our sort of narrow framework and slightly patronise people. Jack doesn't take it well, because mostly people wouldn't, and I don't want to whitewash that. I think you can get a very soft-pedalled version of the past where everyone is fine about everything; that's just not the case, and it's much more interesting to highlight that than to pretend it never happened."
Book's quite a mysterious and unknowable character — is that something that he deliberately cultivates?
"I had an idea from the start that I think you have to do that, without being too consciously eccentric; that's what makes detectives interesting. There are some detectives, and they generally tend to be policemen, where you just think, 'what are we meant to be interested in about this Inspector?', when they just seem to be a regular copper. They've got to have something, haven't they? My big idea with Book was that he has quite a lighthearted attitude to life, because he's seen some very bad things. There was a line, which I think we might have cut, where someone says 'how was your war?' and he says 'long' — that's all he says. But we are going to find out more about him..."
The series is split into three two-part stories. What made you decide to structure it that way?
"Well, I'd written a two-part script to start with, and everybody liked that as a format. There's a cliffhanger, absolutely, but it also gives you more time. This is a genre show, it's a detective show, so you want to give most of the time to the case, while everything else is bubbling along in the background: the whole thing with where Jack's come from, who he is, what's going on with Book and Trottie etc. The main thing has to be the murder, because that's what people are watching it for, so it's about giving it enough time for everything. Although I wouldn't rule out doing single ones, if we get that far. I had a great idea the other day, but it doesn't sustain a two-parter!"
Finally, what do you think Bookish adds that's new to the whodunnit genre?
"The hardest thing is trying to come up with something new! I think it's a tonal thing: it's a funny show, I hope, and it's quite melancholy. I've always loved bittersweet things. I also think the fact that he's gay and in a marriage of convenience is unusual. It looks very beautiful too — I think we've hit upon a new thing, and I'm calling it 'colour noir', like film noir, but it's in colour. We've done some beautifully striking, shadowy stuff, but it's also a very rich palette, and I've not seen that on telly, so that's nice. I hope it appeals to people who like the cosiness of watching a murder mystery in the evening in front of the fire, but I also think it's got more to it than that..."
- Bookish launches on Wednesday July 16 on U&Alibi in the UK, with a two-part story airing at 8pm and 9.10pm.
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