Bookish

Gatiss really stepping out of his comfort zone here, portraying a gay, waspish and brilliant bookseller cum detective. I was resistant at first, seeing it as Gatiss's attempt to claim the role Cumberbatch got to before him, but I really warmed to it and I'm glad to see a second series has been greenlit.

The supporting cast are very stage school gorblimey, and there are one or two really bum notes like the diminutive Turkish girl who has, to put it kindly, an unusual acting style. Book's beard, cough, wife is a charming and attractive presence and their relationship is well drawn. The cases are unnecessarily convoluted, but who cares. This is slippers, tea and biscuits TV, and God bless it for that.

This looks great and has very fine writing and performances. There's a limit to how many plot variations an amateur detective can have and Bookish doesn't really try to push the envelope.

But that is part of its charm.. familiarity with the characters and plots makes it all more enjoyable.

The one negative and itis a big one is that the sound quality s not good enough to make the dialogue clear in all circumstances. Could badly do with optional subtitles.

I wanted to like this program more than I actually did. It's premise, actors and affable quirks were most promising from the trailers. But it just didn't live up to it and I'm afraid it was Mark Gatiss, for me, who missed the mark.

The performance echoed and harked back to characters originally played in The League of Gentleman decades before (brilliant twisted humour). But having seen Gatiss perform this schtick many times in programs and films, it has worn thin.

Recently, I read an article where Mark Gatiss talked about nostalgia being the problem with new Dr Who episodes and holding it back. Ironically, nostalgia seems to be the guiding force behind his acting. I still like Gatiss but he is slowly ascending a glass pedestal of his own making.

This show is really not very good.

Dreadfully annoying theme tune and incidental music.

Camp, over-the-top acting from half the cast.

Bad, wooden acting from the other half.

Woefully poor, stilted dialogue.

Plots that think they are clever but are just silly nonsense.

The set design is pretty good though.

Bet you never thought you'd hear anyone say that about any programme, let alone a mystery penned by the usually very reliable Mark Gatiss. The premise is great: book shop owner with lavender marriage solves mysteries in post-war London, but everything is just so slow. The stories creep along at the pace of the encroaching London smog. And London is not London, so there's a fair bit of not very good AI making the streets look a little less Belgian, where it was actually filmed. On top of that, there are some very dodgy accents - the Turkish girl's comes straight out of 2020s Top Boy - and the while thing is filmed in a washed out, over exposed palette. It's a real shame as I was looking forward to this. In the battle of the afternoon TV Marks, it's a win for Mr. Williams.