“I am a student of the genre, I always wanted to play the detective, and the idea just popped into my head when I was on an airplane,” reveals Mark Gatiss, protagonist of the show he created, directed by Carolina Giammetta and produced by Eagle Eye Drama for UKTV’s channel U&alibi, with Beta Film handling international sales.
“Every detective has a thing: for Sherlock Holmes it is deduction, for Poirot his grey cells, Miss Marple uses the microcosmos of a village to extrapolate the world, Max Carrados is the blind detective,” Gatiss explains to Cinema&Video International.
So, Gatiss developed Gabriel Book—a gay man in a very dangerous world, that of post-WWII London, “a very interesting period, not much done in TV. Book owns a second-hand bookshop which is like his brain, like an analogue computer.”
Gatiss wrote the show during lockdown. A lucky coincidence led to him meeting Walter Iuzzolino and Jo McGrath from Eagle Eye Drama at a party.
“Walter asked if I had a period detective drama, and I had just written it!”
This is not the first time Gatiss has penned a show he then starred in. Two standouts are Doctor Who and Sherlock, for which he won a BAFTA, a Peabody and an Emmy.
During the masterclass he held in Riccione, Gatiss was pressed about a possible fifth season of Sherlock, answering, “Never say never. However, this is not on the agenda nor does it look possible right now.”
The second part of Bookish, however, will be filmed this coming August. For now, following the Italian premiere, this first season will be aired in Great Britain on July 16, on UKTV’s specialist crime drama channel U&alibi.
(Mark Gatiss: photo by Daniele Venturelli for Getty Images for Italian Global Series Festival)
Bolstered by Gatiss’ great confidence in his stylish, witty and humorous series, the shows seem conceived for books lovers, being full of quotes from and references to books (be they true or false).
“A lot are made up of course, but there are a lot of real books inside the show, and I hope it sort of points people towards some of those. It’s an original idea, but drawing on lots of my favorite things, Jane Eyre for example—there is a reference to it in the first episode.
In an age where books are being banned and burned again, it’s a wonderful thing to celebrate everything they represent, and this is really the heart of the show.”
This confidence seems to be well-placed, given the huge international interest around the series, heightened during the festival days, with Beta Film closing deals with Max in Australia, the Scandinavian public broadcasters DR in Denmark, SVT in Sweden, YLE in Finland, as well as Filmin in Spain, AXN WHITE in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and LTV in Latvia. Previously, sales had been announced to Latin America and Brazil, Benelux and Turkey, among others. While Beta Film holds worldwide distribution rights, PBS Distribution has the North American rights to season one.
Also attending the international premiere of Bookish in Riccione was co-star Polly Walker, well known by fans as Lady Fearthington in the hit Netflix series Bridgerton, to which the festival played tribute by presenting Adjoa Andoh (Lady Danbury) with a Massimo Excellence Award.
In Bookish, Polly Walker is Trottie, Book’s wife in a ‘lavender marriage,’ as homosexuality at that time was illegal.
The fact that Trottie owns the wallpaper shop next to the bookshop serves as a nice visual metaphor in a show where set design and costumes are very much curated and spot-on. Afterall, wallpaper is used to cover something, and Trottie’s wallpapers are colorful and exuberant, just like her personality.
“Playing this role after Lady Fearthington was a breath of fresh air for me, because Bridgerton was a formal world, where I was dressed up in corsets. Different to this one, where Trottie doesn’t have to conform in the same way. Also, she’s a very positive character, well regarded, while Lady Fearthington was an outlier, an outsider. But for sure they are two strong women who fight to overcome obstacles,” Walker tells Cinema&Video International.
(Polly Walker: photo by Daniele Venturelli Getty Images for Italian Global Series Festival)
Walker has extensive experience playing in period dramas. Alongside the aforementioned, she starred in Pennyworth, set in a grotesque London combining aspects of the 1950s and 60s, and the HBO-BBC miniseries Roma, shot in Cinecittà.
“Period pieces allow people to visit other times and offer them escapism from their own lives. It’s wonderful to look at those amazing locations and costumes, compared to some kitchen-sink drama,” Walker reflects.
“Costumes play a big role in Bookish,” adds Gatiss, “even though 1946 isn’t a particularly glamorous time, there are some amazing silhouettes, and I spent a lot of time choosing my coat!”
The next 6 episodes will be set in 1946, again in a vaguely autumnal atmosphere—that is all the author is able to share for now. But his ambitions extend further ahead, or perhaps, behind. “I made a conscious decision to have a sign outside the bookshop saying ‘Established in 1791’. I wanted it to be a very, very old family business, also because, if we have the chance to carry on for many more seasons, my dream is to make a flashback Georgian episode.”
Another form of escapism would be geographically. The series is shot in Belgium (produced in association with Happy Duck Films and supported by the Belgian Tax Shelter) with some parts in London, but “we should set an episode in Italy!” Gatiss jokes, just before setting off to visit the Fellini Museum in Rimini. He adds, “I love your ancient culture, the zippy craziness, the food, and anything with crumbling bell towers, like Siena, or Venice, even though this last one is too packed with tourists lately …”
