Remember Me: The BBC Series Review

With winter well and truly here, and with darkness and cold outside the window, viewers of BBC One have for the last three weeks been treated to REMEMBER ME; a chilling supernatural thriller written by Gwyneth Hughes and directed by Ashley Pearce.

The story begins with an elderly Yorkshireman  named Tom Parfitt (Michael Palin) faking an accident in his house so as to convince his social worker Allison Denning (Rebekah Staton) that he ought to be moved into a retirement home, for reasons known only to himself. Once there, he befriends a care assistant named Hannah Ward (Jodie Comer); an 18-year-old girl from a single parent family, struggling to raise her younger brother Sean (Jamie Rooney-West) with little to no help from her widowed mother (Julia Sawalha). Discovering that Tom has a preoccupation with the seaside town of Scarborough, in particular variations of the folksong ‘Scarborough Fair’, Hannah becomes curious about the new resident of the care home. However, shortly after his arrival, a mysterious accident leads to Denning falling to her death through the window of Tom’s room, leaving him shaken and cowering in the corner. However, Detective Rob Fairholme (Mark Addy) begins to suspect that there is more to the death than first appeared, and he and Hannah soon both begin to suspect something supernatural at work.

In some respects, the fact that I am writing a review for Remember Me now has come as something of a surprise to me. Not because I expected that I was going to need to mull it over for a little while after viewing it, but rather because it feels it has sprung onto our screens in advance of when it feels like it ought to be aired. Christmas is, after all, still three weeks away, and it is traditionally in the week preceding or following the big day itself that the BBC unearths its annual ghost story (often an adaptation of a tale by M. R. James) to make the long, winter nights just that little bit chillier.

I therefore regard Remember Me as something of an early Christmas present, as it perfectly encapsulates the haunting atmosphere of those BBC ghost stories. To begin with, Hughes’ story taps into the narrative tropes of the genre perfectly. Though the precise motivation behind certain specific actions isn’t always clear, the spectral presence at work in Remember Me is an archetypal gothic phantom; a single-minded sentinel of some long forgotten charge, prepared – if not all too eager – to inflict appalling reprisals on all those it perceives to be attempting to thwart it in its task in even the smallest degree. However, as is the case with any gothic ghost story, the literal haunting is simply a physical manifestation of numerous unresolved issues at play in the lives of the protagonists, and their working to understand or overcome the physical ghost is simply a catalyst through which they exorcise their own.

The settings of the story (various towns and villages – including Scarborough – in the North-East of England) are likewise an archetype of the type of story Hughes is invoking. Like the seaside holiday resorts in James’ tales such as Whistle and I’ll Come To You (adapted by the BBC in 1968 and in 2010) and A Warning to the Curious (adapted in 1972), they are remote and bleak; not uninhabited, yet strangely deserted, and somehow uncannily detached from the rest of the modern world.

Praise is due to director Ashley Pearce and cinematographer Tony Miller in this regard, as they have done a masterful job of capturing starkness of the locations, the pervasiveness of the grey, overcast mise-en-scene drawing heavily on Scandinavian drama series such as The Killing, and lending new meaning (and menace) to the old adage “it’s grim up North”.

Likewise, the use of sound is also important in this respect, with dripping taps and lapping waves – which ought to be unremarkable in drizzly English coastal locations – becoming a key motif to herald the arrival of the spectre, and used to chilling effect in numerous scenes.

As far is the characters and the cast is concerned, there are very few weak links (Rooney-West doesn’t always convince, and Rob’s superior officer Grogan – played by – Tony Pitts seems to turn on a sixpence for no discernible reason). Mark Addy is eminently likeable as Rob, whilst Julia Sawalha brings to life a complex secondary-character with skill. Michael Palin puts in a fine performance as the seemingly good natured yet haunted Tom (and, naturally, receives top billing). However, it is Hannah who is the real protagonist of the story, and consequentially Jodie Comer who truly carries the miniseries, giving a nuanced performance that juggles lovingly maternal older sister, beleaguered daughter and world-weary teenager who believes circumstance has eliminated any prospects she may have, often all in the same scene.

Remember Me, then, is an effective and eerie miniseries, that could easily be said to be the latest in a proud tradition of chillers provided by the BBC for the holiday season.

If you missed the programme’s broadcast, it is already available for pre-order on DVD. So why not treat yourself for Christmas, sit down to watch (or re-watch) over the holidays, and feel that pleasant seasonal shiver run down your back?

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