The first episode of the new six-part drama The Living and the Dead (BBC1) opened in a Somerset vicarage, in 1894 and I was already sold. “Anywhere but the here and now, my loves,” I whispered at the screen. “Anywhere but here and now.”
Soon, joyfully, we were even further removed from reality. Partly by the ethereal beauty of Colin Morgan – off whose cheekbones the entire production hangs – as Nathan Appleby, a pioneering psychologist returned from London to the family pile to make A Go of Things after the death of his mother, and partly because supernatural doings are afoot. Sixteen-year-old Harriet has started hearing voices and feeding ducklings to pigs. Is she about to get her first period? Is she haunted? Or is her psychic upheaval emblematic of the industrial changes about to sweep through bucolic England?
After fishing Harriet out of the lake, Nathan decides that he will psychologise the ghosts and murder-most-fowl (I daren’t tell you how hysterically I have made myself laugh. Forgive me – these are difficult days) out of her. “I think she’s afraid of her own sexuality.” You think she’s afraid? You should speak to the ducklings.
He needs to get cracking. As well as forcing Harriet to try and baptise/drown any country maidens she sees acting unmaidenly up against a tree, the malevolent spirits around the place induce sturdy labourer John Roebuck to throw himself under the horsedrawn plough. I know, Remainers, I know. Everywhere is metaphor.
Eventually, Nathan hypnotises Harriet with his cheekbones and a watch and baptises her while she is possessed by the spirit of Abel North, the unloved son of a preacherman who never had him christened and possible murderer of a woman in a workhouse. Abel may also know something about the death of Nathan’s son by his first wife, but we’ll have to wait and see about that.
And then – spoiler alert, for all those of you who apparently read reviews in the full expectation that they will give no information about the programme under discussion, and who really should go and stand in the corner with all those who voted Leave as a protest and are now protesting vociferously about the fact that we’ve left – right at the end, there was a twist I didn’t see coming and which I heartily enjoyed.
It’s shaping up to be a nice six hours of spooky fun and games and there’s the Lyke Wake Dirge over the opening credits, which I might petition to have as our new national anthem. Christe receive thy saule.
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Inside Porton Down (BBC4) was an odd proposition. To mark the Defence Science and Research Laboratory’s 100th anniversary – it was founded in 1916 after the Germans used their new weapon, chlorine gas, in the trenches – the cameras, led by Dr Michael Mosley, have been invited in for the first time. I don’t know – it just seemed a bit … needy, to me. Which is not really what I look for in my scientific or military institutions. I’d prefer to think of everyone and everything concerned with overseeing national security as emotionally robust. Maybe even a little bit defiant. Secure enough not to need lots of birthday fuss, anyway. Your job is to do secret things secretly? STAY SECRET THEN.
The programme itself was a depressing, unsettling hour in an already depressing, unsettling week. A brief outline of the history of chemical, biological and nuclear warfare; a quick trip through some anonymous-looking corridors, where no viewer has ever trod, to see people creating and testing nerve gases that have killed thousands of people across the globe and will almost certainly kill thousands more as rogue states and terrorism proliferate. And copious reminders at every turn – via footage of sarin-sown rabbits, disavowed deaths and child corpses on the streets of Syria – of the ever more terrible things we invent to do ever more terrible things to each other.
It tried to leave us on a happy note. Spider webs are being used to trap the ebola virus for researchers to work on. Alas, what they have discovered so far is that ebola does remain contagious in the air long enough for it to be usefully weaponised. What endless bounty nature gives us.
This ae night, this ae night, every nighte and alle, fire and fleet and candle-lighte, and Christe receive thy saule.
