The rise of the literary subgenre cozy crime or cozy mystery (cozy, in British English) is very eloquent as a symptom of our present: friendly mystery stories, located in cozy environments and starring charming characters, who function as a refuge from an everyday life marked by acceleration, uncertainty and latent violence. It is no coincidence that bookstores recurrently appear as one of those safe spaces: ‘Murder Among Books’ (Kate Carlisle, 2023), ‘My Days at the Morisaki Bookstore’ (Satoshi Yagisawa, 2023), ‘Mystery in the Book Club’ (Ellery Adams, 2024)…
The British Mark Gatiss, creator of such popular series as ‘Sherlock’ or ‘Dracula’ (he also played La Agrado in the London stage version of ‘All About My Mother’), takes this plot premise to the extreme in his new series (available on Filmin). ‘Bookish’, translated as “bibliophile”, stars a bookseller named Book, who runs a bookstore in 1946 London called Book’s and, as an amateur detective, solves crimes with the help of books.
Both the bookstore – charming, cozy and ordered in a peculiar way – and the chosen era – the melancholic and evocative post-war London, still with the visible traces of the war -, provide the perfect environment for the viewer to settle back, as in an old wing chair, and enjoy harmless criminal intrigues characterized by ironic humor, playful whodunits, literary winks and a thin layer of pleasant – and sometimes a little cheesy – sadness. Nothing very original or surprising, but it doesn’t pretend to be either.
Throughout six episodes (or three divided into two parts, since three different cases are narrated), while we see the protagonist solve several crimes, we learn about his mysterious past (he always carries with him a letter written by Winston Churchill), the peculiar relationship he maintains with his wife (a wonderful Polly Walker) and a group of characters as eccentric as they are endearing, including a funny inspector clearly inspired by the Holmesian Lestrade.
In this way, the criminal mystery is gradually and very organically intertwined with the intimate drama until drawing the portrait of an era: not only as a vintage set to enhance the nostalgic atmosphere, but as a moral and social climate, with its imposed codes and silences, which ends up decisively influencing the characters’ conflicts. As expected, after its success in the United Kingdom, the series has been renewed for another season.
