A picture of death
Series brings past memorializing of the dead into macabre focus.
Google the words “post-mortem photography” and your screen will fill with sepia-toned family portraits in which something seems a little off. Look more closely and you may discern why: if it’s a true post-mortem photo, one of the subjects is dead.
Macabre as that might seem to us today, there was a time that “when someone died you’d make two quick calls: one to the undertaker, one to the photographer,” says Irish TV producer Paul Donovan (“Titanic: Blood and Steel”).
This very Victorian method of memorializing the deceased is the jumping-off point for the series “Dead Still,” an Acorn TV original that also airs on Citytv.
Set in Dublin, Ireland, in the 1880s, its main character is Brock Blennerhasset, played by Irish actor Michael Smiley (“Luther”), a well-known memorial photographer who often seems more comfortable with the dead than the living.
But if the idea of death photography is what draws you into this gem of a series, know that there are lots more reasons to keep watching.
“Dead Still” is part black comedy, part murder mystery, part period drama, part comedy of manners, with dashes of romance, family ferment, class division and psychological turmoil mixed in for good measure.
It’s very, very Irish, but it has a Canadian pedigree as well.
Donovan, the show’s executive producer, explained that the series’ makers were seeking additional funding and settled on Canada and Shaftesbury, which knows its way around period crime dramas as the home of “Murdoch Mysteries” and “Frankie Drake Mysteries.”
“They got the show immediately, Christina in particular,” said Donovan, referring to Shaftesbury CEO Christina Jennings, an executive producer on “Dead Still.”
“She said, ‘I want to be involved in this show because I like it, not because I can squeeze in a Canadian angle.’”
The Canadian content took the form of a director (Craig David Wallace), an editor (Joel
Varickanickal) and an actor (Mark Rendall).
It was an easy yes for Torontoborn Rendall, who’s appeared in shows like “ReGenesis,” “Transporter: The Series” and “Versailles.”
“From a very early age I was really fascinated by the macabre,” he explained over the phone. “I think I was like a child goth.”
But he was also taken with the tone of the series, the dialogue in the script and the feeling of his character, a sculptor named Percy Cummins.
“I tend to get some really interesting, juicy, morbid roles. I had this sense that he was definitely one of these guys,” Rendall said.
Besides Smiley, Rendall’s cast mates include Irish actors Eileen O’Higgins (“Mary Queen of Scots”) as Brock’s niece Nancy and Kerr Logan, who Canadian viewers would recognize from “Alias Grace” and “Game of Thrones,” as his assistant Conall. American Martin Donovan (“Weeds,” “Big Little Lies”), who lives in Canada, plays a visiting American photo collector.
Paul Donovan (no relation) said all the actors needed “to have funny bones.”
“This isn’t a laugh-out loud show by any means. The humour is quite subtle.” But the actors had to deliver that humour, inherent in the characters and situations, while playing it straight.
Rendall, Donovan said, “nailed the character immediately and the accent as well.”
Rendall was amused when he heard about Donovan’s compliment. The day before he flew to Ireland, he said, the script changed so that Irishman Percy had no longer lived in Canada for years — which meant the accent Rendall had rehearsed was no longer usable.
“It was terrifying … At the last minute I went into learning an Irish dialect,” Rendall said.
Acab driver, whose thick Dublin brogue Rendall could barely understand, offered to help him out, advising him not to do the same “terrible” accent that Brad Pitt used in the movie “Snatch.”
Neither Rendall nor Wallace, who directed two of the series’ six episodes, had ever been to Ireland before they did “Dead
Still.”
They both rented cars and went on road trips around the small country, falling in love with the landscape and especially the people.
For Wallace, known as a cocreator of the horror comedy “Todd and the Book of Pure Evil,” it was a particular thrill to shoot “in these 500- or 600year-old buildings. It was just stunning for me.”
The series shot on location in and around Dublin, with most of the sets in a couple of old estate houses. Donovan’s local pub, aptly known as The Gravediggers (it’s built into the wall of a cemetery), also featured in several scenes.
Like Rendall, Wallace is a fan of the macabre. When he met John Morton, the Irish actor, writer and director who created “Dead Still” with Irish director Imogen Murphy, he found they shared influences, among them 1980s horror movies and the Coen Brothers.
To Wallace, “Dead Still” is “as if the Coen Brothers had come up with this post-mortem Victorian era comedy.”
Nonetheless, “Dead Still” is very much its own creation — and Donovan said it was particularly important to himself, Morton and Murphy that it not feel like “an Irish version of such and such a show.”
“Irish shows set in the past are nearly always about the political, historical issues of the day. They’re rarely about the more generic murder mystery type of show,” Donovan explained.
“We were always looking to maintain the Irish feel and sensibility of the series, but also you have to have something that’s … going to strike a chord with a number of people.”
Having watched all six episodes, it seems to me they’ve accomplished exactly that.
Rendall said he doesn’t usually enjoy watching himself onscreen, but he eagerly binged “Dead Still” and was thrilled to hear that Morton and Murphy already have an outline for a second season.
“I really love it,” he said. “It weaves this really great, beautiful tableau of society at the time and relationships at the time in this really odd family business.”
“Dead Still” debuts Monday on Acorn TV.