THE LIVING AND THE DEAD is a six-part BBC miniseries about ghostly goings on and the man who investigates them. The central characters are a farmer and his wife who arrive at a rural corner of historic England and soon discover that the countryside is awash with supernatural events and dangerous elements. From that premise I knew I had to watch it, but I soon discovered that this is the usual kind of generic BBC nonsense that proves the broadcaster has lost the plot these days when it comes to drama programming.
Visually the series is very similar to POLDARK albeit with a WICKER MAN influenced folk song soundtrack full of pagan themes and feelings. Yeah, the music gets pretty intrusive at times, almost reaching PEAKY BLINDERS levels of interruption. Elsewhere, the usual clichés of the ghost story genre are explored, from the generic possession stuff to hints of witchcraft, curses, and the odd cheesy death scene (the bit with Steve Oram being run over is physically impossible). Cast-wise, the main actor is the kid from MERLIN all grown up, but the problem is he's very wooden and uninteresting - can't the BBC give new talent a chance? There are some good character actors in support including Nicholas Woodeson (ROME), David Oakes (PILLARS OF THE EARTH), and Kerrie Hayes (THE MILL), but they don't have a lot to do.
THE LIVING AND THE DEAD might be well shot but many scenes are rather dark and dingy and there's even a woman in a negligee wandering around in the best Hammer tradition. At times it feels like nothing more than a mildly supernatural MIDSOMER MURDERS copy, but in the last couple of episodes things start to really lose the plot with some significant post-modernist developments seemingly copied from Hollywood fare like THE OTHERS or American HORROR STORY. And this is the problem with BBC drama in the 21st century: a team of writers with little to no experience in the horror genre, copying what's gone before instead of trying something new. The BBC needed to employ a single experienced writer like Stephen Volk in order to do this subject matter true justice.
Visually the series is very similar to POLDARK albeit with a WICKER MAN influenced folk song soundtrack full of pagan themes and feelings. Yeah, the music gets pretty intrusive at times, almost reaching PEAKY BLINDERS levels of interruption. Elsewhere, the usual clichés of the ghost story genre are explored, from the generic possession stuff to hints of witchcraft, curses, and the odd cheesy death scene (the bit with Steve Oram being run over is physically impossible). Cast-wise, the main actor is the kid from MERLIN all grown up, but the problem is he's very wooden and uninteresting - can't the BBC give new talent a chance? There are some good character actors in support including Nicholas Woodeson (ROME), David Oakes (PILLARS OF THE EARTH), and Kerrie Hayes (THE MILL), but they don't have a lot to do.
THE LIVING AND THE DEAD might be well shot but many scenes are rather dark and dingy and there's even a woman in a negligee wandering around in the best Hammer tradition. At times it feels like nothing more than a mildly supernatural MIDSOMER MURDERS copy, but in the last couple of episodes things start to really lose the plot with some significant post-modernist developments seemingly copied from Hollywood fare like THE OTHERS or American HORROR STORY. And this is the problem with BBC drama in the 21st century: a team of writers with little to no experience in the horror genre, copying what's gone before instead of trying something new. The BBC needed to employ a single experienced writer like Stephen Volk in order to do this subject matter true justice.