It’s been a very long time since we last saw Michael Palin getting into any kind of fictional character for a TV performance, but the good news is that the BBC has recently announced that he will be taking the lead role in a new haunting mini-series called Remember Me. Coming hot on the heels of his recent Travelling To Work UK tour and the 2013 Monty Python reunion gigs, the new role sees him getting his spam-loving, lumberjack toughened, globe trotting gnashers into a modern day ghost story.
The three-part spectral drama has been written by award winning writer and documentary director, Gwyneth Hughes, whose previous work has created an air of expected mystery, having written everything from the TV crime drama, Five Days, to HBO’s The Girl, which focused on an alleged obsession Alfred Hitchcock is believed to have had for the leading lady from The Birds, Tippi Hedren. She’s also worked on an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ final, unfinished novel, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, which should stand Remember Me in good stead to tap into the dark and brooding style that typified a lot of Dickens’ work.
Talking about writing the mini-series, Gwyneth Hughes commented, “You write every story with the simple hope that you can make [people] laugh, make them cry, and if it’s a ghost story, make them jump as well! But at heart, Remember Me is a love story, and I hope that’s what people will really take from it. It’s about how long love can endure, about the responsibilities it brings, and about how true love must always be freely given.”
The BBC’s air date for the mini-series is at 9pm on Sunday 23rd November 2014, with filming completed during the summer, which took place largely in Scarborough. Hughes also commented, “who doesn’t love a good ghost story on a winter’s night?”, and the Beeb has clearly gone for a sooner rather than later release for the ghost story, coming hot on the heels of Halloween.
The story is that of a frail and elderly Yorkshireman called Tom Parfitt (Palin), who finds himself in the later years of life taking up residency in a nursing home with mysterious events following his every move. It starts right from the outset as he moves out of his house and home for the first time only to be the witness to a violent death, with no other witnesses to corroborate his version of events.
One in the nursing home, he finds himself in the care of Hannah, played by Jodie Comer (My Mad Fat Diary), a young worker at the home who tries to pull together the fragments of Tom’s life to unlock the mysteries of his history. This is added to by the interest of investigative police officer, Rob Fairholm, played by Mark Addy (The Full Monty, Atlantis), who’s also on the hunt for answers. However, the more truth they uncover about the little old man, the more unsettling danger they discover.
The cast is added to by Julia Sawalha (Larkrise To Candleford), who plays Jan, Hannah’s somewhat troubled mother, and Mina Anwar, who you might recognise as Police Constable Habib from The Thin Blue Line, had been cast as Tom’s Neighbour, Roshana Salim.
It’s been 23 years since Michael Palin (Arthur Christmas) led the cast in a BBC drama in American Friends the 1991 movie that he wrote and starred in, so it’ll be interesting to see how well he takes to his return. The last TV show to feature the Monty Python legend was the serialisation, Holy Flying Circus, which starred Charles Edwards doing a pretty good impression of the Spanish Inquisition expert.
With such a long time out of action, Palin has said, “The main thing I was worried about is that I hadn’t acted in a series for a while so learning the lines, getting on top of the part; I was worried about all those things. Fortunately I was blessed with having Ashley Pearce as director. He was superb and we got on from the beginning. I felt he was somebody who really listened and who guided me through but let me feel my way into the part.”
