Old Hollywood Thrillers That Shaped PBS' New Detective Series

Bookish is set in London in 1946 and follows Gabriel Book, an antiquarian bookshop owner whose sharp mind and encyclopedic knowledge help the police solve baffling murder cases. His ease with books becomes his crime-solving edge. Mark Gatiss said it was easier to name films than books when tracing the show's influences.

He singled out Sidney Gilliat's Green for Danger with Alistair Sim — a wartime hospital murder story he called 'very, very clever and really funny and really scary at the same time' — and Leslie Howard's Pimpernel Smith, about getting people out of Nazi Germany, which Gatiss used as a model for Book.

He added a dash of Roger Livesey in A Matter of Life and Death. Those elements give the series a balance of wit and menace: cozy bookshop charm sits beside murder and moral compromise. Like Leslie Howard's quietly heroic professor, Gabriel Book presents one face to the world while working against darker forces behind the scenes.

United Kingdom, London

bookish, gabriel book, bookshop, london, 1946, mark gatiss, sidney gilliat, alistair sim, leslie howard, roger livesey