{"id":13280,"date":"2020-06-09T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2020-06-12T12:38:35","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T16:38:35","slug":"dark-comedy-collides-with-the-macabre-in-dead-still","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/dark-comedy-collides-with-the-macabre-in-dead-still\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Comedy Collides with the Macabre in Dead Still"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Morton, the creator and writer behind the Acorn TV Original <\/em>Dead Still, talks to <\/em>TV Drama about the darkly comedic Irish murder-mystery series set during the Victorian era of post-mortem photography.<\/em><\/p>\n

Next Monday, June 15, marks the finale of the\u00a0Dead Still. <\/em>The darkly comedic Irish murder-mystery series is set during the Victorian era of post-mortem photography\u2014a real-life trend in European mourning culture when the recently deceased were captured in commissioned portraits. The six-episode series, set in 1880s Ireland, follows a renowned memorial photographer as he investigates the murders of the dearly departed subjects.\"**image***\"<\/p>\n

The original idea for the series had a bit of a different form though, according to creator and writer John Morton. \u201cI had an idea a couple of years ago for a murder-mystery story about a photographer who\u2019s been pursued by a murderer,\u201d he tells TV Drama Weekly<\/em>. This photographer at the center of the story, with one of the first-ever cameras, was to have accidentally photographed a crime scene, and the idea involved what the first people to have seen the strange apparatus being used must have thought. \u201cWe kicked it up the road about 50 years,\u201d Morton says of how that initial concept developed. \u201cBut it\u2019s still in the same world of photography, murder and mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morton said that research into the times and practice involved \u201ca lot of looking at photographs of corpses and questionable Victorian photography. In terms of where [the idea] came from, it was something I was aware of as a practice. It\u2019s still a thing that happens. In our times, it is something that happens behind closed doors. It\u2019s not something we\u2019re very aware of because it\u2019s such a private thing. But we are aware of the Victorian version of that and how they dealt with death and their grief. There\u2019s something morbid about it, so it seemed like an interesting angle from which to set a television show.\u201d<\/p>\n

The central character is renowned memorial photographer Brock Blennerhasset (played by Michael Smiley, Luther<\/em>), who is famed for the manner in which he photographs the dead. \u201cWe meet him in the story at a point in the early 1880s when that particular trend of photographing the dead is kind of going out of fashion, as cameras become more accessible and people have photos of them when they\u2019re alive,\u201d Morton explains. \u201cIt\u2019s on the wane, and he\u2019s very much struggling with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

An injury forces him to hire an assistant. Enter Conall Molloy (Kerr Logan, Game of Thrones<\/em>, Victoria<\/em>, Alias Grace<\/em>), who starts off as a gravedigger but has an eye for photography. Blennerhasset also gets assistance from his estranged niece Nancy (Eileen O\u2019Higgins, Brooklyn<\/em>, Mary Queen of Scots<\/em>), who helps while he\u2019s convalescing.<\/p>\n

Morton says that a challenge, and the biggest liberty he had to take in regard to the actual photography practice, was in \u201ctrying to make it dramatically compelling. It\u2019s not; it\u2019s a very personal and poignant thing. Even when you\u2019re looking at some of the more ridiculous versions of that in terms of the lengths they went to to make a person seem alive, a lot of that photography was still just people on their deathbeds, literally lying in bed. The biggest liberty, in that regard, is the character of Blennerhasset. He\u2019s positioned them in more of an artistic way, where he poses the bodies in ways that make them look alive. He\u2019s got great skill in terms of how he presents the bodies\u2014it does make the person seem alive and makes the photo as realistic as possible. So he sees himself very much as an artist. A lot of the photographers who would have actually done that job wouldn\u2019t have gone to the lengths he goes to in order to achieve realism and life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside Blennerhasset\u2019s story, it appears someone more sinister is getting in on the death-photography game. Detective Frederick Regan (Aidan O\u2019Hare, Jackie<\/em>, Dublin Murders<\/em>) investigates a series of murders in Dublin\u2019s criminal underbelly and concludes that the serial killer may be cashing in on a taste for a different type of memorial imagery: pictures of people in their death throes.<\/p>\n

The storyline has mystery, drama, dark comedy and thriller elements, with touches of both the macabre and supernatural\u2014though they are blended seamlessly. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot in there; it\u2019s a thick stew,\u201d Morton says. \u201cIt was a case of making sure that those elements were supported by a strong story and by characters that people were invested in, and hoping that those elements work within that. There\u2019s a lot of very heightened scenarios in the show, but the characters are pretty grounded and stay as close to history as possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the deeper themes Morton wanted to explore was the development of technology and how fast that actually moves, he explains. \u201cThe early 1880s was a time when photography was becoming more commonplace. There was a massive boom in terms of amateur photographers because the technology became more accessible. It reminded me in ways of how mobile-phone technology functions now; how it\u2019s constantly progressing and how what people can do with it is building and building. It felt like cameras were somewhat like that at the time. [It\u2019s about] seeing how people dealt with those changes and things that were dying and things that were coming anew.\u201d<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 and Acorn Media Enterprises (AME) commissioned the series, with Dublin-based Deadpan Pictures and Toronto-based Shaftesbury co-producing, alongside ZDF Enterprises. AME holds all rights in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.; co-premiere rights in Canada; and secondary rights in Ireland. ZDF Enterprises distributes the series in the rest of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Morton, the creator and writer behind the Acorn TV Original Dead Still, talks about the darkly comedic Irish murder-mystery series set during the Victorian era of post-mortem photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":350,"featured_media":13281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,70],"tags":[179,3845,3904],"class_list":["post-13280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-acorn-tv","tag-dead-still","tag-john-morton","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nDark Comedy Collides with the Macabre in Dead Still - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/dark-comedy-collides-with-the-macabre-in-dead-still\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dark Comedy Collides with the Macabre in Dead Still - 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