Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Bertie Carvel, Jeremy Irvine, Helen Aluko, Alice Nokes, Eliot Salt, Robin Krostoffy, Alex Krostoffy, Beccy Henderson, Fenella Woolgar, Amanda Root, Siobhan Cullen, Richard Dillane, Avin Shah, Natasha Little, Syd Ralph, Lily Newmark.

We have come to think of the past as a rusting, decaying, and in many cases unnecessary distraction from the objectives of today, and the hope for the future that we all wish to witness, the new sense of puritanism that has come replete with cancel culture, of objectifying key moments and simply erasing them as if they didn’t happen, rather than confronting them and placing them in their appropriate modern day thought; that is the past not only rusting, but being corrupted in the same way that the workers of the Ministry of Truth changed details daily under the terrifying eye of Big Brother.

‘The past is another country’, as the writer once mused, and whilst we must absolutely scrutinise the past, to bring it out into the open and discuss the aftereffects of certain actions, neither should we erase what happened in the belief that it will make it more appealing to our version of history; such is the case for reconcilement with our own impact on history, that we forget the misdeeds we may have committed in the name of orders and national interest.

So keen an eye did P.D. James possess, that history bears witness to her own style of justice when to comes to reassessing history, and perhaps none so more than in the novel Shroud For A Nightingale which delved in the secrets and lies of a war that some have forgotten, or refuse to accept that needed to be fought for the soul of humanity, and one that makes a huge impact as James’ poetry loving detective, Adam Dalgliesh, returns to the television screens in a fantastic adaption by Helen Edmundson.

There is a brilliance to the writing which reflects the period before electronic and scientific breakthroughs became the norm for solving crimes and murders, and who finer than Detective Inspector Dalgliesh to remind us of that fact, that the brain is a more complex judge of character and will understand the nuances of crime more than any machine can hope to achieve.

The setting of the murder mystery is as important a feature as the time when the teleplay is set, this is not just some creepy old house in which the team have placed their trust in, this is point where life and death are in the hands of medical professionals, and it is to that allusion that the first in a three part series of renewed interest in the works of P.D. James comes dramatically into view.

Following on from the impeccable Roy Marden in the main role could be considered, at best, difficult, but in Bertie Carvel, the sense of grief etched on the man’s face is beautifully portrayed. This is not just a man beaten by personal injustice, but who seeks to redress the balance with an air of compassion, softly spoken pursuit of truth, and there is arguably no one finer to capture the essence of the detective than Mr. Carvel; one who also finally receives the top billing so richly deserved.

Shroud For A Nightingale makes no excuses for reminding the viewer of the evil permitted and carried out in the name of the state during the dark days of Nazi rule across Europe, and is a positive and timely remembrance of that fact that evil must be confronted and dealt with but never erased if we are to learn history’s most valuable of lessons. 

Ian D. Hall