Acorn TV's 'Dead Still' is a Breath of Fresh Air in the Mystery Landscape

You've probably never even heard much about the practice of Victorian-era memorial portraiture until this exact moment, let alone watched an entire TV series based on the (obviously, very dated) practice - but that was legitimately a real thing that people used to do way back when, and someone has, in fact, made a show about it. And that show is perhaps one of 2020's best hidden gems.

Dead Still is, in fact, the weirdo dark comedy period mystery about death photography you honestly didn't know you needed and probably haven't seen yet. But you should correct that as soon as possible.

Set in Ireland in the 1880s, the series centers around the practice of mortuary photography, something that seems morbid and more than a little gross to our modern sensibilities. This trend, which involved people commissioning photos of their dead relations to commemorate their lives, generally featured disturbingly elegant posed photos of the recently deceased, often also involving their living family members. This was meant to help blunt the pain of grief, by giving loved ones something to remember the dead by, which could also serve as a sort of Memento mori for the rest of the family. (Victorian culture was obsessed with death - driven by the nation's high infant mortality rate, constant epidemics of diseases like typhoid and diphtheria, and a queen who spent half of her adult life in mourning for her dead husband.)