One of the major qualities of a good ghost story lies in the ways directors manage to make the familiar seem unfamiliar. They draw viewers into the story and then deliberately frustrate their expectations, and hence encourage us to wonder about what will happen next.
This is certainly true of Ashley Pearce's production, which casts Michael Palin in the central role as pensioner Tom Parfitt. British television viewers are accustomed to seeing Palin as the genial host of a slew of travel programs; apart from his Monty Python involvement, his roles have been largely confined to comedies such as THE MISSIONARY (1982). In REMEMBER ME he has a very different role as someone dying to leave his house and move to a retirement home; but we are not exactly sure why, especially when he seems uncomfortable in his new surroundings of an antiseptic room with large windows. He strikes up a relationship with Hannah Ward (Jodie Comer), but we sense that there is more to Parfitt's character than meets the eye. He seems emotionally affected, but director Pearce refuses to provide the necessary clues to help us resolve our confusion. Suffice to say that the story revolves around the seaside resort of Scarborough, immortalized in the folk- song "Scarborough Fair."
Stylistically speaking, REMEMBER ME creates a mundane world of an (unspecified) city in the north of England, full of gray terraced houses, damp streets and drab colors. People go about their daily lives, with their ordinary hopes and dreams: Hannah's family hope that their daughter will find a more rewarding career than just being a care home assistant. The community is a multiracial one, trying their best to look after one another, yet ultimately perplexed as to the reasons for Parfitt's apparently eccentric behavior. Like the viewers, Roshana Salim (Mina Anwar) and her family regard him as an enigma.
The pacing of the three-part drama is kept deliberately slow, alternating memorable visual imagery (for example, water gushing down the stairs of Parfitt's home) with clever use of sonic leitmotifs (the repeated singing of "Scarborough Fair.") Viewers are not only introduced into an abnormal world, but they are kept guessing right until the final episode as to what the action "means." Like most ghost stories, the plot involves a close interaction between past and present; neither of them can be kept separate.
REMEMBER ME requires a certain degree of patience, but the resolution is definitely worth waiting for.
