BOOKISH airs Wednesdays at 8PM beginning March 4

BOOKISH is a stylish and sinister new six-part series that transplants the cozy crime novel to the rubble-strewn, shadowy heart of post-war London. Created, written by, and starring Emmy Award-winner Mark Gatiss, the series introduces Gabriel Book, an antiquarian bookseller whose encyclopedic knowledge of literature proves to be the ultimate weapon against murder.

The year is 1946. A bomb site excavation reveals skeletons, swiftly followed by a local chemist’s poisoning. Book, with his razor-sharp wit and unconventional methods, is the invaluable consultant the police never knew they needed. Across three two-part mysteries, he deciphers crimes as complex as the volumes lining his shelves. A glamorous film shoot on Archangel Lane turns deadly with poisoned chocolates and broken necks. At the grand Walsingham Hotel, a poisoned cocktail points to an international conspiracy involving exiled royalty, with Book’s own wife, Trottie Book (Polly Walker), curiously implicated.

But beneath the gripping whodunits simmers an intimate puzzle: the nature of Book’s unconventional marriage to his childhood best friend, Trottie, who runs the wallpaper shop next door. As his new assistant, Jack, discovers, in a world of lethal secrets, the most profound mysteries are often the most personal.