In Capturing Mary, acclaimed writer-director Stephen Poliakoff enters new territory by creating a terrifying and compulsive story of lost youth. This new film for BBC Two stars some of Britain’s most talented actors, led by Dame Maggie Smith and including David Walliams, Ruth Wilson and newcomer Danny Lee Wynter, who was the eponymous caretaker in last week’s BBC One film, Joe’s Palace.
Capturing Mary introduces caretaker Joe Dix to Mary Gilbert, a past luminary of the grand mansion he now tends. When Joe welcomes Mary into the dormant house, he coaxes her in to sharing her memories of it with him.
Once inside, Mary wanders the corridors of the splendid mansion in which, as a brilliant young writer and critic (played in her youth by Ruth Wilson), she attended glamorous soirées during the late Fifties. As she does so, she recounts to Joe the tale of woe that befell her within the gilded walls.
Reflecting on her heyday, remembering parties and functions with the cultural élite, she is haunted by the memory of a subtly evil man, Greville White, who feigned friendship but actually brought about her destruction.
Now, in later life, Mary cannot escape the fact that revisiting the past is not always a happy, nostalgic journey but it does help her understand where her despair and disappointment began.
Monday 12 November 9:00pm BBC2
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