'Remember Me' Recap: Episode 1
Something strange is going on in Yorkshire. Taps drip, stairs creak, lights go wild and sea shells are showing up in the oddest places. A well-meaning social worker is unceremoniously defenestrated and an ominous figure like something out of The Ring wrapped in a sari is haunting a young woman’s dreams apparently because she dared sing a few lines an old English ballad.
In order to decipher the first episode of this chilling and macabre BBC mystery, Remember Me, we must start with the enigmatic man of eighty-odd years who is so tormented that he stages a fall down the stairs to escape his own home. That man is Tom Parfitt and he is played by the famous comedic actor and world traveler, Michael Palin. A bit of unconventional casting perhaps, but this role allows Mr. Palin to return to his Yorkshire roots while challenging audience perceptions at the same time.
After faking the tumble, Tom is checked out by paramedics and assigned a social worker (Rebekah Staton). His fear and trepidation melt as he is transported to a temporary nursing home placement at Millthorpe Lodge - which he insists will be permanent as he has no desire to return to his house. It doesn’t take much time for Tom to get settled in his new digs considering the suitcase he had all prepared for a speedy departure is curiously empty.
But no sooner has he been left alone than violently inexplicable things begin to happen. Tom’s social worker dashes in his room to drop off a memento from his old house: a framed photo of her elderly ward as a child. From the activity room below we hear loud shuddering bangs immediately followed by an alarm sounding from Tom’s room. When young care worker Hannah (Jodie Comer of Doctor Foster and The White Princess fame) arrives a few seconds later, Tom is quaking with fear in the corner and where the window once was, there is a gaping hole. On the ground below the social worker lies dead surrounded by glass, curtains and the window frame. Tom’s puzzling explanation is only, "I should have stopped her. But I’ve never had the strength."
Hannah has an instinctive desire to protect the fragile old man and sends Detective Rob Fairholme (Game of Thrones and The Full Monty's Mark Addy) who has come up to question him away. Seeing the young girl as someone he can trust, Tom asks Hannah to take the offensive picture and his empty suitcase back to his house, making it very clear that she not nose about.
Of course, Hannah has other plans. Having removed the photo from the frame, she ascertains it’s only half of the original image with another person having been torn out completely. She heads to Tom’s place with every intention of getting him some clothes and gleaning more background info about her troubled patient in the process.
She steps into a creepy, darkened house filled with sinister noises. After a brief encounter with kindly neighbor Roshana (Mina Anwar) Hannah returns to collect a supply of Tom’s clothes. She finds herself inexplicably drawn to the parlor where she discovers numerous copies of the sheet music for ‘Scarborough Fair’ stored in the piano stool. She departs the inhospitable abode in haste without taking any of the scores with her.
When Hannah dutifully delivers what she’s collected to Tom in the hospital, he is none too pleased. He scolds her with instructions to return everything and informs her that he’s tired and wants to sleep. When the compassionate young woman offers to sing him a lullaby, we know which song she’ll choose and it’s no surprise that Tom is alarmed by this.
