Watch the Trailer for Acorn's Darkly Comic Period Mystery 'Dead Still'

Streaming platform Acorn TV is launching a new darkly comic period mystery series this spring with a truly unique concept: It's centered around the idea of Victorian-era memorial portraiture. But also there's murder.

Entitled Dead Still, the six-part series already like a breath of fresh air in the landscape of British procedural mysteries we see so often. Sure, there will presumably be plenty of murders to solve, but the intriguing setting and premise make the series stand out. Set in in Ireland in the 1880s, our story takes place during the peak of the “postmortem photography” craze. This process, in which people commissioned photos of their dead relations to commemorate their lives, generally featured disturbingly elegant posed photos of the recently deceased, sometimes also involving their living family members.

The series will follow a renowed memorial photographer as he investigates the murders of his recently deceased subjects.

(Now, I have several questions - the biggest one being how in the world he makes money off this if he's just ending up photographing murder victims, but here's hoping the show plans to explain that early on.)