Talk of the devil | 24 September 2015

For years, Ian Fleming was famously self-deprecating about the James Bond books. (‘I have a rule of not looking back,’ he once said. ‘Otherwise I’d wonder, “How could I write such piffle?”’) Towards the end of his life, though, he finally produced an essay in their defence — proudly pointing out, among other things, that however fantastical the plots may become, they’re always carefully rooted in a world recognisable as our own.

Of course, this is not something that can necessarily be said of all the Bond films — but it certainly applies to ITV’s new three-part thriller Midwinter of the Spirit (Wednesday), based on the novel by Phil Rickman. It also explains why the programme already feels so promising.

The main character is Merrily Watkins, played by Anna Maxwell-Martin: an actress so good that she even made Esther Summerson in the BBC’s Bleak House seem appealing rather than infuriatingly pious. Recently widowed, Merrily lives with her stroppy teenage daughter and can often be seen driving her Volvo estate around the bypasses of Herefordshire. She’s also a vicar — but one, like Adam Smallbone in Rev, whose regular-person status is constantly emphasised, not least by the fact she sometimes smokes. (Oddly in our anti-tobacco era, television is increasingly using a fondness for cigarettes as a humanising signifier.)

But, along with her general parish duties, Merrily is now being trained in the rather more specialised area of exorcism — or ‘deliverance ministry’ as the church has apparently rebranded it. The urbane local bishop wants ‘a new kind of deliverance’, more in keeping with contemporary attitudes. He’s therefore keen for Merrily to replace the old-school figure of Canon Dobbs, with his Latin chanting and unmistakable resemblance to Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future.