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Joel and Will’s story starts to ricochet around inside their friend group, leading them to a strange memory, a time-slipped building and a terrifying window.

This might be my favourite episode of the show. It’s certainly one of the most self contained. As Joel and Will dig into their friends’ story, they break through into the sort of received wisdom and accepted myth that so many people grew up around. We live on two landscapes: the physical one we interact with and the memory-based one that we build. Both are accurate but only one is concrete and this week’s story steps across onto the Protean ground of memory and implication, where art and history collide.

Along the way it stops off at the BBC Domesday Project and that’s where my own memories come in. The BBC’s decision to mimic William the Conqueror’s project led to community groups and schools all over the country posting photos in to be added to a laser disc snapshot of the country. I vividly remember being allowed to take the immense player home from school for the weekend to play with. I remember, I think, taking photos for it. The country mapped into supposed exactitude, through the personal recollections of thousands of people.

That mercurial nature of reality is tied into the concept of psychogeography where the geographical layout out a place impacts on the emotions of the people in it. I vividly remember the one time I took a shortcut through the trenches around the York walls and how unwelcome I felt there, so much so that I left seconds after entering and apologised out loud. Here that sense is one of fear and dominance, as a glowering, angular stained-glass window is vividly recalled, and drawn, even though it was never there. The church we’ve visited before returns to the story in more than one way too.

The payoff to this episode, which wraps the book, psychogeography, local ghost stories and the building around one another is lovely and oddly reassuring. There’s a hint of the ‘pleasing terrors’ of M R James once again. But the sting here is the killer, as the chaps return to an earlier recording made nearby and hear a voice under their own. One echoing the words heard way back in episode 1…

Verdict: An almost standalone look at local weirdness and a great pause before diving into the endgame, this is oddly reassuring and a surprisingly great entry point for the series. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

RECOMMENDED RESEARCH

Psychography

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/psychogeography#:~:text=Psychogeography%20describes%20the%20effect%20of,Tristram%20Hillier

BBC Domesday Project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project