Watch Trailer For BBC Psychological Drama Requeim

Threatening Her Very Identity?

♦ BBC’s new drama six-parter Requiem starts this week, and ahead of that, here’s a trailer for it…

Twenty three years later, in London, the mother of rising cello star Matilda Gray commits suicide, without apparent reason.

Among her possessions, Matilda discovers tantalising evidence that links her mother to the Welsh girl’s disappearance all those years ago.

And so grief-stricken Matilda travels to Wales, determined to explore this mystery, even if it means unraveling her own identity. In the process, she uncovers long buried secrets in this remote community – including one secret more bizarre, terrifying and dangerous than anything she could have imagined. Dark otherworldly forces are gathering – they have been waiting many years for Matilda to arrive.

If every life is a story, then for most of us, it’s our parents who write the opening chapters. They record and remember our early childhoods as we cannot, acting as trusted witnesses to our lives.

But what if you discovered that your parent might have lied to you? That almost everything they’d said about their own history, and yours, might have been untrue?

Requiem takes its inspiration from the psychological horror films of the late 1960s and ‘70s – Rosemary’s Baby, Don’t Look Now, and The Innocents, avoiding easy answers, and instead playing on uncertainty and ambiguity.

It’s also a rumination on the nature of memory, identity, and loss, hinging on a universal truth: that when a parent dies, a part of you dies with them.

Requiem is written by Kris Mrksa (episodes one to four and six) and Blake Ayshford (episode five). The series is directed by Mahalia Belo, produced by Susan Breen and executive produced by Willow Grylls, Elaine Pyke and Charlie Pattinson for New Pictures, Kris Mrksa and Christopher Aird for BBC.