The Undertaker has a novel suggestion for gangsters needing to dispose of dead bodies in a hurry. Instead of going to all the fuss of running a waste disposal business, why not just bury the bodies in a the ground, beneath the coffins of legitimate new arrivals at their final resting place? Who’s going to look in a cemetery? And if you can’t be bothered with the rigmarole of being an undertaker yourself, just get a real one to play along, and pay him handsomely to keep his mouth shut.
That is the simple and effective premise of Michael Wright’s debut feature, which he wrote and directed. Wright started out in the world of claymation, as a production designer for Aardman. He worked on Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out and on the Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer promo video. You can see both in this movie. And while that sounds like a negative in a gangster thriller, it adds a welcome touch of the statically surreal to this noirish tale about a meek undertaker and his increasingly uneasy relationship with a local gangster – once you’ve agreed to bury one “spare” body as a bit of a favour, where does it end?
Wright sets his story in the north of England in the 1960s, which means it looks like the 1940s – bakelite telephones and chilly parlours – and has the good fortune to have Paul McGann as the star of his movie. McGann’s lean, haunted features lend themselves particularly well to playing the highly correct, austere, old-fashioned undertaker, a man grieving for the fiancée who died long ago before they could marry and the brother who shuffled off this mortal coil only the year before.
Now Arthur’s old business associate Lenny (Murray Melvin) looks like he’s about to depart this life too, which forces Arthur to get some new blood in at the funeral home. Kat (Lily Frazer), Lenny’s grand-daughter, turns out to be bad news for Arthur, who may be able to hide the odd extra body on his meticulously kept books, but smart, inquisitive and ethical Kat is surely going to have questions.
I liked this film a lot more than I expected to. It’s hamstrung by a small budget and has the feeling of something that’s been made on the hoof with compromises taken at a lot of turns. But the good stuff is really good. The cast is excellent and I don’t just mean McGann. Roger Barclay as the smooth villain Finlay Unsworth, who has “a long reach” in this neck of the woods, but cannot stop killing once he starts, is particularly good. His henchmen are also highly plausible bad guys with only semi-functioning consciences (Unsworth himself is clearly a psycho). The ever welcome Sean Gilder as Kelly, the moth-eaten cop on the case, his trilby hat an echo of something Bogart might have worn. Tara Fitzgerald, in little more than a cameo, as the club singer once again back in the orbit of Unsworth and regretting it. As for Murray Melvin, as Arthur’s old compadre, he’s a familiar face in movies. Aged 90 when this was made, after long career including roles in A Taste of Honey and Barry Lyndon this was his final bow.
Wright possibly gets caught up in his stylish stage design a touch here and there and the odd moment of Joe Orton-style funereal humour could have done with the company of a few more. There is a schematic feel to the whole thing, which lends everything a touch of the unreal throughout. Which I, for one, found rather refreshing. When things eventually slip into the supernatural, while it’s unexpected, it does somehow fit.
There’s lots that’s familiar here, but Wright serves it up in an unfamiliar way. That is a good thing and this is a good film.
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
