Parents' Guide to

Requiem

By Martin Brown, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Sometimes-violent British mystery has supernatural elements.

TV Netflix , BBC Drama 2018
Requiem Poster Image

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What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.

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What's the Story?

In REQUIEM, Matilda Gray (Lydia Wilson) is a renowned cellist whose mother has committed suicide in front of her, suddenly and gruesomely. Among her mother's things, Matilda finds a box full of press clippings and other material related to the 1994 abduction of a young girl named Carys Howell (Emmie Thompson). With her best friend, Hal (Joel Fry), she travels to Penllynith in Wales, where the abduction took place, in order to try to figure out the connection between her mother and Carys.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

This story begins with a pair of unsettling, perhaps supernatural, on-screen deaths -- the kind of scenes designed to get under your skin -- but after that, everything feels like a pretty by-the-numbers British mystery show. Clues take the protagonist to a small town where she slowly discovers that everyone had some sort of involvement in a years-old crime that's haunted them for most of their lives. This is a formula that, while undeniably satisfying, has been in use for a hundred years -- from Agatha Christie to Broadchurch.

Requiem is unique in that it steeps its mystery in elements of supernatural and psychological horror and gives its characters a real live haunted house to live in. That, and it ingeniously makes its protagonist, Matilda Gray, a cellist -- to give all the morose, haunting string music a practical feel. But, like a classical requiem mass, Requiem moves at such a deliberately slow tempo that the show's paranormal elements lose their impact, and unraveling the mystery feels tedious and rote.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about loss. So much of Requiem is steeped in tragedy -- whether it's the loss of a family member or of one's own childhood. What do you think about the way these characters respond to the events around them?

  • Families can talk about the idea of ghosts and haunted houses. Why do you think some houses can be perceived as haunted, and why are they so popular as an entertainment?

TV Details

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