Review: ‘The Mind Reader of Vale Street’ is the most moving drama of the fall

Every few years a television drama arrives that looks like a crime story and turns out to be something gentler and far more devastating. ‘The Mind Reader of Vale Street’, now streaming in full on a big streaming service, is this fall’s example.

Teodor Kask plays Lucien Marr, a once-famous stage mentalist who could tell an audience member’s secrets from the way they held their coat. Now in his sixties and living alone above a shuttered theater, he has given up performing. When a teenage girl from his building goes missing, her mother asks him to do what the police cannot: read the people around her.

A performance built on stillness

Kask, best known for supporting roles, is extraordinary. He plays Marr as a man who has spent his life reading others and never let anyone read him. The show’s best scenes are quiet ones: a long silence in a kitchen, a card trick performed for a frightened child, a look that says more than the script ever could.

Creator Ilse Brandvold, whose debut series won the audience award at the Riverton film festival two years ago, wisely keeps the mystery simple. The real story is Marr’s slow return to the world, and his friendship with the girl’s mother, played with fierce warmth by Noor Albescu.

Where it stumbles

The middle episodes drag, and a subplot about a rival magician feels lifted from a different, louder show. Some viewers may also find the final twist a little too neat.

But the last episode, set almost entirely on the stage of Marr’s old theater, is as good as anything on television this year. Bring tissues.

The series runs eight episodes of about 50 minutes each and was produced by Halberd Pictures in Riverton and Port Alden. Watch it slowly, one episode a night, and let Kask’s silences do their work.