Dark. Unsettling. Sinister. These are the three words you are probably least likely to associate with Michael Palin.

Until, that is, you watch Remember Me, BBC One’s new three-part Sunday night chiller. And, my god, the first chunk was chilling.

Before last Sunday, I never could have imagined being exhilarated by terror while watching Michael Palin’s familiar, avuncular face.

It’s a combination of sensations you could never anticipate – like how you’d respond to being suddenly, viciously assaulted by a penguin.

Finding myself electrified by fear in the company of Mr Palin must surely be one of this year’s great telly curveballs.

Michael Palin is, of course, the kind of bloke anyone, even the most fervent psychopath, can imagine chumming along with.

Maybe it’s his jaunts around the globe, never grumpy, always curious on those endlessly repeated Around The World In 80 Days and Pole to Poles.

In this cynical, post-Yewtree world, genuine niceness is a rare commodity (and yes, I’m still reeling from the shock over my own childhood telly hero Rolf Harris).

Attenborough has it, Palin has it... but golden oldies with that level of charm are few and far between.

So, what does Michael do, with all his... niceness?

Subvert that tea-and-crumpets persona, masterfully, in this ghost story written by Gwyneth Hughes.

Now, the words ghost story might conjure up some rather feeble, namby pamby Beeb drama.

But, don’t dismiss Remember Me as a ghost story: it has all the makings of a superb horror film.

Moody Yorkshire skies? Check. Absent mothers (a la Psycho)? Check. The theme of sanity/insanity running through the whole shebang like words through a stick of rock? With madness seemingly leaking from the saintly Palin’s face?

Meaning that any “haunting” could take place in the mind or any one of the creepy buildings looming in the gloom? Check, check, check!

Spooky tune? Check (Scarborough Fair). Eerie quiet punctuated by sound effects (at the bumpy bits) that sound like hell itself being ripped open? Check (shudder).

No spoilers here (you can time to watch, or rewatch, the first episode on BBC’s iPlayer before the second is screened this Sunday at 9pm).

But, if you didn’t yet tune in, Palin convincingly plays Tom Parfitt, an “80-odd” year-old pensioner determined to move into Millthorpe Lodge nursing home.

A social worker drives him there and Tom has a jab at racist jokes and chuckles at the car’s electric windows. Michael Palin’s face is one we feel we know almost as well as our own, so to see him so old, so haunted, his face (during the rare happy bits) old, bulbous and joyful as the BFG’s, is a reminder of our own mortality.

When there is an unexpected death, you’re somehow expecting it... but it still shocks you.

So adept is Palin’s acting as the possibly murderous, probably mad old codger, that you soon forget his past life as an ex-Python and national treasure.

But his is not the only remarkable acting – as serenely beautiful care assistant Hannah, Jodie Comer could have easily been a heart-of-gold cliche.

She’s not and you’re gripped by what she’ll find in Tom’s old house, as you are by Mark Addy’s messed-up police inspector Rob.

I for one can’t wait to plug myself back into the looming gloom to find out what bumps in the night Tom and co will deliver.

Long live the chills.

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