In 2002, a former math and science teacher and prison guard named John Darwin paddled a kayak into the North Sea from his home in Seaton Carew, England, and disappeared. Subsequently he was declared dead, and his wife, Anne, received a life insurance payout of 250,000 pounds. As it happened, he was very much alive and living secretly at home and in a neighboring house, when not traveling abroad under a false passport — a fact hidden even from the couple's two sons. The story has been twice dramatized ("Canoe Man" in 2010, with Bernard Hill and Saskia Reeves, and "The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe," with Eddie Marsan and Monica Dolan, in 2022 — "canoe" is apparently what the British call a kayak) and has now provided the inspiration for a wicked comedy, "Can You Keep a Secret?," which premiered Thursday on Paramount+.

Created and written by Simon Mayhew-Archer ("Our Country," which became the basis for the American "Welcome to Flatch"), "Secret" takes the basics of the Darwin story and whips them into something less sociopathic. As we begin, Harry Fendon (Craig Roberts), nervous, depressed, has come to visit his mother, Debbie (Dawn French); he is under the impression that his father, William (Mark Heap), had died two months earlier. Debbie tells him that the life insurance money has come through and hands him 10,000 pounds from a bag packed with bills, depressing him further. "We're reducing my dad to a bag of cash," says Harry. "Well, I was impressed by how much we got for him," says Debbie. And, hoping to cheer up her son, she produces William from the pantry.

As recounted in flashback, Debbie had discovered William, who has Parkinson's disease, not breathing and unresponsive. Before he popped back to life — he had accidentally overdosed on his Parkinson's medication, from a combination of forgetfulness and poor thinking — he had been declared dead by a neurotic doctor in hazmat gear. (There's a reason — goofy, but a reason.) An inattentive mortician, under the impression that a different corpse is William, inadvertently provides a body; mentioning insurance, he plants an idea in Debbie's mind — that it might be profitable, which is not say practical, to leave William deceased in the eyes of the world. "Who are we to argue with the NHS?" she asks. To William, who rarely goes out anyway and is something of a cipher in the community, she notes, "The wonderful thing about you is that you might as well have been dead for the past 30 years."

Things will get more complicated, of course. Harry will fret over whether to tell his wife, Neha (Mandip Gill), a police officer, that his father is alive. (Debbie is against it, for Neha's sake.) William, who is addicted to sugar, will sneak out in search of the snacks Debbie denies him. And they'll learn that their secret is not completely secure when blackmail notes begin to arrive — at which point the series becomes a mystery.

The humor can be low (not a criticism); pop-cultural references, of which there are many, may not necessarily make sense to an American viewer. There isn't much in the way of jokes, in the setup and punchline sense, but genuinely funny things are happening all the time. Each character seems to understand the others dimly, as through a language barrier; each vibrates at their own frequency. Conversations are built on disagreement; distractable brains flit from one thought to a barely related other. Arguing over the name of a great train robber, in the midst of more serious business, Debbie and William slide into what amounts to an Abbott and Costello routine. They will go in circles over what day the trash bins go out, and what day it is at the moment.

British humor has its own flavor, naturally, born from that nation's particular history, culture, class, weather, cuisine (if you can call it that, ha ha), and it's one of which I've been enamored with, at least since Monty Python albums first fell into my hands. Generally speaking, it's more angular, more acid, more morbid, more willing to let a protagonist stew in misery, more suspicious of sentiment than our comparatively genial homegrown brand. (Yes, there are exceptions.) You can measure it in the temperamental difference between the original "Ghosts" and the CBS remake, or in the British and American versions of "The Office," or of "Doc Martin" and its recent translation here as "Best Medicine." (Even the new title tells you something about that difference.) "The Black Adder," "Black Books," "Brass Eye," each of Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge series, "Human Remains" (Rob Brydon and Julia Davis as different unhappy couples), David Mitchell's "Upstart Crow" and "Ludwig" — I list these series by way of recommendation and as a hello to any fellow fans reading this.

Though he doesn't go in for mush, Mayhew-Archer does at least provide a sort of rationale for the fraud: medical insurance declined to cover William's Parkinson's drugs. "We paid our taxes, we paid our bills," says Debbie. "We haven't been arrested … much." They are "simply taking back what we paid in." ("Plus a little bit more," Harry points out.) The Fendons are not living large, and Debbie's instincts are basically charitable. And there are some incidentally poignant scenes surrounding William's condition, though — Mayhew-Archer's father, Paul Mayhew-Archer, who co-wrote French's popular sitcom "The Vicar of Dibley," has lived with Parkinson's for 15 years (and does stand-up about it).

The four principal characters are perfectly balanced, but above all, it's the players who make the magic. Roberts (seen here, playing American, in "Red Oaks" and as an agoraphobic insomniac journalist in the lovely import "Still Up"), is the bundle of nerves through which the others intersect. As the relatively sensible one, Gill, a constant companion to Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor, as in "Who," is wonderful being astounded or upright. And Heap, who played Noel Fielding's father in last year's "The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin," is quietly hilarious as a tall, muddled old man-child, pranking his son by pretending to be dead (again), munching on food he's found while hiding in the pantry ("Bacon puff, anyone? … They're pre-9/11, but still up to snuff") and playing a fictional German relation, in lederhosen and a fake mustache, in order to see his grandchildren.

French, probably best known here from PBS showings of "The Vicar of Dibley" and less probably from her double act with Jennifer Saunders (of "Absolutely Fabulous" fame), is the engine pulling this train, and, in a not unaffectionate way, pushing her family around, confident in her impulses — they don't quite amount to decisions — and sure that she knows best for everyone. "You're a moron," Debbie tells William, "but you're my moron." That's love.

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'CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?'

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Paramount+

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