The Acorn TV series, starring Michael Smiley as a “post-mortem photographer” in 19th century Dublin, plays as a darkly comic (with touches of slapstick) crime thriller that offers a fascinating look into a weird Victorian-era occupation: taking photographs of corpses “posing” with their very-much-alive family members.

“It was a plaything of the very rich and was only for a specialized few,” says Smiley, best-known to American audiences as Benny “Deadhead” Silver (opposite Idris Elba) on “Luther.” “It coincided with the Victorian-era fascination with morbidity. In those days graveyards were around a church and then they spread out of town with monuments. The next thing to come along was photography … so that’s what some people did.”

Smiley plays Brock Blennerhasset who, as a master of his chosen craft, is paid handsomely for his services (he lives in a fashionable Dublin townhouse). He’s a loner and estranged from his family, who are aghast at his occupation. In the series premiere, he’s (grudgingly) joined by his young niece, Nancy (Eileen O’Higgins), an aspiring actress who moves in with “Uncle.” They’re soon joined by conscientious gravedigger Conall Malloy (Kerr Logan), who loves photography and is hired as Brock’s assistant.

“What you have is a Victorian-era English class system … in Ireland,” says Smiley, born and raised in Northern Ireland. “You had that mainly in Dublin, where they were known as ‘Anglos’ or ‘Anglo-Irish,’ with stately homes in the countryside. Brock is this guy who became obsessed with a new thing called ‘photography’ and his family semi-spurned him and viewed him with disdain.

“We’re quite unsure about his personality,” he says. “There’s a question mark around his sexuality and, because he’s quite insular, everything is internalized.”

Smiley acknowledges that part of the show’s offbeat charm lies in Brock’s name.

” ‘Blennerhasset’ is a really strange name, since [the series] is set in Dublin,” he says. “It’s the least Irish name I’ve ever come across. It turns out there were quite a few Blennerhassets in Ireland, in the Limerick/Cork area, who were sort of landed gentry, Anglo-Irish and high status. ‘Brock’ has that Germanic sound to me … his value system is different from his family and he’s a complete outsider from his family and the Dublin cognoscenti. He’s not flamboyant, is socially awkward and doesn’t fit in at dinner parties or in rough areas [of Dublin].

“I think he’s quite happy being on his own,” he says. “And then his niece turns up … and he needs an assistant and Malloy is quite a decent chap.”

Smiley says “Dead Still” was filmed in Dublin and in surrounding country estates. “They’re lovely country homes that were built in the 1800s and some of them survived the revolution and weren’t burned down,” he says. “What was creepy was some of the old homes we went to. We filmed [an episode] in the upper floors of this massive estate where there was just the guy who owned it [living there] and he pretty much used only two rooms of the 40 or 50 [rooms] there.

“It was really creepy shooting on the top floor,” he says. “There were children’s toys and prams and stuff that were over 100 years old — and that was really freaky.”