Moodier, Murderier Mysteries

[Datepalm]

Thought I would resurrect this thread - all your moody murder mystery needs here. Preferably set on small islands with quaint inns,  melancholy priests and unlikely body counts.

My recently watched stuff includes Shakespeare and Hathaway, which is hardly moody but somehow not too silly for me, Whitstable Pearl, which is good, Annika, in which there are apparently enough murders in Scotland just on boats for that be a whole police unit (naturally), Karen Pirie, which had a nice tartness, and Murder in Provence, which I like to think is actually Thursday from Morse's deserved retirement.

[Zorral]

Three Pines is the latest.  It's so good in production values, acting, writing, location, all of it.

 

[Datepalm]

mmmm I couldn't get into the books, but might give the show a try if it's less cutesy.

Also, Midsomer Murders is back, but only in America!? What is the world coming to.

[Zorral]

But we get only a single episode at a time. 

It being the cold and dark season I did watch the 25 Year Anniversary Special because of they covered the many well known and not yet well known actors employed by the show over these many years.  Got a kick of hearing Barnaby in French and in Japanese (the show is popular all around the world).  Also watching the transition from white only to diversity casting, seeing again, which I noticed at the time, it took a while for them to find solid footing with this (though there is no mention of that really), and that the second, new Barnaby, Neil Dudgeon who took over from John Nettles, is still referred to by the viewers as the "new Barnaby,' despite it being 11 years now Dudgeon has been doing MS -- I too still call him the new Barnaby. 

If you haven't watched the Shetland series, that's one I'd highly recommend.

 

[dog-days]

I might watch that! At its best, it's great fun. I've just spent five minutes trying to dig up an old trailer where one of the Barnabies and their sergeant stood under a 'Welcome to Midsomer. Population: 30 000' sign. As the trailer went on, the population figure accelerated down to zero. 

[Datepalm]

Me, I'm fond of thematic watching. Say, the craft brewery murder, boutique winery murder and traditional cidery murder episodes.

I also have to admit I find Midsomer really calming and so quite often use it to fall asleep, and therefore don't have a clue who actually did it on episodes I've (half)seen like six times.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Datepalm said:

I find Midsomer really calming

As do I.  I seldom can remember who did it, or even what it was, an hour later.  But I always remember what the wives and family did, what the pets did, and the locations.  Death In Paradise is another series in this vein, including the number of recognizable actors showing up; Orlando Bloom has been in Death In Paradise, as he's been in MS.  I've also enjoyed the Agatha Raisin series.

Different as it's a city cop show, is New Tricks.  I really enjoyed those seasons, and admired how they could keep coming up with new ideas -- which they did better than MS does, but then, it didn't have many seasons as MS, or even Murdoch Mysteries, which is a whole other thing from either New Tricks or MS, being, to start with, set in the last decade of the 19th C and first decade of the 20th.

[Zorral]

Another cop show that fits well is the French series, Candace Renoir.

These too:  Australian/New Zealand series, featuring Lucy Lawless as a retired cop and cop widow, but working as an investigator for the police, My Life Is Murder, is bright, sunny and filled with great color and food. Another Australian series, highly recommended, is Misrs. Fischer's Murders, and a New Zealand series, The Brokenwood Mysteries.

And, always, Foyle's War.

[Wall Flower]

16 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Another cop show that fits well is the French series, Candace Renoir.

These too:  Australian/New Zealand series, featuring Lucy Lawless as a retired cop and cop widow, but working as an investigator for the police, My Life Is Murder, is bright, sunny and filled with great color and food. Another Australian series, highly recommended, is Misrs. Fischer's Murders, and a New Zealand series, The Brokenwood Mysteries.

And, always, Foyle's War.

I enjoy Candice Renoir too (love picking up the occasional French word as a bonus). I'm Australian so My Life is Murder and Miss Fisher are old favourites. I haven't  caught up with The Brokenwood Mysteries yet but it's next on my list once I finish the umpteen series of Murdoch Mysteries. Covid lockdown was a great time to catch up with some mystery series. Foyle's War is a classic.

Looking forward to checking out the Three Pines series. I have the first Louise Penny book on my Kindle and have been debating whether to read it before seeing the series.

[Datepalm]

I quite liked Ms. Fischer - they were jaunty - but in the movie sequel she seems like a straight up toxic narcissist, (and it was very badly plotted and written) which left a bit of a bad final taste :-/

[Poobah]

I've been enjoying The Brokenwood Mysteries. It's sorta a NZ take on Midsomer Murders, albeit confined to one town with a very high murder count rather than an endless series of villages. There're a fair number of recurring side/background characters and much like Midsomer there's a lot of charm to be found in the various weird and excentric denizens of Brokenwood.

[Zorral]

9 hours ago, Datepalm said:

the movie sequel

It was unwatchable -- so out of tune with the series too.  I couldn't finish it.

 

7 minutes ago, Poobah said:

sorta a NZ take on Midsomer Murders,

With even more wine!  At least the earlier seasons, when Mike Shepherd owned a vineyard and winery himself. No wine available in emojis, so -- 

[Mindwalker]

I think I'll check out My Life Is Murder next, thanks for all the suggestions! Sounds good, plus while I could never get into Xena (just too silly), I came across Lucy on twitter and she's awesome. Also, "right, sunny and filled with great color and food" sounds good.

 

[Datepalm]

In the same vein (maybe) I watched the Mallorca Files a while back, in which a German and a British cop are seconded to the Spanish police and investigate murders with seemingly zero knowledge of Spanish. Because, uh, EU exchange something something. But it has a lot of picturesque olive groves, cliffside villas, teeming village markets, etc, and a very 90s will-they-won't-they vibe. There's also Murder in Provence and the Madame Blanc Mysteries for more Mediterranean-themed murder too, though Madame Blanc is really on the goofy side.

[Iskaral Pust]

We just finished S1 of Vera, which is reasonably good, although my wife dislikes her constant exasperation.  We definitely tilt toward mysteries that have a calm tempo, some moodiness and a cerebral touch.  Endeavor was right in our wheelhouse, even if the main character had a forced persecution complex to explain his development into disillusionment, career stagnation and alcoholism.

Frustratingly, some of the highly rated Scandinavian and European mysteries have very low quality dubbing.  The voice acting is so poor that it overwhelms everything.

We tried Three Pines and are undecided whether to continue.  The production values are good but it’s undermined by a heavy political slant: you know automatically whether a character will be virtuous and/correct based on their relative oppression index.  Even when I agree with the politics, propaganda ruins art.

[Zorral]

16 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

The production values are good but it’s undermined by a heavy political slant: you know automatically whether a character will be virtuous and/correct based on their relative oppression index.

That's your political bias coming through.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Zorral

[Iskaral Pust]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

That is, just, well, not true.

Spoiler

We’ve only watched the first mystery (is that spread over one episode or two?) but it’s obvious all the way that, despite all of the evidence, the missing young indigenous women is not actually in NY smoking meth because her indigenous grandmother insists that it’s not so and repeatedly cites past colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples for why she should not believe anything from the police.  So of course she was proven correct, even though it involves ridiculously elaborately faked evidence.

But it was obvious all along that this would be the case, we never had a moment’s doubt, because the in-universe logic is that marginalization and oppression confer immediate and ultimate authority: not just moral, but over truth too.  There’s even a disgusting line that just washes away a pervasive problem of substance abuse, domestic abuse and child sex abuse within indigenous tribal communities as some sort of propaganda against indigenous people.

It’s a very common trope now, especially in British crime dramas: a marginalized character will be initially disbelieved by the systemically racist system that relies on bureaucratic things like evidence over what the marginalized person subjectively knows to be true — and the protagonist will always be an ally! — but the marginalized individual will always be ultimately vindicated and we all get to reflect on an important lesson about systemic racism or misogyny or ableism.

I’m not claiming that politics hasn’t always infused popular culture.  This is just the latest chapter.  But the more it dominates, the weaker the art.

[Datepalm]

3 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

We just finished S1 of Vera, which is reasonably good, although my wife dislikes her constant exasperation.  We definitely tilt toward mysteries that have a calm tempo, some moodiness and a cerebral touch.  

Have you seen Unforgotten? I usually watch stuff for a bit of calming background noise and maybe some nice cliffs, moors or spires if I can get them, but Unforgotten has properly pulled me in every season.

[Mindwalker]

My Life Is Murder has nice leads and scenery, but is a bit too ... generic for my tastes. And demands even more suspension of disbelief than your average 2-person killer in Midsomer...

But the post above reminds me, I haven't watched Vera for a long time and I always liked it, I think. Particularly the rather curmudgeonly/ chaotic protagonist. I have no idea where I left and where to resume the show, though.

I might give Three Pines a try, too.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Mindwalker

[Iskaral Pust]

15 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

Have you seen Unforgotten? I usually watch stuff for a bit of calming background noise and maybe some nice cliffs, moors or spires if I can get them, but Unforgotten has properly pulled me in every season.

Yes, enjoyed it

Edit: shows like this are why we subscribe to AcornTV or BritBox for months at a time, but we seem to have exhausted most of the best candidates, so I need to look further back for older stuff that we missed.

Morse didn’t land well with us even though we really liked Lewis and Endeavor.  I suggested A Touch Of Frost to my wife but she didn’t see the appeal.  Sometimes the writing and characterization don’t age well.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Iskaral Pust