Fri 31 Jul 2015
A TV Series Review by Mike Tooney: MR. & MRS. MURDER (2013).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[15] Comments
MR. & MRS. MURDER. FremantleMedia Australia/Bravado Productions; Network Ten, Australia. 13 episodes (20 February to 15 May 2013). Shaun Micallef (Charlie Buchanan), Kat Stewart (Nicola Buchanan), Jonny Pasvolsky (Peter Vinetti), Lucy Honigman (Jess Chalmers), Ben Geurens (Alan), Georgina Naidu (Janine). Creators: Shaun Micallef, Tim Pye, Jason Stephens. Available on Acorn TV via Roku.
“We’re the cleaners.”
Like the Nick and Nora Charles films of the ’30s and ’40s and the Mr. & Mrs. North TV series of the ’50s, Mr. & Mrs. Murder is a comedy series with occasional detectival interruptions, falling into the lightweight —you could say featherweight — category. Very cozy, this one, with virtually no on-screen violence.
Series creator and star Shaun Micallef seems to be Australia’s answer to Stephen Fry as he alternately dazzles and annoys everyone with his wit and breadth of knowledge. He plays Charlie, who runs an industrial cleaning service with his more down-to-earth wife Nicola. They seem to have an exclusive contract with the Melbourne police to clean up messy crime scenes, but they simply can’t suppress their natural inclinations to investigate unsolved murders.
The police are embodied in the person of Detective Vinetti, who (as befits plot requirements) tolerates the Buchanans’ meddling in the investigations principally because they get quick results. (Of course, it’s just barely possible that Nicola’s strong resemblance to Vinetti’s ex-wife might have something to do with it.)
Nicola’s long-suffering live-in niece Jess is often unwillingly shanghaied into helping Charlie and Nicola with their “investigations,” and when they’re stuck for technical help they go to Alan, a wheelchair-bound boffin.
When we say “featherweight,” we’re not kidding. Most of the mystery plots in this series are paper thin and not really all that interesting. The only episode that comes close to being first-rate is the next-to-last one, “Zootopia,” which the IMDb describes this way: “The zoo’s big-cat keeper dies by human hand, and the hippo keeper has gone missing. From clues and conversations, coworkers emerge as suspects. The break comes when Charlie gets a chance for some inside investigation during a sleepover safari.”
While there are several scenes in this short-lived series that are truly hilarious, if you’re looking for another Nick and Nora you might be disappointed; we feel, however, that it’s just enough fun to make it worthwhile.
July 31st, 2015 at 5:11 pm
Never heard of this series. What do I say?
July 31st, 2015 at 5:14 pm
It sounds like a lot of fun to me.
July 31st, 2015 at 7:21 pm
You can find it online at streaming service Acorn TV.
Mike, your review explained the series well.
I liked the first episode a great deal but it quickly grew annoying. It suffers from the flaws of most traditional style mystery adapted on TV, it is trapped in a simple formula that becomes repetitive after an episode or so. It is the type of series that depends on the audience liking the characters. But the characters are so quirky they can be taken only in small doses.
July 31st, 2015 at 8:14 pm
I’ve noticed that in many modern mystery or crime series that the mystery is not always the most important part … it’s the characters. At which some people will declare themselves fed up.
July 31st, 2015 at 9:06 pm
4. Randy, I think it is the opposite. Today’s modern TV mysteries such as TRUE DETECTIVE the plot can be more important than the characters.
Episodic TV mysteries such as NCIS will always depend on the audience’s devotion to the characters and less on the mystery of the week. Even great TV mysteries such as Perry Mason and Columbo depended on the characters during the weeks when the mysteries were not that good.
The TV tradition mysteries from MURDER SHE WROTE to MISS MARPLE are comfort food where people enjoy watching the characters solve the mystery more than trying to solved it themselves (even though the later is important to some). And the repetition of series format adds to the viewers comfort zone.
Today’s modern mysteries such as MR. ROBOT have unlikable characters and depend on the strength of the central mystery or plot that runs through the entire (usually short 13 week) season.
The problem with MR. AND MRS. MURDER was it has the flaws of the traditional style amateur mystery (lack of believability and predictability) but the characters are so odd they annoy when the attempt is to endear.
July 31st, 2015 at 10:25 pm
But in TRUE DETECTIVE I take the opposite view in that I see the strange characters as more important than the plot. The three police characters are alienated and perhaps ultimately doomed no matter what they do and the mob connected character even more so.
I agree the MR AND MRS MURDER characters look very annoying. Sometimes a show starts off with likable characters and ends with the characters so annoying that I have to stop watching. This happened to me with THIRTY SOMETHING. I started off liking the characters and by the end of the series, I hated everyone.
August 1st, 2015 at 1:11 am
Walker, what I disagreed with Randy about was the word modern. Today’s audience will put up with unlikable characters if the mystery/plot is strong enough (example LOST). In the past if the audience did not like the main characters they stopped watching.
I watched one episode of TRUE DETECTIVE, realized it was a quality TV series with flawed human characters and a depressing story. I never watched another episode because reality is depressing enough without spending money to get more depressed.
Old TV would have been episodic and a different mystery each week. The characters were interesting enough I would have watched another episode or two before considering to stop watching. It was the thought of suffering through weeks of this slow moving depressing single mystery that drove me away.
August 1st, 2015 at 6:18 am
Michael, you have a good point about TRUE DETECTIVE, it is top quality TV but extremely depressing. I guess I like it because I’ve been a lover of film noir movies since the 1970’s and I’ve become used to depressing plots and characters.
In fact, I sort of like them!
August 1st, 2015 at 10:47 am
I probably should amend my remarks in 4 to say that those mystery or crime shows I watch seem to follow the pattern I indicated. I know people who don’t care about the “back stories” of the characters and just want to find out whodunit. Is it just me or are there as many mysteries and crime shows these days as there were Westerns back in the 50s?
August 1st, 2015 at 2:04 pm
A series like this relies on charisma and on screen chemistry. I don’t see either in the photos, and you can see those things just in pictures.
August 1st, 2015 at 4:01 pm
9. Randy, there are more now that there are more networks. CBS today would take THE WALTONS and make it a crime procedural.
August 1st, 2015 at 4:14 pm
10. David, actually I did find the two leads had a chemistry between them. But it lacked a straight man. The niece was the closest this series came to a normal person.
I liked the series in the beginning but two weird characters getting involved in murder cases became more and more unbelievable than the serial killer Jessica Fletcher series. The quirks took over the characters. Imagine two comedy relief characters solving murders against the police orders.
August 2nd, 2015 at 9:00 am
After I hit submit I thought of what you said in 11, Michael. To have so many crime dramas today is not a phenomenon. To have so many westerns at once in the 1950s mostly meant that a couple of shows were so popular that everyone else copied them.
On plot vs character I have noticed that the British shows tend to be more clever in the use of clues in their mysteries than the American ones. I suppose someone will disagree with me on this.
August 2nd, 2015 at 1:33 pm
13. Disagree? With you? Only a fool. 🙂 TV is much like literature with the British favoring traditional mysteries of Holmes and Christie and America favoring hardboiled procedurals.
August 2nd, 2015 at 6:25 pm
The best one was in an early episode of “Endeavour” the prequel to Inspector Morse. The young constable points out that the hymn numbers on the board could not refer to hymns. They are sequential numbers left by the murder victim that can be identified as chemical symbols and interpreted as the initials of the murderer.