And Morse and Lewis and lovable if sometimes stodgy Chief Superintendent Strange (James Grout) are going to solve them all.Įndeavour (29 hour-and-a-half-long episodes) Yes, that’s right, there are tons and tons of murders in Oxford. Slightly cranky, but always professional, he and his unlikely partner, the thoughtful Detective Sergeant Lewis (Kevin Whately), solve impossible murders in and around Oxford. Morse (John Thaw) is an uptight, erudite, and thoroughly brilliant detective who likes to do things his own way (no one even knows what his first name is-well, for a while). In this beloved program, loosely based on the novels by Colin Dexter, Chief Inspector E. Inspector Morse (33 two-hour-long episodes) Use them as your humble guides in these dark times. (I also recommend spending your time this way, too, if that’s more your style.) I bet they wash their hands a lot as well (except Vera maybe). This lot spends their evenings curled up in tiny but orderly town flats, reading Dickens by low lamplight, as their thin white curtains billow gently at the open casements while rain softly pelts the cobblestone streets outside. Indeed, no one knows how to weather solitude and disaster QUITE LIKE an outsider detective in a small English town. One more thing… besides that these shows are good company, they are also invaluable as models. Also, we’re sticking to the English countryside (though exceptions will be made for other rural areas of the UK), but that rules out globetrotting treasures like Poirot and the (is it colonialist? I haven’t seen it) tropical-set Death in Paradise, as well as the Melbourne-set Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (which, if you’re looking for comfort, is the television equivalent of this cake). They’ve got to be series with many, many episodes, not mini-series, which rules out you, Death Comes to Pemberly. This rules out the panic-laced and devastating arcs of shows that also happen to be set in picturesque places, like your Broadchurches, your Shetlands, your Bletchley Circles, and especially your Happy Valleys. The trick is that, despite the astronomically high murder rate in each program, all the shows on THIS list MUST be cheerful or at least cute. But ignoring that, we’ve put together a list of the most bucolic and somehow peaceful and definitely charming British village murder mysteries out there, in case that might prove soothing for you, as well. Now, we all know that English villages are actually hotbeds of violent crime, with murder rates higher than Tijuana or Caracas. But sometimes, when the mood is right, the only thing that can really relax me is a mystery in the darn Cotswolds. I much prefer mystery shows in which police officers and handsome criminals team up to solve art crimes and heists and there’s only like one dead body per season. I’m not pretending this is a novel take, but I just really don’t like that people have to die in order for the entertainment to get going. The problem with this is that murder mysteries also really upset me (a writer for this crime website). One of my favorite things to do when I’m cooped up inside is to watch a calm, traditional murder mystery. For obvious reasons, we’re all home a lot more than usual these days.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |