Blue Murder: Set 2 (2006)

Hurray for Janine!

I love this series. The detective played by Carolyn Quentin is so human and funny and smart. I love how each episode gives us a glimpse of her challenging family life (single mother, 4 children!) and how she manages to balance that life with her career as a Detective Inspector. I love her 2nd in command, Ian Kelsey, and the wonderful sexual tension between the two. I live in hope they will ultimately get together for I have a suspicion they just might "make it."
The mysteries in each episode are very good and engrossing and Janine and her team always bring them to very satisfying conclusions. I hope the series will continue for a long time to come. August 16, 2008

This May Just Be Your Cuppa

"Blue Murder, Set 2,"a crime drama/police procedural, chronicles the doings of a Manchester-based contemporary female British detective who's both a top cop and a single mum to four. It was made by the British Independent Television (ITV), and is a ratings hit in the United Kingdom, but has not yet been broadcast here. It is, inevitably, reminiscent of Helen Mirren's "Prime Suspect," though the mysteries tend to be somewhat kinder and gentler.

In the lead role, DSI Janine Lewis, Caroline Quentin("Jonathan Creek," "Men Behaving Badly") gets a chance to prove herself a substantial actress, as well as a talented comedienne. In her job, she faces drive-by shootings, abducted children, and police corruption; at home, the, praises be, no longer all that young, nor all that slim, detective interviews nanny candidates, and attempts to comfort her bullied young son. Ian Kelsey ("Casualty") co-stars as her second in command, handsome DI Richard Mayne; he provides romantic and sometimes professional tension. And as Detective Schapp, Nicholas Murchie turns in particularly flavorful performances. The series is filmed on location in Manchester, a busy Midlands city that we don't get to see much of here, and it looks good. Enough extras have been hired so that the city bustles as it should, too. The actors have been encouraged to trot out their Manchester accents, which add a lot of atmosphere to the productions, and, thankfully, Acorn Media has added unadvertised subtitles, so that we can actually follow what's happening, local slang and all. However, the series' direction could be tightened a bit; the actors sometimes tend to stand around, posing.

In Episode 1, "The Spartacus Thing," we meet a fairly dysfunctional family. Mrs. Hickson has killed her husband's dog: he has strangled her with a dog chain, and served only eighteen months for it. Upon his release, he is strangled in strikingly similar fashion. Fifteen members of his dead wife's family confess to the murder. This episode piles up the most unlikely events to reach a conclusion.

Episode 2, "Make Believe," concerns three-year old Sammy Wray, who apparently vanishes into thin air from a neighborhood playground. Soon, the body of a child of similar age turns up nearby, wrapped in a sheet in a drainage tunnel. The plot's tight, has some good twists and turns, is emotionally involving, and will keep most viewers' attention.

Episode 3, "In Deep," follows a group of four college friends who used to fish together at a nearby lake, where the body of a man eventually identified as Mickey Day, small-time crook and drug dealer, is found. Now someone's picking off the college friends, one by one. This episode, too, must pile up the most unlikely events to reach conclusion.

Episode 4, "Steady Eddie," tells the story of Eddie Carter, popular copper's cop, who preferred walking the beat to climbing the slippery ladder of departmental promotion. When a jewelry heist goes wrong, and Carter is killed in a drive-by shooting, Janine and her team are forced to investigate him, and find out some things about him that they'd rather not have. Again, an absorbing mystery, with plenty of twists and turns.

Now, I'm not sure who's been asking for kinder, gentler British mysteries; surely, not me. I find "Hetty Wainthropp" acceptable, because, after all, the title character is played by Patricia Routledge, better known as our Hyacinthe Bucket, from the hilarious Britcom "Keeping Up Appearances." And "Rosemary and Thyme" works, because you've got those lovely gardens to look at, and the female leads are both, also, apt and talented comediennes. However, if you like female-headed, female-oriented, mysteries, and prefer them softer-edged, this may just be your cuppa.

June 26, 2008

So British the Supreme Court may object !

HIT AND RUN - Two crimes, two deaths, two lines come together in the course of the enquiry. The tricky intricacies of the two lines and how they get together is the core of the film. So you'll have to watch it to know. The first line is a hit and run with an officially reported stolen car But the hit and run was caused by the stress of the mission the driver was on. The second line is that of illegal immigration from Eastern Europe: girls who come to England to be nothing but whores and eventually barmaids, to cover up the deal. And then you add to that a fictitious pimp who looks and sounds like Bizet's famous invisible Arlésienne. What appears clearly in this episode is that the author cooled down the DCS and insisted on the social and political problem treated here. Quite a good job. FRAGILE RELATIONS - Here, Manchester explodes with another social problem, that of the large Moslem Pakistani community. It all spins around a mosque and a young mullah who is assassinated. You double this side of the problem with the militancy of a racist party and its leader and you have an explosive situation and some would like to excuse the lack of a real enquiry with the danger of this explosive social, religious and ethnic situation. The film shows how the English have set up a local police corps entirely composed of members of the community to do the police work in this community, and one of the members of that unit will be the interface between the Manchester criminal unit and the mosque officials and community and that's how the truth will finally come up and out, how too the female Inspector will be able to enter the inner circle of the mosque without creating any resentment. UP IN SMOKE - Another social situation, a crematorium mind you. Fascinating though horribly morbid, especially when you find out that there seems to be a few more bodies that got burnt than the official count. We know how the missing people, or bodies ended in flames. The point is to find who did it. Nearly easy to suspect it. But the trick here is the sordid reason why a plain love affair turned into a tragedy. Early teen pregnancy, an adoption and then imagine twenty years later when two people fall in love and discover one day they are mother and son. A mountain of guilt explodes out of the earth and then submerges the actors of the tragedy with a volcanic explosion. Everyone gets either burnt or at least singed. A marvelous trashy mess in which we live without knowing about it. LONELY - This episode is very strong and powerful from the very start. All the characters are potential killers. They all have a motive and none has an alibi. And the solution that will come out is a little bit easy because of the final discovery of the murder weapon that should never have been found and especially not with finger prints on it if the ultimate outcome is to be believed. That's maybe a weakness among the plot-writers. A Deus Ex Machina coming out of nowhere. The end of the second season. The need of a vacation, or is it a holiday? We'll see in the next series if the weakness has been strengthened enough to enable the series to last some more. But the culprit is unluckily a very difficult case that cannot be depicted in any way, thence the weakness in the plot.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
June 13, 2008

Blue Murder mysteries

best female detective series from the Brits available. Great action, not too gory and believable characters February 8, 2008

Great DCI

I love this lady. She is an excellent copper and is so different from Jane Tennison. I love her of course. This lady is married and has four children. She is tempted to have a cozy with her partner Richard. They never quite make it together. So she balances her family with her job and breakfast is a funny business. Good murder mysteries too. February 5, 2008

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