Murdoch Mysteries -- Season One (Acorn, 2009)
My, that was an interesting series to watch! Murdoch Mysteries is a Canadian television drama series which came out of a television movie series which in turn was based on a series of mystery novels by Maureen Jennings. I will be reviewing the films separately as they are quite different from this series. This series stars Yannick Bisson as Detective William Murdoch, an investigator in Toronto in 1895. He works with three other main characters: native Scotsman Inspector Brackenreid (played by Thomas Craig), Medical Examiner Julia Ogden (played by Hélène Joy), and Constable George Crabtree (played by Jonny Harris). That is the sum total of regular characters with a few recurring characters, such as A. Conan Doyle. For both seasons one and two, there was exterior filming in the Galt district of Cambridge, Ontario. I have not read the any of the novels so I don't know if Jennings portrays Toronto in 1895 as clean as this series does, or as outright filthy as the preceding movie series does. My suspicion is that Shaftesbury Films (in association with Citytv, Granada International and UKT which air it elsewhere) intentionally decided that a cleaner, less filthy cityscape was more desirable for the viewers than a dark, Satanic look. Detective William Murdoch is an openly devout Catholic (he crosses himself when encountering a body for the first time) on a Protestant police force that is not at all open-minded. He's also from the Maritime provinces, which makes him a hick by local standards. And this Murdoch is a futurist tinkering with forensic science that won't exist for decades in the real world of police work, i.e. lie detectors. Cute, terminally cute to be precise, in several cases. Hell, one of the very last EPs of this season would do The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, another Canadian television series, proud! Let's see... Acting is good here if sometimes a bit theatrical, the mysteries range from well-crafted to downright comical (and beyond belief as well), and there's certainly nothing here that will offend sensitive feelings -- there's little gore, precious little violence, and definitely no foul language (as contemporary audiences would define it) as Inspector Brackenreid swears frequently in slang that is deliberately obscure. If you own a copy of Partridge's Slang, you'll be amused by this language! It is certainly one of the best Victorian era mystery series I've seen and that includes the legendary Jeremy Britt Sherlock Holmes series, though oddly enough, it is not as good as the film series that came before it. I can understand why the decision was made to change the tone as dramatically as was done here, because that series could scare the living Hell out of many folk in no time at all! I certainly strongly recommend that you take the time to watch these as they are quite entertaining. And after you watch them, do watch the Murdoch Film Series as well!
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