Reviews

I am tired of female detectives with severe emotional problems and great resentment of reality. That seems to be the only thing being produced these days. However, Miss Scarlet and the Duke offered two very attractive protagonists with witty dialogue, gorgeous costumes and hats, authentic Victorian settings and sizzling chemistry between the leads. It's been a long time between romantic dramas or playful comedies on television,and this last episode of the latest season seemed to be hinting at a resolution of a complex relationship (in which, I'll add, they have enjoyed two kisses in 10 years). So what do we get instead? Such slavish devotion to having another season that they ship the hero off across the ocean with a sultry promise of "this is not goodbye", and the selfish, lying and determined Miss Scarlet gets to embark yet again on another sleazy murder investigation. Good riddance, Miss Scarlet, I hope you have a lovely future leafing through diaries of murder investigations, and I won't be back for the next season. "Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, shame on you".

Oh, good, a chance to vent about one of my least favorite writing devices. Writers of TV mysteries, do not introduce the previously entirely unknown perpetrators of the crime 5 minutes before the end of the show and expect me to be enthralled by the cleverness of the reveal. No, I want a fighting chance to figure out the murderer. I have just wasted most of an hour admiring reasonably well acted and appealing personalities, and an area of the world with which I am unacquainted. But it's not much of a mystery, and certainly not up to the clever plot standards of a well written British mystery (see Vera, Inspector Morse, or, classically, "Ten Little Indians") And then there's the introduction of a promising mystery that becomes a mere plot device (a red herring, my husband adds). I refer to the three previous deaths in the last few months at the nursing home in question, and the doctor who attended them but, as repeated over and over, did not attend the latest victim. And guess what, there was a financial incentive in helping victims die a little sooner than they would have otherwise. The sleazy operator of the nursing home who might have connived with the doctor are both left uncharged, and they refer briefly to being unable to prove that it was murder. It's as if they thought about heading up that road, and then thought better of it, and instead added a previously unknown character.

Writing! Give us better writing! I'll settle for fewer artistic sets, I'll settle for fewer quirky characters, give me good writing! Since my husband likes company watching British mysteries, I've restorted sometimes to switching old Alfred Hitchcock episodes. Now there was a Director who knew how to locate good writers. Surely we still have good mystery writers around?