A different kind of crime show
New ‘whydunit’ series explores the motive behind crimes
Crime dramas are the norm on TV and viewers are used to seeing detectives painstakingly nab murderers, serial killers and other assorted bad guys in forensic detail.
The new CTV series Motive, which debuts Sunday night after the Super Bowl, takes a different approach. It’s being billed as a “whydunit” as opposed to a “whodunit” because not only the victim but also the killer is revealed in the opening moments of the show.
And that suits Ottawa actor Brendan Penny, who plays Det. Brian Lucas in the series, just fine.
“I think the show really works as a whydunit,” said Penny, 33, in an interview from Vancouver where he now lives. “Because when you know the answer of who did it and who was killed I want to find out more about why.”
He said the show forces the viewer to try to figure out why the person committed the crime. “You can’t turn away from it. That’s what I really like about it. I find it very engaging to find out the next step of what happened and that’s also what makes the show different.”
In the opening episode titled Creeping Tom, a wellliked high school teacher, played by Joey McIntyre, is found murdered in his home. Lead detectives Angie Flynn (Kristin Lehman) and Oscar Vega (Louis Ferreira) are called in to investigate and at first suspect McIntyre’s wife. Upon further investigation, Lehman suspects one of the teacher’s students, who gets his kicks breaking into people’s homes.
The hour-long series got a big boost this week when ABC-TV announced that it was picking up the show for a summer run — even before the first episode aired in Canada.
Penny has appeared in the TV shows Whistler and The Assistants, and has guest starred in other shows, including Flashpoint, Supernatural and The L Word. Acting, he explains, came later in his life after his father suggested he try it out. He was born in Ottawa and attended Brookfield High School, where he mostly performed in comedy skits in high school productions rather than full-blown plays.
After he moved to Vancouver in 2002 Penny enrolled in an acting school and became more serious about his craft.
“I definitely wanted to give acting a shot and I thought it sounded interesting. As soon as I started getting into it and doing classes I saw how you discover a lot of different things and you get to play a different character. You get to be a lot of people you probably never get to experience.”
Within three months of taking acting classes he was hooked. In his early days as an actor he did TV commercials and small roles on TV shows. His big break came in 2006 on the CTV drama Whistler, set in the upscale ski resort in British Columbia.
“On that show I really grew as an actor and that character had a lot of range,” said Penny about the series, which lasted two seasons on CTV and centred on the mysterious death of a local snowboard legend. Penny played a character called A.J. Varland, a rich entitled kid who got addicted to drugs. Det. Lucas, the character he plays in Motive, is pretty much a straight arrow kind of guy.
“It’s very different and very subtle, the ebbs and flows of Det. Lucas. Every episode is self-contained and every episode is about the guest-starring characters, the victim and the killer. So you see a lot more of their story and what drove them,” said Penny, adding he is getting more comfortable with his character.
Lehman (The Killing) and Ferreira (Durham County) play the lead detectives, while Penny is one of the secondary characters.
“Lucas is the kind of the guy who comes in and out of the shows and you see a little bit of his quirkiness. I like to think he adds a very human appeal to the show where he’s not cool and collected, he’s eager and he’s excited and sometimes he’s wrong.”
The series is filmed in and around Vancouver.