‘Murdoch’ picks up the ‘Buffy’ musical torch
TV writer Paul Aitken’s first attempt at a musical had nothing to do with singing detectives; it was about rats in a science lab who rise up to escape their cages. It never saw the light of day thanks to thieves who broke into Aitken’s van in Mexico in 1980 and stole the cassette tape with all the songs, among other things.
Now, more than 40 years later, he’s giving us the first ever musical episode of the long-running Canadian drama series “Murdoch Mysteries.”
It’s a project that Aitken, who said he’s been writing songs since he was a teenager, has been dreaming about since Season 6 or 7 of “Murdoch,” which is now in its 17th season. In Season 10, he even brought a pair of speakers to the set so he could play five songs he had written for the proposed musical episode.
“The songs were kind of proof of concept,” Aitken said in a Zoom interview. “I thought if I could write three or four songs that were interesting enough to get people’s attention that I could then write the rest.”
But the world of musical TV episodes is a fraught one, as TV aficionados know.
For every “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — widely considered the ne plus ultra of musical episodes — there’s a “7th Heaven,” “Riverdale” or “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Tastes have changed since the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, the golden age of movie musicals, or even the 1960s and ’70s, which gave us classics like “West Side Story,” “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Grease.”
In other words, if your characters are going to burst into song, they had better have a reason.
Thus, “Murdoch Mysteries” the musical didn’t happen until Aitken came up with a way to make it work: The central conceit of the show is that Murdoch is in a coma. The detective is shot in the head as the episode begins and, while the bullet doesn’t penetrate his brain, the injury causes musical hallucinations. “When people are singing, they’re actually talking over his (hospital) bed,” said Aitken.
“I thought it was a way in which we could do a mystery show” — i.e. who shot Murdoch? — “but the music itself would be baked into the very idea that has saved us from the fate of a lot of pretenders to the ‘Buffy’ musical, (who) basically could not come up with a solid idea as to why people were actually singing.”
So does it work? Having seen the episode twice — it has the somewhat cheeky title “Why Is Everybody Singing?” — I think it does. It features 15 songs, including a music hall-style number, “Bloody Hell,” by Inspector Brackenreid (Thomas Craig) — the only tune to survive from the five Aitken brought to set in Season 10 — and a tender ballad, “The Sum of You and Me,” sung by Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) and his wife, Dr. Julia Ogden (Hélène Joy).
Most of the songs, however, including a couple set to the tune of Robert Carli’s beloved theme music, advance the plot. The characters, including Murdoch, Ogden, Brackenreid, his wife Margaret (Arwen Humphreys), constables Crabtree (Jonny Harris) and Higgins (Lachlan Murdoch), Detective Watts (Daniel Maslany) and coroner Violet Hart (Shanice Banton), mainly sing about the case or Murdoch’s condition.
Cast members were understandably apprehensive at first about singing and dancing on the show. None of them are musical theatre professionals, after all, although Bisson had to sing in every episode of the children’s show “The Adventures of Napkin Man,” for which he got vocal help from Elaine Overholt, known for coaching Renée Zellweger in the movie “Chicago.”
Maslany got his start in musical theatre as a child — “and then I realized it wasn’t really where my skill set is” — but was still nervous on first hearing about a musical episode in Season 10, his first on the series. “And then, when I heard it was actually happening and I heard the music, I got so excited,” he said on the group Zoom call.
Humphreys, who emphasized she is not a singer, was nonetheless thrilled by the idea, noting the show’s fans have repeatedly asked for a musical episode.
“To be able to do something like this, I felt so lucky,” she said.
“I was very surprised, because I didn’t anticipate that everyone would have a good voice,” said Aitken, “but it turns out, yeah, they could hold the note, they could hit the pitch.” (Well, with a little help from producer Jono Grant, who Maslany said adjusted everyone’s notes.)
Singing and dancing (with the help of choreographer Tim French) weren’t the only hurdles, however.
Director Laurie Lynd said it was “the hardest script I’ve ever worked on to wrap my head around it. Paul was very patient with me because there were times where I was wanting to break out of the coma world to remind the audience that he’s been shot. And Paul was absolutely right that we should always be (seeing things) from Murdoch’s perspective.”
Plus, “it was huge to try and think about what each number could be, and to try and vary them so that there’s a range to them.”
Songs like the opener “The World Keeps Getting Better” — an ensemble number that gives Crabtree his own “Singin’ in the Rain Moment” with a spin around a lamppost — naturally fit well on the streets of the “Murdoch” set, but Lynd also wanted to reproduce the “black void” background seen in the 1979 movie “Hair,” which he did in several songs.
It “was partly practical because it could film faster that way and we were on such a tight schedule,” he said.
Speaking of the schedule, the series continued shooting during the three weeks or so that the cast rehearsed their numbers. Showrunner Peter Mitchell arranged to film a couple of “guest cast-heavy” instalments before the musical to free up the main actors to practise as much as possible.
“And Laurie went over and above in terms of showing up early and being involved in the prep process, well before he would be contracted to,” Mitchell said.
The producers also scheduled a table read — a table sing? — for the cast, something they hadn’t done since the pandemic.
“The moment after the table read, I think there was a sense that this is not going to be embarrassing; this is going to be good,” Mitchell said.
Humphreys said she still gets emotional thinking about it. “Hearing the music and hearing who had a great voice … it’s not like we sing on set,” she said. Also, “the story worked and I remember that was the thing that I thought was the best … it was so magical to sit and hear it out loud.”
And now, of course, it’s everyone’s turn to hear it.
Mitchell hopes viewers will come away humming. “A lot of TV musicals it’s just actors lip-synching to pop songs. These are all original compositions that drive the story forward but are still catchy enough that they’ll end up on someone’s Spotify playlist,” he said.
Christina Jennings, the president of production company Shaftesbury, hopes the episode gives viewers goosebumps, makes them cry even. Personally, it has given her “pure joy,” she said.
Aitken, however, hadn’t been able to bring himself to watch it.
“I’m a big ball of anxiety,” he said. “I’ll be very relieved on the 25th when this is actually out there.”