From joining the dots to a preposterous plot
It was an ambitious homage to attempt: a New Zealand Midsomer Murders; but with The Brokenwood Mysteries in its second season on Prime as of Sunday, South Pacific Pictures has pulled it off with aplomb. It has the mix about right: a lurid murder with novelty circumstances, entailing the investigation of a bunch of characters who veer entertainingly toward caricatures and ‘‘types’’ – but with the procedurals and plot retaining credibility.
Above all, the storylining ensures that, unlike with serious drama, the fact of the murder does not detain the viewer with weeping and wailing.
Detective Sergeant Shepherd (Neill Rea) and Constable Simms (Fern Sutherland) return to investigate a rugby team whose coach is found bound to the goalpost with ladies’ undies jammed down his throat. Arnie’s peculiarity was an inconvenient aversion to violence on the field. This accounted for the team’s record-beating history of losses.
This gives the story a surprisingly varied procession of monosyllabic local hard men to interview, most seemingly with Something To Hide. At the same time a young woman is murdered. It’s no spoiler to say the solution to the mysteries is not stunningly original – but then, there’s nothing new under the sun given the escalating volume of TV murder mystery movies.
The fun part is the journey, and seeing how many dots you can join.
Meanwhile, the Emmys were last week, but already we have a new winner: in the category for Most Unnecessarily Ridiculous Plot In a Dramatic Series, give it up for TV One’s new Tuesday show, The Player.
The premise is that a bunch of shadowy powerful figures get together and devise a computer programme to predict crimes. They locate a handy Jack Reacher/Bruce Willis type, and blackmail him into trying to prevent the crimes, and then bet on whether he’ll be successful.
The idea of these dudes highfiving because they successfully picked a murder, rape or kidnap will happen is seriously sick, to say nothing of preposterous.
The show then adds corny to stupid, beginning with our ‘‘hero,’’ security consultant Alex (Philip Winchester), reconciling with his lovely ex-wife. Suddenly, she is shot through the heart and he is hit by a car. As he recuperates and grieves, the proposition is put to him: in order to find out who killed his wife, he must become ‘‘The Player’’.
Upon corny and stupid is then heaped trite: we are given to suspect the wife may not be dead after all.
It doesn’t take a secret chamber of sicko billionaires to predict this show won’t last.