This torturous murder mystery game show really lost the plot
Don’t stand in puddles of blood. Don’t leave your own fingerprints all over the crime scene. And, for heaven’s sake, stand up when the Guv’nor walks into the room.
We all fancy ourselves as armchair detectives but Murder Island (C4) reveals that most people are unversed in the most basic police protocol. When former Detective Chief Superintendent Parm Sandhu arrived at the first briefing, the eight contestants playing plainclothes officers stared at her with their mouths open, like a remedial class.
‘It’s courteous,’ barked an inspector, ‘to stand when the SIo [Senior Investigating officer] walks into an investigation.’ Everyone scrambled to their feet.
the four pairs of players are competing for a £50,000 prize to solve the killing of an eco-activist on a Scottish island.
the timing isn’t great because the self-obsessed attention-seekers blocking our motorways in the name of better home insulation have left the country seething with disgust at their antics (although perhaps murder would be a punishment too far).
But, that aside, this is a cleverly constructed mystery — much better than the format of the show deserves. Writer Ian Rankin, creator of the Edinburgh sleuth John Rebus, has devised a crime with multiple suspects. the body of green campaigner Charly Hendricks, dead from stab wounds, is discovered by two of the people who detest her most — a couple of developers who want to turn the Hebridean island into a tourist resort.
But Charly had numerous enemies. Many of the locals resented her presence, and she was mixed up in a messy love triangle.
In a neat twist, the kind Rankin does so beautifully, the voiceover is supplied by the victim herself: ‘the person in the bodybag . . . is me.’
If a whole episode had been devoted to setting up the case, Murder Island would have me hooked. We’d all have our own theories about the murder and could enjoy watching the investigation unfold.
Instead, the show flip-flopped, trying to introduce us to all eight amateur detectives, while throwing in frequent flashbacks to Charly’s story.
the disparity between the elegance of the mystery, and the incompetence of the wannabe detectives, was as painful as offkey bagpipes. Within half an hour, it had all become impossibly confused. no wonder Rankin has admitted he doesn’t want to do another series: it must be infuriating to see his meticulous jewel of a plot handled so clumsily.
the isle of Gigha does look spectacular — almost as wild and remote as the snow stranded Dales where shepherdess Amanda owen and her nine
children were wintering in Our Yorkshire Farm (C5).
Lockdown restrictions meant the family were again doing their own filming. A GoPro camera was strapped to the head of fiveyear-old Clemmy, who belts around the farm in a constant state of inexhaustible awe.
Who wouldn’t want to grow up at Ravenseat, skipping homework to build igloos and hand-rear orphaned lambs? the joy on the children’s faces, when their mother took them to peep at tawny owls roosting in a barn, could melt a heart of stone.
Lord knows the farming life looks tough. Amanda and husband Clive spent days searching for a huddle of lost sheep during the January blizzards, when temperatures on the hillside dropped to minus 11c (12f).
But their frozen waterfall, a pond that became an ice rink and the ponies eating greedily from buckets with their breath steaming were glimpses of a fairy-tale England. How wonderful to know that it still exists somewhere. Lucky children.