Recipes for Love and Murder

Available: Monday 5 Sept Genre: Crime drama Season: 1 Episodes: 10 (two released per week)

Set in South Africa, this quirky crime drama serves up an unusual mixture as it follows a crime-solving cook turned agony aunt. Maria Doyle Kennedy stars as ‘Tannie’ (‘auntie’ in Afrikaans) Maria, who loves to cook, and the sensual kitchen scenes in the series wouldn’t look out of place in one of Nigella Lawson’s shows. She also gets a job writing an advice column for the local newspaper. ‘Tannie Maria lives on her own in a little farmhouse way outside of town,’ says Maria, who previously starred in The Tudors. ‘She wants to observe people and comment on what’s going on around her.’ But her work as an agony aunt takes a dark turn when she fears one of her correspondents is a victim of domestic violence. As she teams up with young colleague Jessie (Kylie Fisher) to find out what’s happened, an unlikely sleuthing double act is formed. ‘Tannie Maria has a kind of a darkness to her,’ Maria says.

‘She’s also carrying a secret that she wants to keep.’