Looking for clues
Yannick Bisson back on the case in new season of 'Murdoch Mysteries'
As Toronto’s forward thinking Detective William Murdoch in “Murdoch Mysteries,” Yannick Bisson is at his 16th season with nearly 260 episodes. Yet he’s setting his sights — and why not! — on a 20th season.
When, exactly, did he realize this is a showbiz phenomenon?
“Oh, boy. Well, I certainly had no idea at the onset,” Bisson, 53, said in a phone interview earlier this week. When “Murdoch” began in 2008, “There were very few shows of this type on the landscape.”
“Murdoch,” a weekly murder mystery set in Toronto’s 1895 police department, riffs on classic Sherlock Holmes mysteries and dots its plots with historical luminaries like Arthur Conan Doyle, Nikola Tesla, Charlie Chaplin or Mary Pickford.
“Once we sort of got cancelled in Season 5, it was for no other reason than just administrative-type stuff. When they picked us up,” Bisson recalled, “only then did I start to see record viewer numbers and thought, ‘Wow! This actually is a thing’
“Around Season 6 I started to think, ‘This is really cool. Whatever happens from here, I feel pretty good about it. Fast forward 10 more years, I don’t even know what to think anymore.” Bisson, just 15 when he began acting, had immediate success. “Murdoch” came when at 38 he was already a veteran of several hit series. Did he choose the detective that would define his career from several offers?
“If I’m perfectly honest, I had done a lot of shows, but that’s the only part that’s listed on your IMDb. There’s a lot of dry days inbetween and I didn’t always have multiple offers on the table, that’s for sure. This was the only thing on my desk and I was happy to do it.
“There’s a funny story,” he continued, “about how it was a long, drawn-out casting period. I said to my agent, ‘What’s going on with that show? Is this a thing or what?’
“He said, ‘Stop thinking about it. They’re debating which way to go with casting, between the younger version of Murdoch and the older version.’ And I said, ‘Who the hell’s the older version of Murdoch that I’m up against?’ He said, ‘Well actually, you would be the older version.’
“So it’s a bit of a humbling moment.”
As for why “Murdoch Mysteries’ continues to thrive, “It was interesting what we could do. Because this was a departure from what Carolyn Jennings’s books were and what a couple of TV movies were. ‘Murdoch Mysteries’ was a departure in that we were going to adopt a little bit of a fantastical aspect, a light-hearted side to it. I thought that was very smart.”
“Murdoch Mysteries” Season 16 airs Feb. 11 on Ovation