{"id":4763,"date":"2015-08-21T08:46:30","date_gmt":"2015-08-21T12:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4763"},"modified":"2015-09-21T07:30:46","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T11:30:46","slug":"kick-back-tv-mysteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4763","title":{"rendered":"Kick Back TV Mysteries"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4764\" style=\"width: 386px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4764\" class=\" wp-image-4764\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/3677159744_5ba266a5a8_z.jpg?resize=376%2C256\" alt=\"tv, television, relaxing\" width=\"376\" height=\"256\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4764\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(photo: Caitlin Regan, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>We may spend the week grappling with the critical affairs of the world and leaky plumbing, but come the weekend, we hope Netflix offers us something entertaining\u2014and nothing\u2019s better than a little crime! You know, something about people with <em>real <\/em>problems!<\/p>\n<p>These five U.K. and Australian series take you out of the United States altogether, for an armchair vacation to boot. Here they are, from light to dark:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/acorn.tv\/franchise\/mrandmrsmurder\"> Mr. &amp; Mrs. Murder<\/a><\/em> \u2013 found CDs of this 13-part Australian series at the local library. It\u2019s about a husband and wife team (Shaun Micallef and Kat Stewart) who clean up after a murder and, of course, end up solving it. The real police detective (Jonny Pasvolsky), is sweet on the Mrs. and never misses a chance to put the husband down. Not one bit serious, just fun.<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.midsomermurders.org\/\">Midsomer Murders<\/a><\/em> \u2013 Based on books by Caroline Graham, this veeeeery long-running British series\u2014it began in the late 1990s\u2014has outlasted its original cast. More lately, John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), the \u201ccousin\u201d of the long-running Tom Barnaby (John Nettles), is the lead detective. Tom should never have let wife Joyce out of the house. Whether she was at choir practice or off <em>plein air<\/em> painting, a murder inevitably ensued in these deceptively charming country villages. Lots of suspects. And, over the years, lots of entertaining sergeant side-kicks. Ever-amazed that the CME always arrives and the scene and already has some conclusions before Barnaby even gets there.<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/acorn.tv\/franchise\/lastdetective\">The Last Detective<\/a><\/em> \u2013 great recommendation from a friend (thanks, B.T.!), based on novels by Leslie Thomas. In this London-base series, sweet, but hapless \u201cDangerous\u201d Davies (Peter Davison) must deal with the breakup of his marriage, the couple\u2019s shared custody of a very large dog, and the constant badgering of his doltish colleagues but always\u2014yes!\u2014solves the case. His boss, the self-medicating alcoholic DI Aspinwall (Rob Spendlove) is perfect. Friend and perpetual loser Mod (Irish comedian Sean Hughes) is the chief comic foil.<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/masterpiece\/casehistories\/\">Case Histories<\/a><\/em> \u2013 Several of Kate Atkinson\u2019s excellent Edinburgh-based mysteries about protagonist Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) have been made into television programs (three two-hour ones and three 90-minute ones), including <em>One Good Turn<\/em> and <em>When Will There be Good News<\/em>? Jackson is a defrocked policeman working as a P.I, who\u2019s still called in to advise the Department\u2019s DI Louise Munroe (Amanda Abbington) when he stumbles on a dead body or a juicy case. A little too much flashback about \u201cwhy he cares,\u201d when the fate of dead young women is involved. Why wouldn\u2019t he? His secretary (Zawe Ashton) is priceless. Cute daughter, too.<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/tv\/jackirish\/\">Jack Irish<\/a><\/em> \u2013 Three television movies (<em>Bad Debts, Black Tide<\/em>, and <em>Dead Point<\/em>)have been made from the Jack Irish mysteries by Australian writer Peter Temple, with more to come. Guy Pearce plays the eponymous character, and these are the grittiest in this list. I\u2019ve not read Temple\u2019s originals so don\u2019t know whether the excessive plot complications come from the original, but the shows would be better if they were a half hour shorter and without one of two of the endless twists. Between that and the heavy accents, I\u2019ve gone a bit past caring a time or two. Girlfriend journalist Linda Hillier (Marta Dusseldorp) is a charmer. Like the touts and horses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We may spend the week grappling with the critical affairs of the world and leaky plumbing, but come the weekend, we hope Netflix offers us something entertaining\u2014and nothing\u2019s better than a little crime! You know, something about people with real &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4763\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Kick Back TV Mysteries - crime-watching from comedic to gritty","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,54,67,104],"tags":[412],"class_list":["post-4763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-television","category-the-morgue","tag-mystery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1eP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4765,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4763\/revisions\/4765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}