A bestselling mystery author is an
amateur sleuth who conducts her own self-styled investigations of murders in the storybook seaside town in which she lives.
If this sounds like the premise for the
old 1980s and ’90s CBS series “Murder, She Wrote,” then that would be correct.
But it also serves as a
description of a new mystery series starring Brooke Shields.
Angela Lansbury famously played mystery author Jessica Fletcher on “Murder, She Wrote,”
which had an extraordinarily long run on CBS for twelve seasons (1984-96).
The new Brooke Shields show — titled “You’re Killing Me” and
premiering Monday on Acorn — has Shields, 60, playing Allison Chandler, a very successful mystery writer who has written so many novels relying on the same detective character that her sales have
plateaued.
The character is named Chandler, perhaps as a nod to Raymond Chandler, who wrote detective novels for 19 years starting in 1939 with The Big
Sleep.
But Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled novels were not “cozy” mysteries. The term “cozy mystery” has come to describe a
genre of murder-mystery TV shows that take place in quaint towns or villages, where murders are incomprehensibly numerous in relation to the population.
In a
cozy mystery, crime scenes are not depicted graphically and the murders are relatively chaste affairs.
The
crime-solvers in the shows range from a local police detective to amateurs such as vicars, mystery writers and, in at least one mystery show, a nun (“Sister Boniface
Mysteries”).
Cozy mysteries imported from British television are a staple of PBS, and the content on Acorn TV is, for the most part, British as
well.
“You’re Killing Me” is definitely cozy and decidedly American, although it was filmed in and around Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Like “Murder, She Wrote,” which took place in the fictional seaside town of Cabot Cove, “You’re Killing Me” also takes place in a similarly
named fictional “cove” named Founders Cove.
In the first episode previewed by the TV Blog on Friday, Chandler is receiving an award at a
convention of mystery writers that just happens to be taking place in the very town in which she lives.
All of a sudden, a man known to everyone in town
plummets from a high hotel window and crash-lands on the roof of a parked car. And thus begins the episode’s murder mystery.
“You’re Killing Me” diverges from the “Murder, She Wrote” formula in one important way.
Unlike Jessica Fletcher, Allison Chandler takes on a sidekick — a young woman who styles herself as a true-crime
podcaster (played by Amalia Williamson, above photo, right, with Shields).
As Episode One proceeds, the Baby Boomer and the Gen-Z’er clash over
everything from cellphones to coffee orders.
More to the point, they are each carrying on their own investigations and bumping into each other everywhere
they go.
Eventually, they make peace, team up, face danger together and solve the murder mystery.
The verdict?
“You’re Killing Me” is a very nice show that is easy to take — in a word, cozy.
“You’re Killing Me” starts streaming on Monday, May 18, on Acorn TV.