Stream It Or Skip It?
Murder In A Small Town is a joint Canadian-American production that did very well for Fox last season, mainly because it has the same cozy vibe as mystery series on BritBox or Acorn TV, combined with small-town quirkiness and romance a la Virgin River and Sullivan’s Crossing. In the second season, there are more high-profile guest stars and interesting additions to the cast, like Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden.
Opening Shot: The shoreline of Gibsons, BC at night. A shot of a house and a husband and wife having an intense argument.
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The Gist: During the fight, the drunk husband shoves his wife. She defends herself by grabbing a frying pan and whacking him in the head. Thinking she just killed her husband, the woman calls her sister; together they wrap him in a rug, put him in the trunk of his car, and drive the car out in the woods. The logic is that he’s been involved in some shady stuff, and the police will think his death is related to that.
In the meantime, librarian Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk) is celebrating her victory in an election for a seat on the town council. One of the people happiest for her, of course is Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland), the police chief and Cassandra’s boyfriend.
The next morning, Laila Jackson (Bethany Brown) starts her first day at the Gibsons police department; she worked with Karl in Minneapolis, and is a welcome sight to a department that’s scrambling to cover shifts. The first thing she looks into is a drunk and disorderly report; it’s the man who is now supposedly dead in the trunk of his car.
Cassandra’s major campaign promise is to revive a plan to build an arts center in town. That has been opposed by Mayor Christie Holman (Marcia Gay Harden), with Holman’s contention that the money can be used for other needs. Holman, a practicing physician, has some political savvy up her sleeve; when she proposed to Karl that he lead a regional department that consolidates policing with surrounding towns, he asks for six full-time officers. Knowing his relationship with Cassandra, Holman asks Karl to tell her to back off the arts center.
As the investigation into the missing husband continues, Karl and his officers find that the trunk of his car, which supposedly had his dead body, is empty. Eventually he’s found, but burned to death on an expensive fishing boat he recently purchased with some money he got for doing favors for unsavory types.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we said during Season 1, Murder In A Small Town is essentially Murder, She Wrote crossed with Sullivan’s Crossing. It would fit really well on Acorn TV or BritBox.
Our Take: Ian Weir created Murder In A Small Town based on The Alberg and Cassandra Mysteries by L.R. Wright. The fact that the novel series is called “Alberg and Cassandra” is key, because that means the romance between Karl and Cassandra is a big part of what makes the show go. The vibe in Season 2 is that, with the expansion of Karl’s jurisdiction and Cassandra’s new entry into local politics, that relationship may either take a back seat or morph into something less romantic.
We’re not thinking that they’ll break up. But it does seem like Mayor Holman is intent of getting between Karl and Cassandra, at least when it comes to her agenda for Gibsons. Will it cause some tension between them? Sure. But it seems that Karl is going to try his best to keep Holman at bay; the problem is, he really needs the additional resources as his jurisdiction grows.
There are also backstories with other members of his squad, which we’ll see with Cpl. Jackson as well as Sgt. Sid Sokolowski (Aaron Douglas) and Isabella Harbud (Savonna Spracklin). We prefer to see those stories, more of Karl’s struggle with being the son of a well-known artist, and Karl and Cassandra deepening their relationship, even if that sacrifices a bit of mystery content.
The first week’s mystery actually is more complex and layered than we expected, but it was more interesting because of how the sister of the dead man’s wife kept encouraging her to just escape town with the husband’s money. We didn’t really care all that much about who actually killed the victim of the week, and that can be a problem if this is how it goes during the rest of the season.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: As Cassandra and Karl discuss them being on opposite sides of her key campaign issue, they agree that “whatever happens, whatever’s said, we’ll get through it.”
Sleeper Star: Season 2 will have a number of interesting guest stars, including the Camryn Manheim, Tyler Posey, Jamie Chung, Noah Reid, Sarah Canning and the late Malcolm-Jamal Warner in his last screen role.
Most Pilot-y Line: There still seems to be a bit too much of Karl looking at things that seem to automatically push him in the right direction. Some of them are obvious, like the missing frying pan on the wall of the missing man’s kitchen.
Our Call: STREAM IT. As long as the mysteries are serviceable and Cassandra and Karl’s romance doesn’t get buried under murders and politics, Season 2 of Murder In A Small Town should be as fun to watch as Season 1 was.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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