I love a good who-done-it. This is my guilty pleasure. I love watching murder mysteries T.V. shows or movies while trying to figure out who committed the murderous act. A tip, it’s never the most obvious suspect. I think I just heard a very loud, collective “DUH!”
Who doesn’t love an Agatha Christie murder mystery. The polite, quirky detective is reluctantly drawn into the murder investigation, spends all their time questioning a multitude of suspects then gathers them all into a room at the end to reveal the murderer. It is a formula she used for both of her famous detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Her formula has been copied by many mystery writers and TV shows. The most glaring example was “Murder She Wrote” starring the late Angela Lansbury. The main character, Jessica Fletcher, was a retired school teacher who becomes a successful mystery writer and seems to always be in the vicinity of a murder. If I were the police, she would be my main suspect. Too much of a coincidence that she just happens to be at a murder each week. Do you think she was just working out ideas for her next novel? Also, she has made a bundle of money but still lives in her little house in Cabot Cove, Maine. That is suspicious right there. What’s she hiding? Does anyone really know what happened to her husband? What is she really growing in that garden?
With this world of Netflix and on-line streaming, I have fallen in love with British murder mystery television shows. The ones I like the most are those set in the English countryside, with legendary universities and quaint little villages. When someone gets murdered there, they do it in the nicest way possible (they tend to poison, suffocate or stab) and everyone seems so polite, despite that one of them is a ruthless murderer. There is always a Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) assisted by a young, and sometimes clueless, Detective Sergeant Inspector (DSI) and a pathologist who, doesn’t speculate on the cause of death until they get the body back on the autopsy table, but before they leave, wildly speculates on how the victim was “done in.” What makes this all right is the British accent. How can you dislike someone with a calming, never show panic, British accent?
I have noticed a few differences between American and British murder shows. First and foremost is that American detectives are always packing heat (a gun) and are willing to use it. It is difficult to gather all the suspects in a room at the end of an American murder mystery when they have been shot before getting to the conclusion. Yes, British police do carry firearms–sometimes–but not without having to get permission to sign out a weapon and only after proving to their superiors that it is absolutely necessary. On a British murder show it is rarely necessary. Again, every suspect is polite and always complies with the detective’s request. They can be led away, after being revealed as the killer, without cuffs. It would not be proper to “make a break for it.”
Another difference is the British detectives are usually nicely groomed and neatly dressed while the American detectives look as if they haven’t showered or shaved in a week, and have an aversion to wearing leather jackets. (This may be a bit of an over generalization…some of the detectives are women and don’t wear leather.)
I think the biggest contrast is the locations of the shows. While the American detectives are working the gritty streets and back alleys of an American big city, the British detective is plying their trade in small hamlets, miles away from London. Instead of dodging drug dealers and gang members, the British detective has to avoid chickens or stepping into whatever the horses and pigs left behind. This is the biggest drama on their show, considering how nice their shoes are.
On an American murder mystery, we tend to know who did it at the beginning and the show is a procedural on how the police solve the crime. In Britain, everyone seems nice at the beginning but with the revealing question and answer sessions staged by the detectives, at the end, you’re convinced any of the suspects could be guilty and they should all be locked for one reason or another. When the actual killer is revealed you are puzzled by how the police pulled the conclusion out of their butt. No worry though, that is when the killer, without conferring with a lawyer, confesses and spills all the details on how they did it and why it was committed.
Finally, we need to discuss the perpetrator of these murders. Here in the states, the killer tends to be a hardened criminal, drug dealer or an unsympathetic rich person. In Britain it could be any one of the 12 residents of the community where the dastardly deed was done. It could be the librarian who’s upset because the victim checked out too many books or the local mayor/paperboy trying to protect his position of power.
They could spice up the British shows a little. I don’t know, maybe a car chase once in a while? Now that I think about it, that won’t work because one of the vehicles would be an ox drawn cart.
The one thing that drives me crazy about those Brit shows, instead of the detective slugging down a hot cup of Joe, like here in the good old U.S.A., they sip a dainty cup of tea made for them by one of their suspects before interrogation. That just makes me want to strangle somebody.
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