Murdoch Mysteries, Season One
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Actor: Helene Joy, Jonny Harris, Lachlan Murdoch, Thomas Craig, Yannick BissonBrand: BISSON,YANNICK
Writer: Maureen Jennings
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Anamorphic, Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 598 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-06-16
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Acorn Media
DVD Reviews of Murdoch Mysteries, Season One
DVD Review: Turn-of-the-century Detective William Murdoch: Not bad, but without the squalor or much depth
Summary: 4 Stars
Poor William Murdoch. Will he ever get a fair shake in the casting department? He's a police detective in a number of turn-of the-century mysteries set in gas-lit Toronto written by Maureen Jennings. They are good books, well written, detailed and intricate, and Murdoch is a fine protagonist. He's reasonably well educated, worked rough before he became a policeman and is a Catholic in a very Protestant town which has a largely Protestant police force. Murdoch is convinced that beating a confession out of a suspect -- the usual way of solving a crime -- is not as effective as using deduction and the new scientific methods that are being talked about. He's thoughtful, sincere and shrewd. He's not the most popular copper at his station, but he grudgingly earns the respect of his superior and most of his colleagues.
The Murdoch Mysteries is the second attempt by Canadian producers to bring Murdoch to television. The first consisted of three 90-minute programs based on three of Jennings' books. Murdoch's impostor didn't look much like Jennings' description but he was a skilled actor. It all started well but quickly drifted down into melodrama, with Murdoch in the third program involved with a loving street prostitute. With that highly unlikely development, not in the books, the axe came down on the show.
Murdoch Mysteries showed up a couple of years later. It's a conventional television approach with thirteen one-hour mysteries in a season, with two seasons finished and production started on the third. My impression is that the television producers and writers are caught between trying to bring Murdoch and his times to life and having a hit in the ratings. The series, considering that no one in their right mind on this side of the Atlantic is about to spend the kind of budget the BBC used to on production values for a series, looks good enough to be satisfying. The pressure of cranking out 13 mysteries a year is evident in stories that don't leave much time for character development or in plotting mysteries that are complex and don't cheat. The squalor and social injustice Maureen Jennings writes about are largely missing. The writers try for humor by frequently having Murdoch, who loves to apply science to solve crimes, make innocently ironic comments about how such and such an advance - the auto, ballistics, alternating current - might or might not be good for future generations. It's a bit of shtick that wears thin.
The weakness, for me, once more lies in the casting of Murdoch. Yannick Bisson is an extremely handsome actor who got his start doing television commercials and then moved into acting. He's 40 but looks younger, with eyes that probably make his lady fans swoon. His eyebrows sometimes have a life of their own. He's not a big man and he has a somewhat light voice. He can play serious but there's not a great deal of gravitas about him. Don't get me wrong; he's not a bad actor. But Murdoch requires a fine actor who can combine thoughtfulness, curiosity, some quiet humor and authority. He's also a man who can handle himself well in a brawl. Bisson, whose career has mainly been in television, reminds me of all those interchangeable and handsome Hollywood television actors who luck out in popular series. He's better than they are, but he doesn't carry much actorly weight.
If you like historical mysteries, I recommend trying out this series. It's nowhere near as gripping and detailed as, say, Holmes and Poirot. It doesn't have the character development and cleverness of Marple. The programs are a pleasant way to spend an hour at home. By all means, however, get the books and really delve into the crimes and squalor of William Murdoch's world of murder and injustice.
The season one and season two sets contain 13 episodes on four discs in each set.
Description of Murdoch Mysteries, Season One
Forensic sleuthing in the age of invention
Cutting-edge Victorian science meets cunningly plotted mystery in this "stylish period thriller" (The Globe and Mail). In the 1890s, Detective William Murdoch (Yannick Bisson, Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye) adopts modern techniques like "finger marks" and forensics to track Toronto?s most sinister killers. Though derided by his skeptical boss (Thomas Craig, Where the Heart Is), Murdoch finds friends and allies in a lovely pathologist (Gemini®-winner Hélène Joy, Durham County) and an eager-to-learn constable (Jonny Harris, Hatching, Matching & Dispatching). Along the way they cross paths with some of the era?s most famous figures, including Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Prince Alfred.
Winner of two Geminis® and nominated for 12 more, including best drama, best supporting actor, and best writing
DVD SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE episode commentary by stars Yannick Bisson and Jonny Harris, production designer Sandra Kybartas, and executive producer Cal Coons; interviews with the author and cast; photo gallery; cast filmographies; and character bios.
Inspired by a series of television movies based on the mystery novels of Maureen Jennings, the enjoyable Murdoch Mysteries: Series One follows the investigations of Toronto police detective William Murdoch at the close of the 19th century. A man of scientific progress as well as devout Catholicism, Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) approaches mysteries with such new, state-of-the-art techniques as fingerprinting, blood-testing, and trace evidence, collaborating closely with his department's pathologist, Dr. Julia Ogden (Hélène Joy). Working under the skeptical Inspector Brackenreid (Thomas Craig), an old-school copper who respects his lead investigator's results but has little patience for his complex methods, Murdoch often encounters new-fangled technology that, in time, will pave the way for such 20th-century staples as radio, television and the electronic grid. At the same time, the faith element in Murdoch's view of the world allows him to be something more than a complete rationalist. His occasional reliance on a medium (Maria del Mar) to help him discover clues, and his church-derived ethics are all part of Murdoch's approach to an increasingly complicated world.
The first episode in Murdoch Mysteries: Season One is an excellent template for all 13 shows in this boxed set. "Power" finds Murdoch trying to discover how and why a woman was killed during a demonstration of the "evils" of alternating-current-derived electricity put on by a direct-current power company. Murdoch's queries put him in touch with Nikola Tesla, the real-life father of the AC motor. "The Glass Ceiling" pits Murdoch's scientific techniques against the more brutal approach of his boss, Brackenreid, who seems to be the target of a killer linked to an old case. "Elementary, My Dear Murdoch" somewhat inevitably pairs Murdoch in a murder investigation with one of his idols, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose faith in such spiritualist pursuits as seances complicates things. (Doyle returns in a later episode, "Belly Speaker," again proving more of a meddler than a help in a case involving a mad ventriloquist.) "Bad Medicine" is a scary story about a hooded archer killing off the patients at a clinic for advanced brain study. (The aforementioned medium has unnerving visions of Murdoch becoming one of the murderer's victims.) The last episode, "The Annoying Red Planet," is easily the season's most ambitious, involving crop circles, possible extraterrestrial footprints, and a genuine unidentified flying object that pushes the series into The X-Files territory. --Tom Keogh
Stills from Murdoch Mysteries: Series 1 (Click for larger image)
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