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The Brokenwood Mysteries: Series 9
R0 - United Kingdom - Acorn Media Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (11th October 2023). |
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The Film
 Touted as New Zealand's answer to Midsomer Murders, The Brokenwood Mysteries trades village f๊tes for cheese rolls as four-times divorced, country & western music-loving city officer Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Shepherd (The Irrefutable Truth About Demons's Neill Rea) first turned up in the North Island town of Brokenwood to put the "field in field investigator" and takes over investigation into a death that everyone else would rather believe was a suicide or accidental death, replacing the local senior inspector implicated in the case. Ditching the city for Brokenwood and a vineyard, Shephard finds his outsider status both alienates him from the locals but also allows him to view cases from a perspective lacking in partner Kristin Sims (The Almighty Johnsons' Fern Sutherland) and young Detective Constable Sam Breen (Power Rangers Mystic Force's Nic Sampson) who was subsequently replaced last season by D.C. Daniel Chalmers (Fantail's Jarod Rawiri). And yet, they are as much sources of background information and incriminating gossip as feisty pensioner Mrs. Marlowe (30 Days of Night's Elizabeth McRae), hapless entrepreneur Frankie 'Frodo' Oades (Karl Willetts) who finds himself a suspect more than once, while the outlandish theories posited by humorless Russian pathologist Gina (Filthy Rich's Cristina Serban Ionda) are sometimes as fruitful as Shephard's habit of interrogating corpses. As with the aforementioned Midsomer Murders and other small-town procedurals, dirty laundry and skeletons in the closet could do with some airing out to expose culprits and the motives which sometimes are rooted in the past Suspects from earlier cases often pop up in later episodes with much more frequency than the British series and are not always readily available to help; indeed, some like to hinder the investigations just for the sake of it like attorney Dennis Buchanan (The Almighty Johnsons' Shane Cortese) who often turns up as defense council just as the team bring in a suspect, or Trudy Neilson (Tracy Lee Gray) who defended her hapless brother Ray (What We Do in the Shadows' Jason Hoyte) when he was suspected of murdering his wife and then landed in some hot water of her own. In "Brokenwood: The Musical" (93:33), hack playwright Terrence Weaver (Simon Leary) cons the town into funding a "Hamilton"-esque musical about the town's founding and brings down the house (onto his head) when he takes center stage. In "Old Blood Money" (92:56), serial gold-digger Jools Fahey (Ash vs the Evil Dead's Ingrid Park) - a suspect in four previous cases lands a much younger heir (Spartacus' Sam Bunkall) in a fiance when the only impediment to his inheritance in an illegitimate cousin (Louisa Hutchinson) winds up dead in her car boot. Most entertaining is "Nun of the Above" (93:13) in which one of the singing Sisters of St. Monica is strangled by one of her fellow sisters' cinctures, and an autopsy reveals that she had a very colorful past, casting suspicion on the extracurricular interests of the rest of the order and their uncooperative Mother Superior (The Insatiable Moon's Laurel Devenie). In "Going to the Dogs" (92:25), a veterinary nurse (Britta Brandt) is murdered, and the investigations turns up the dirty laundry of her colleagues involving drug thefts, horse doping, and fatal mistakes. In "Shot of Love" (93:51), Mike and Beth reluctantly go to visit Mike's estranged wife while Kristin, Daniel, and Gina investigate the apparent heart attack death of a man which turns out to be murder when Gina finds a bullet fragment in the most unlikely of entry wounds, while in "Motorcycle Mamas" (90:25), Brokenwood may be in the middle of a biker gang war when the fiance of one of their number is murdered, but there may be other reasons for the killing. Series nine feels a bit more tired than series eight, with Gina's relentless pursuit of Mike becoming even less funny, the series not seeming to know what to do with the romantic lives of Sims or Chalmers who has started pursuing a relationship with Missy Tohoroa (Cowboy Bebop's Roimata Fox) who had been a suspect in a case in the previous series and is reluctant to get involved in the investigations even when her various odd jobs around town allow information to fall into her lap and the series finally throws in the towel on Mike's uninteresting relationship with nurse Beth Haines (Jess Loudon) by way of a particularly unpleasant run-in with Mike's off-the-grid estranged fifth wife (13 Gantry Row's Rebecca Gibney) who has yet to sign the divorce papers the only good outcome of which is Mike realizing that work does come first for him and he is not willing to make a move from Brokenwood back to the big city with only hapless Frodo (The Power of the Dog's Karl Willetts) as the consistently amusing element. If there is to be a series ten of The Brokenwood Mysteries, one hopes that they find ways to start afresh with some more diverting cases and more interesting character subplots. 
Video
Acorn Media spreads six feature-length episodes over three dual-layer DVDs, but the American Blu-ray editions of the previous series demonstrates that the standard definition anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen encodes only do a serviceable job of rendering some stunning scenery while the more set-bound sequences fare better in SD in terms of detail. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track, and dialogue is always clear while the series' use of original country and western-themed songs often fills the mix in place of atmospheric effects. Optional English HoH subtitles are provided. 
Extras
While previous series editions included behind the scenes segments, series nine has no extras whatsoever. 
Packaging
Annoying, all three discs are stacked on top of one another on the same hub, requiring fingernails to pry them apart and risking potential scratches on the playing surface by the embossed lettering on the labels.
Overall
If there is to be a series ten of The Brokenwood Mysteries, one hopes that they find ways to start afresh with some more diverting cases and more interesting character subplots.
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