Ms. Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries: "Seasoned Murder" (Every Cloud Productions, Seven Productions, Screen Australia, Film Victoria, All3 Media, GPB, WGBH, PBS, 2019)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Saturday, January 27) I watched an episode of the engagingly quirky detective series on PBS, an Australian production called Ms. Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, set in the 1960’s and featuring private detective Peregrine Fisher (Geraldine Hakewill), niece of the original Mrs. Fisher who was the lead character in a similar series set in the 1920’s, and her budding romance with official police detective James Steed (Joel Jackson). This episode was called “Seasoned Murder” and centered around the murder of Graham King (Josef Brown), an egomaniacal chef who’d formerly owned a Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong until he emigrated to Australia and started a cooking school. He has constant arguments with his business partner, Lucy Harrington (Ling Cooper Tang) – a Chinese woman despite her Anglo-sounding name, which she acquired through marriage – mostly over the recipes. Lucy insists that Graham’s dishes are inauthentic, and Graham replies that he has to cook “Chinese” food the way Australian diners expect it whether it’s authentic or not. “Seasoned Murder” was the weakest of the three episodes of this intriguing series I’ve seen so far, mainly because writers Jo Martino and Alli Parker really larded on the plot devices and clichés to James Bondian levels. It doesn’t help that James Steed’s character name is a mashup of James Bond and Steed, Patrick Macnee’s role on the 1960’s spy TV series The Avengers.

Among the gimmicks is that the Chinese cooking school is a front for smuggling refugees out of mainland China who face a well-founded fear of persecution from Mao Zedong’s dictatorship, including Tony Wu (Jason Chong) and Chung Li (Gareth Yuan). Rita Harrington (Alicia Banit), Lucy’s stepdaughter, has become an opium addict – twice, since she kicked the stuff once but has relapsed. She’s getting the drug via a smuggling ring led by Bruce Taylor (Alan Dukes), who turns out [spoiler alert!] to be the real killer not only of Graham King but also his widow Shirley (Jane Allsop). Taylor literally blew up Shirley via an explosive concealed in a baked alaska dessert Lucy had prepared for her as a peace offering, and Peregrine Fisher and James Steed are nearly taken out as well when they just happen to show up at Lucy’s home to interrogate her as she lights the flambé dessert and unknowingly blows herself up. It also turns out that Samuel Birnside (Toby Trulove), nephew of Birdie Birnside (Catherine McClements) who owns the detective agency Peregrine works for, is still pining over his late wife Daphne, who died in a car accident; Rita was with her in the car but survived, though the lingering pain was what got her addicted to opium in the first place. She felt guilty because, as she tearfully confesses at the end of the episode, she had been driving when the fatal crash occurred, and the other good guys tell her they don’t hold it against her and they just accept it as a terrible accident. I generally like this show and in particular the spunkiness of the heroine (as well as the great mod dresses Peregrine gets to wear), but this time they really laid the clichés on too thick!