The Brokenwood Mysteries: "To Die, or Not to Die" (South Pacific Pictures, NZ on Air, GPB, WETA, PBS, 2015)

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

Last night (Wednesday, January 4) at 10 p.m. I put on KPBS for the latest episode in the New Zealand-set and -shot detective mystery series The Brokenwood Mysteries. I’ve already noted the similarity between this show and Midsomer Murders – both are set in out-of-the-way parts of their native countries (Britain in Midsomer Murders and New Zealand here) and feature police teams solving crimes in out-of-the-way locations, many of them dealing with local events of one sort or another. This episode was called “To Die, or Not to Die” (2015) and was set in and around the Brokenwood amateur theatrical society while they’re mounting a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Only the show goes awry on opening night when at the end of the curtain calls the actor playing Hamlet, Ben Faulkner (Nick Davies), literally expires on stage. It turns out he’s been poisoned with cyanide, which at first police detectives Mike Shepherd (series star Neill Rea) and Kristin Sims (Fern Sutherland) assume was administered to him in the squib of fake blood strapped to his arm so he would bleed on cue in the final scene. Later they realize it was actually in his asthma inhaler – both Ben and another actor in the show, Billy Franks (Dan Veint), were asthmatic and needed inhalers to survive.

The killer administered the cyanide by lacing the mouthpiece of the inhaler with it in solid form so whoever used the inhaler would get a fatal dose. The investigation reveals a set of people with various bizarre motives, including the show’s director, Ralph St. John (Peter Hambleton), who pronounces his name “Rafe Sinjan” and who claims to be protecting Shakespeare’s reputation against modern-day producers and directors who are allegedly distorted it (he also claims to have worked with Ian McKellen on The Lord of the Rings, but it turns out he was only an extra in a battle scene as a dead Orc); Gray Jenkins (Bruce Phillips), who left his wife decades earlier to “come out” as Gay and made a set of crude passes at Ben; his partner; his ex, who’s become a recluse who lives out in the countryside and makes her living catching, killing and skinning opossums for their fur pelts; a local English teacher who’s obsessed with the idea of Hamlet being played by a woman and wants the role for herself; and various other local eccentrics, including the young woman, Juliet (Holly Hudson), who plays Ophelia in the production. She had been dating Ben until he broke it off with her just a week or so before the play’s scheduled opening, and the double shock of being abandoned by her boyfriend and then seeing him die on stage for real has unhinged her so she’s going crazy like her character in the play.

The two other series “regulars,” Sam Breen (Nic Sampson) – the hot-looking young redhead who’s the third man in the police detective team – and Jared Morehu (Pama Hema Taylor), an equally studly young local vintner who’s on the fringes of the investigation and various other things, are both involved in the show. Jared, in fact, is drafted to play the part of Hamlet after Ben’s untimely demise, and the main reason Mike Shepherd (who predictably can’t stand Shakespeare) and Kristin Sims (who loves his work) were at the play’s opening and therefore witnessed the murder was to see Jared act the smaller role of Laertes. Ophelia’s brother, which passes to Billy once Jared steps up to Hamlet. Only he doesn’t immediately because Ralph St. John tries to take over the part himself even though he’s a generation too old for it. It turns out [spoiler alert!] that Ralph is the real murderer; he invites big-city critics to witness the performance at which he will take over as Hamlet, only none of them show up and instead the cops arrest him for the murder. The Brokenwood Mysteries has become one of my favorite TV shows even though I’ll probably have to give it up if and when the Law and Order cycle returns to NBC on Thursday nights (assuming it will) following the double disruption of the writers’ and actors’ strikes; though its debt to British mystery shows in general and Midsomer Murders in particular is pretty obvious, it’s got a charm of its own and Mike Shepherd, with his rampant sexism, his marital history (either three or four ex-wives; even he can’t remember just how many times he’s been married) and his love of country music, is one of the great eccentric characters of police-thriller history.