My Life Is Murder: "Mirror, Mirror" (CJZ, Cordell Jigsaw Productions, Film Australia, Team Victoria, American Public Television, PBS, 2019)

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

Last night (Friday, July 12) my husband Charles and I watched a quite good episode of the Australian-made and -set policier My Life Is Murder, starring Lucy Lawless as Alexa Crowe, recently retired police detective in Melbourne, Australia, who receives cold cases from her friend still with the Melbourne Police Department, Kieran Hussey (Bernard Curry). This episode was called “Mirror, Mirror” and dealt with the Cavanagh Clinic, owned by Levi and Imogen Cavanagh (Christopher Kirby and Diana Glenn), whose star plastic surgeon, Tilly Phillips (Emma Livesey), died a few months before from an overdose of botulinum toxin administered at home. Tilly was a former heart surgeon whom the Cavanaghs recruited to come to their clinic and not only perform plastic surgery on others but go through it extensively herself, telling her she should consider herself “a work in progress.” This didn’t sit well with her husband Ross (Brett Cousins), who had liked her fresh, natural beauty when they first met and started dating but didn’t care for the weird apparition all those plastic surgeries turned her into. In fact, Ross tells Alexa that his late wife became “addicted” to plastic surgery – which is what they used to say about Michael Jackson. As Alexa digs into the investigation with the help of her assistant Madison Feliciano (Ebony Vagulans), whom I’m convinced is of Aboriginal descent even though in the U.S. she’d be assumed to be Black, Levi Cavanagh threatens her with a defamation lawsuit as soon as he realizes she’s not there to go through plastic surgery herself. Charles, who for once arrived early enough from work and therefore got to watch the whole episode with me, wondered about Levi because he’s Black – though Madison is probably Aboriginal it’s pretty clear Levi is African-Australian – and for decades Australia simply didn’t admit Black people as immigrants. Levi is also depicted as a sexual abuser who seduced Tilly Phillips into having an affair with him and is also carrying on with the clinic’s receptionist, Ainslie (Eliza Matengu D’Souza) – sort of like Harvey Weinstein, though in a Black and way hotter bod!

Alexa goes through the pool of suspects (Charles asked me if this show regularly features so few potential suspects, though frankly that’s true of most real-life murders as well) and briefly considers whether Ross Phillips killed his wife out of jealousy for her extra-relational activities. But she ultimately deduces that Imogen Cavanagh killed Tilly by giving her a dose of barbiturates impregnated in her work clothes, then sneaking into her home while her husband was away and giving her a hot-shot of botulinum toxin. Alexa figures all this out when the police lab discovers traces of barbiturates in her lab shirt and a crime-scene photo of Tilly’s bathroom (where she received the fatal dose) shows a pink rose petal. The petal is from an exotic sort of flower called the “Juliette Rose” that grows only in France – if it exists in Australia it had to be imported. Imogen Cavanagh was heavily involved in a charity called “Juliette Rose” that raised money for grants to aspiring young professional women, and her alibi was the charity was giving a fundraiser the night Tilly was murdered. Only Imogen gave Tilly the drugged work shirt which would render her unconscious long enough for Imogen to sneak over to her place during the fundraiser, kill her and then return in time to make the guests think she’d never left. Alexa brings KIeran Hussey and two uniformed police officers to arrest Imogen at the Juliette Rose’s latest fundraiser, and Imogen pleads with the cops at least to let her finish the fundraising auction before they take her away. Her motive was that while she was willing to accept and live with Levi’s affairs, she drew the line when he wanted to relocate and set up a separate Cavanagh Clinic in Tokyo with Tilly as his partner there. There was also a nice comic-relief subplot when Dawn (Kate McCartney), the obnoxious on-site manager of Alexa’s condo, shows up at the Cavanagh Clinic herself to have “work” done, and an interesting and pathetic (in the good sense) plot twist when Alexa interviews Ken (Lawrence Leung), who went to the Cavanagh Clinic to have his acne scars burned off – though he ended up looking either the same or worse. Ken tells Alexa that Tilly was the only Cavanagh staff member who treated him decently; the Cavanaghs themselves were arrogant and once again threatened to crush him financially if he breathed a word in public about what they’d done to him.