Armchair Detectives

We need more shows/game shows like this :) I'm a fairly big fan of shows like Father Brown and Agatha Christies work/ shows made from her work and more traditional british tv. We are starved in New Zealand for shows like this but finally they are starting to turn up on amazon prime... They use to be on a free tv channel called prime when I was a kid, now they are overshadowed by "US reality tv" which I find absolutely unentertaining. Of late Sky tv has had the only rights to show british tv in NZ- but you have to buy the initial $80 subscription as well as approx another $15 for the bbc channels. Ridiculous, I can't afford that. Then britbox isn't available in NZ but is for similar countries like Aussie and Canada.

At this time it looks like there is only one season of this show but I would love to see more! Many of my favourite shows seem to be cancelled after the first or second season, this may be another one of them. I love lighthearted murder mystery shows. So many shows are far too heavy on adding unnecessary amounts of drama over seemingly petty stories and the rest is just arguing and sexual acts. Especially modern day US shows, it's so common these days. Everything feels saturated and over-hyped and not to mention, made for binge watching not episodic at all. Companies would rather spend more money on rushed cgi than traditional acting. I love when shoes have a bit of humble comedy without too much politics with obvious agendas. This show was not filmed and edited in a way that would give me a visual or aduitorial headache. Call me a grumbler but many shows these days are mixed poorly with tonnes of noise added in afterwards.

I enjoyed following alongside guessing the murderer in each episode. It also gets your brain working and thinking a bit. Some people may find the mysteries to be boring as it's not for everyone but it's definitely for me :) Even if I didn't guess during an episode, I found the thoughts and commentary of the host and participants as they unravel the mystery. It's interesting as each story unravels. Gives me something to bite on and a break from reality. If multile seasons were made, I would buy it on dvd to rewatch from time to time!

This is easily one of the best programs on the BBC at the moment. I've watched the show from the very first episode and take great delight in trying to solve the murder along with the armchair detectives themselves. You can play along at home by taking notes and putting the clues together in order to answer the question of "Whodunit?" The cast is also really good, with Stephen Billington as DI Knight, Roger Nsengiyumva as DC Slater, and Sarah Baxendale as SOCO Simmons. Susan Calman does a fantastic job as the shows presenter, she doesn't know who the killer is so also plays along with the three armchair detectives. If you get the chance you must watch the show, it really is one of the best shows on the BBC, hope they make another series next year. Without doubt a great show that will keep you wanting to watch till the very end. You would have to be completely unimaginative and lacking any patience (prylands-389-567480) not to appreciate it.

Wow but this is possibly the worst thing I've seen in 10 years. You would have to be at the loosest of loose ends to watch this more than once. A wishy-washy whodunit format with a mumsy tone. Three 'enthusiasts' are presented with flimsy clues in order to guess the ID of the murderer. If they guess correctly they win a golden magnifying glass ("ooooh!") The acting is dreadful, the clues largely silly and the motives for the murders mostly ridiculous. Susan Calman has a game attempt at stringing the whole mess together but it does not move beyond a series of chuckling, witless exchanges and finally the revelation of the murderer - by which time anyone with an ounce of intelligence would have switched off or busied themselves with something else. This is pap aimed at people trapped at home in the daytime - no doubt to punish them for a lack of imagination. I cannot believe they made so many of these - it is truly the nastiest, cheapest, dumbest type of television!

I don't watch hardly any daytime TV, apart from Father Brown, but this intrigued me, as a big fan of Murder mysteries and suspense stories, I found the premise quite interesting. When you think back to Whodunit from the Seventies and Cluedo from the Nineties the format works. It's a good afternoon distraction, the best thing I've seen Susan Calman doing, to be fair to her she adds the entertainment. The mysteries themselves are naturally nonsense and everything is very woolly and mainstream, but that's the whole point.

So it's not Whodunit or Cluedo, but it's been an enjoyable few weeks watching it. BRING CLUEDO BACK :-)

Watchable fun 7/10

Armchair Detectives is a slow burner. Each episode a new crime case is investigated by the team of DI Knight, DC Slater and SOCO Simmons. Set in the fictional town in Mortcliff (the eagle eyed will recognise various spots around the East Lothian coast) the format is playful and pulls the audience in. It took me a few episodes to understand the game-play element of the show, but it's ever so slightly addictive. I love crime drama and this feels like a cult hit in the making.