Blue Murder

Loved the show. Good stories, great characters. Janine is great - watching her balance home life with police work is inspiring. Lots of humor lightens the series in a good way. Richard, Butchers, Sharp - also make the show worth watching. I wish there were more seasons!

This is a series that should have all the advantages with excellent casting and good production values yet it start out not knowing what it is supposed to be or where it is going. The writers and/or the producers seem to think that if it cannot be outright comedic it must at least have moments of light relief. The beginning feels as if it is transparently a vehicle for Caroline Quentin, based perhaps on her long running appearance in Jonathan Creek but that itself is disrespectful of her undoubted skill as an actor.

Only by season 4 does it finally settle down to be serious drama without the interpolated moments of jollity to tell excellent stories told with very fine performances across the cast.

Having achieved that it throws much of it away in the last season by paring the story-lines and episode length down to a mean 45 minutes (not counting advertising). Even the last story presented over the last two episodes fails to recapture the depths of the previous season and a side plot concerning DCI Janine Lewis's family that is obviously designed to elicit sympathy for her fails to do so by dragging up all the single mum woman police officer tropes on offer.

So close to being good it sabotages itself.

My wife and I were pleasantly surprised by this detective series based on the reviews. It was definitely a well-acted and scripted detective show that kept you guessing about who did it. However, it was a little uneven with some great episodes and some that were implausible (e.g., the final episode). Also, several episodes were incredibly sad. I want to give it 7.5, but can't so it gets a 7.0. I'm sorry they didn't make more than 5 seasons.

I started to watch this a few times and kept getting put off by the intro music because the theme song on just the first episode made me think this was going to be a super light detective series. I finally watched this whole series recently and really liked it. After the first episode there is no silly theme music or any intro. This is a well balanced detective crime drama with good personal interaction between the cops.

Caroline Quentin and Ian Kelsey have good chemistry together and their characters are very believable. Detectives Butchers and Shap are well developed characters along the way. The show seemed to just be hitting it's stride before it was canceled.

Many of the plots seemed more original than most. The forensics aspect was not particularly interesting in this series but adequate and realistic.

This is definitely worth watching.

The stories are good, I wish the background budding romance would have been a little more in depth although DC Mayne doesn't seem quite the right match for DCI Louis. All in all, I liked the show!