Aurora Teagarden Mysteries: Death at the Diner

About as thrilling as watching the grass grow. The potential for an interesting mystery drama is here, but the casting is flawed. The young Aurora with her lack of talent along with her caked on makeup, grocery store red dye hair makes me wonder why a casting person selected her or the actress for Sally. They really ruined a decent mystery. Please replace casting who hired them. I use to look forward to the drama. Aida, the mystery club and the library shenanigans. The characters were good seasoned performers and now you have two unlikable weak and wrong for the parts leads. What were you thinking? These people couldn't be more unlike Auroa and Sally.

The rebooted Aurora Teagarden series shows some questionable showrunning choices. Casting is a big one. The newcomers lack the charm of the prior cast in general. But this episode suffers from other problems, and the biggest one is that it's boring from the start.

We open with a murder. Okay. But there's nothing much to see. Nothing raises questions, other than who was murdered. We're also given no information on why we should care. Then it's a rewind to see a bit of bland backstory until we catch up with our murder again. Everything so far has only provided evidence that DEATH AT THE DINER is weak on storytelling.

We did have a murder, so that proves the title is accurate at least. But does anything else interesting happen? Unfortunately, the episode doesn't improve after that and we end up with a dull slog all the way through until the end when the murderer is revealed. If viewers haven't fallen asleep by then, that is.

As a stand-alone scenario, I rate it 10 - I still enjoy the storylines and feel of the Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, as long as I ignore series continuity a bit! Firstly, it is visually too modern to be set a good decade before Candace Cameron Bure's incarnation - make up, fashion, tech etc - and the fact that these prequels mean Aurora is an established sleuth in her 20s doesn't add up with Aida's surprise that her daughter starts and continues finding corpses / solving mysteries in her 30s. Similarly, the originals imply Sally is also new to murders, whilst these movies show she clearly isn't. On the upside, young Sally's mannerisms and fear do remind of her older-self but in general I do struggle with the casting - the young actors talk too modern ie soft / fast compared to the originals plus having so many familiar faces from other Hallmark shows as new characters, whilst the younger incarnations of the established characters are so unfamiliar messes with my head!

If you just want to kill time... go for it. Run it in the background for noise, because that's what it is. Not only is the writing poor, but the "new" Aurora (with the HIDEOUS red hair dye job and whiny sulk) is just annoying. Kimberly Sustad is just plain obnoxious as she also whines her female power character lines. (What DA threatens a police detective with investigating his arrest rates with his department's money?) Sally is equally annoying. I know it's hard to do a reboot, especially following in the footsteps of the "revered" Bure, but c'mon, guys! This is the equivalent of a high school play written by the junior English class, with the pretty, but not talented, girl in the lead. The wrap? Annoying. Whining. Lots of waspish, snappy females... Oooooh... so many reasons to tune out.

Trying to use the Aurora Teagarden name to get more viewership was a terrible idea. The casting is atrocious, Ro and Sally don't have the chemistry with each other or anyone else and don't remotely resemble the characters we've grown to love (both in personality or looks... Since when is Ro 4" taller than Sally?). The stories are dull and predictable. Maybe had they written new characters completely separate from the old franchise it would have been okay. They come out with new mystery series' all the time, why steal from the old one and retrofit the story for no good reason but to piggyback off of the original success.