User reviews

Just streamed the series on Netflix over the weekend...quite enjoyed it. They put together a very good ensemble cast that played off one another rather well throughout the 5 seasons. Sure there were some hiccups now and again...characters appearing then vanishing without notice or trace...lol...and on a police drama too ;P. It gives a more realistic view of the police that make up the squads in the UK, 'real' people with 'real' lives mucking up the works and managing somehow to keep all the balls in the air. DCI Lewis is as 'real' as it gets being a full time cop and mom...never quite getting it all right...but life is messy and this drama really brings home that reality. The story lines played out as well as any drama on TV British or US. Sorry to see it didn't survive a while longer...I grew to really like the characters and would have liked to see where they got on to. :) Well worth a watch if you like police dramas...Brits got this spot on I think.

Thanks to the show "Jonathan Creek," I became a fan of Caroline Quentin. She stars in "Blue Murder," a British series about a DCI Janine Lewis (Quentin) as she works police cases and deals with her chaotic private life as not only a single mom, but the mother of a new baby.

The series begins when she's pregnant with her last child, and her husband Pete (Joe Tucker) has already taken off with another woman, though he and Janine haven't actually gotten a divorce. Fortunately, at least for the first years of the series, Tom is around to babysit. In the last year he and his wife move to Spain.

Janine's team consists of Ian Kelsey (Richard Mayne), with whom she has an on again/off again relationship, DS Butchers (Paul Laughlin) and DS Shap (Nicholas Murchie), all of whom create very full characters and make a good ensemble. The cases are interesting and make for good drama.

I don't think the ensemble work comes anywhere near "NCIS" or "The Closer" but over time, we get to know the team. The team doesn't have the humor and the characters don't have the individual focus of the above-mentioned shows; the emphasis is very much on its star, her family, and to a lesser extent Ian.

Really enjoyable and well-acted; sorry this didn't go longer, but what there was, was very good.

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!

British cop series; quite entertaining IMHO! You'll like this a lot as it's quite original and spicy too. Series ran from 2003 through 1008? For about five seasons I think. It's full of intelligent and cohesive dialogue and detective processes. You'll being paying attention as each episode runs in many sub plots and clued up mysteries at once. Enjoy on Amazon, and tell me what you think! ? Murf

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.

Loved, Loved Caroline McQuentin and Ian Kelsey in this series. I wish it had run more seasons. I would have liked for the two of them to get together, eventually.

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!

Discovered this gem during pandemic 2021. It is witty and smart. The actors are excellent. Caroline Quentin & Ian Kelsey have a chemistry and express so much through body language and facial expressions. The only downside is that Blue Murder didn't have a consistent format/formula/run time so the series didn't flow the way others do.

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.

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.

Found this on ITV Iplayer a series I had previously missed before. I thoroughly enjoyed it, great characters - Caroline Quentin as the main character is excellent as are the rest of the team. I just thought the jump from S2 to S3 seemed to miss something out. Her old boss "the lemon" had gone with a woman replacement with no explanation, her elder son seemed to have grown another head and her daughter seemed to have aged 8 years in 18 months.

It's virus isolation time and we're in the market for another British crime series when we happen upon Blue Murder. Decent rating in IMDB so let's give it a try. What is this? There's a real murder in the first few minutes and occasionally they seem serious about it, but the most of the time it wanders into bad sitcom territory without a laugh track. I really enjoyed Barney Miller decades ago, but didn't expect to run into it again in a homicide incarnation. Another total turn off is a sound track that feels completely wrong for a show like this. Some kind of upbeat jazz that is played very loudly. Again, it feels like the soundtrack from an American 90's sitcom has been layered on this British murder mystery. We sat through the first episode, but won't watch the concluding second episode. We don't care who did it and the characters didn't interest us enough watch them stumble to the answer.

I have no idea what the show was trying to portray but it failed to entertain at the first step. I really cannot see a DCI with 3 kids and 1 on the way running a team as displayed. The show is neither comedy or drama, neither realistic or fantasy, its just a mess with this woman at the centre . It seems to play to the Jonathan Creek model that made Caroline Q well known but just is so overdone that it is IMHO unwatchable. The writing is really so "over the top" in terms of potraying a DCI with issues at home and in her marriage (don't all these dectective series seem to have the same central character) that it just becomes silly. Not recommended unless you are desparate.

A barely watchable show...nothing like any other police drama except thats what they call it. More soap opera.than anything.

Took to watching this as I had finished viewing the excellent Scott and Bailey. I love the British crime procedurals - they are the best in the business.

Blue Murder, however is highly unbelievable. A woman would never achieve the rank of DCI whilst of the age that the lead is meant to be (prime child-bearing age). And there is no way that any DCI would be leading murder inquiries from her living room with her baby on her knee. And as for doing interviews as the SIO, she would have DCs or DSs doing that.

I couldn't get past the first episode of season 2. I know it was made back in the early 2000s but that's not really an excuse. The script writing is very bland and as a series does not know where it wants to go.

This police drama series is a bit dated. The plots are sometimes very different to the usual run of the mill material seen in many other British shows of this genre. The narrative is fast moving but the sequencing does not always get it right. This leads to viewer confusion when they try to fill in the gaps between consecutive scenes. The main theme is that of a DCI trying to balance a career about which she is very passionate and her family obligations, all after a separation from her husband. It went on for a couple of seasons but begins to flounder after season 3. It was cancelled after season 5. It's one of those series that might have been more successful if the storylines and character development were more compelling!