Blue Murder

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!

Like able characters with little violence or gratuitous sex or gender propaganda. Simple stories that don't require a lot of effort to keep up but are still interesting and entertaining. A complex, dark, moody theme is not always necessary for good viewing and I for one, am sick of all the politically correct crap being shoved down my throat at every turn. If a writer, producer, director, or actor has an agenda of which they want to dwell or pontificate, let them do so on their own time. I have lost all patience with the nonsense.

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.

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.