Blue Murder

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!

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.

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.