The Good Ship Murder

A Luxury Mediterranean cruise ship sets sail, stopping at all the major destinations, but at each stop, murder, and on the case is former Detective now crooner Jack Grayling, and first officer Kate Woods.

If you're a fan of shows such as Mallorca Files, Shakespeare and Hathaway etc, I am sure you will enjoy this series. Don't expect anything too serious, and expect to be made to believe some rather impossible scenarios.

Gorgeous location work, it really does emphasise and make the most of The Med. I spent a fair bit of time in Malta, and I may be wrong, but did Malta double up?

Shayne Ward absolutely makes this series, he has that combination of being talented, likeable and charismatic, he really does help to make this show pretty good. Jack is a bit of a bad luck charm, he's The Jessica Fletcher of The Mediterranean, wherever he goes, murder follows.

Shayne's songs are really good, especially his version of True Faith by New Order.

Some nice guest performances along the way, and the regular cast are all very good.

As it stands series two has been commissioned, looking forward to that.

7/10.

Let's just say this up front - you will be continually suspending disbelief with this series. Way more than any other cozy mystery series you come across. Starting with it being a cruise ship, yet mostly empty. And that the ship's captain seems to spend most of the time...not captaining. And that the captain hangs out with guests on shore excursions. And of course all the murdering that takes place.

And those are just a few reoccurring examples. There are a seemingly endless parade of eye rolling scenarios packed into each episode.

With all this said...they are clean fun. If you turn your brain off, it's a decent time. Also good to fall asleep to.

It is a nice cosy murder mystery and you get to see other European countries. The locations chosen remind me of a trip to Europe.

The music is nice. The actor sings beautifully. And the music matches the vibe of the show.

With respect to how she is able to work on crimes, maybe it is her day off or something. Tv shows are escapism and this is cute escapism.

Would love to have some other recommendations for the cosy murder mysteries other than Death in Paradise, Harry Wild, Mrs. Marple, Ms Sidhu Investigates, My Life is Murder. I must say love me some Acorn TV and Britbox they provide such good recommendations.

On the plus side this is family friendly series set on a luxury cruise liner allowing each episode to be set in different beautiful location, which means on the down side as each episode goes by it stretches credulity that one liner could have so many murders associated with it. However this is light entertainment and there are plenty of other series that suffer with the same problem that many are happy to overlook. Unfortunately the acting is very poor and the solution to the murders contrived, a poor man's Agatha Christie. All that being said I suspect that is exactly how it was meant to be written. It stars amongst others Shayne Ward who is a singer and ex winner of the X Factor, so appropriately each episode concludes with him in his role as ship's entertainment officer singing a song. It is what it is and if you take it as that it is a pleasant enough show.

First the good things: Shane Ward (who I had never heard of before) can sing and his acting actually isn't bad, especially given it isn't his first job. There are other decent actors in the cast too. The show also gets extra points for - as far as I can tell - using the real locations and for including some characters who at least try to speak languages other than English. Last time I looked, Madame Blanc, for example, hadn't even started trying to speak French!

But that's about it. The plots are a bit average, some are better than others and as has been pointed out the involvement of Jack, Kate & the rest of the ship-board characters in the crimes isn't really credible. However, this is NOT the only TV crime drama that stretches credulity like this, especially at the moment.

This is not great, ground-breaking telly, but there's nothing really wrong with it. It's lovely to look at and it actually doesn't always shy away from the realities of life - episode 3 is particularly good here.

It's a perfectly nice way to spend a winter evening.