Summary
Murder in a Small Town is an interestingly cozy procedural, but its premiere is a bit too long and perhaps chooses the wrong case. Still, the potential is there.
It might just be me, but I think it was a mistake for the premiere of Fox’s Murder in a Small Town to be 90 minutes long. Episode 1, “The Suspect”, is an introduction to a refreshingly cozy and low-stakes procedural that starts to sag heavily because it has too long to linger. Murder mysteries should be tauter than this.
The murder isn’t really the point, to be fair. An old man, Carlyle Burke, is bludgeoned to death in his own home by what is quite clearly another old man. If the show’s plot had decided to pick up a few weeks later, both would have probably been dead from natural causes.
The killing is an excuse to introduce the titular small town of Gibson, on the Sunshine Coast, and the central pairing of Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland, late of Three Pines) and local librarian Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk). The show is based on the Alberg and Cassandra Mysteries by L.R. Wright, so fair enough.
Alberg is new in town, naturally. Big-city policing has worn him down, so he’s looking for somewhere ostensibly peaceful to spend the latter portion of his career. One of the first things he does is hop on a dating app, since there’s no better way to get a sense of a place than to date the local women, I guess, and Cassandra is his first date. They fall in love pretty much immediately.
This is what Murder in a Small Town is really about, at least according to Episode 1. How does a careerist begin to settle down while tussling with his responsibilities to justice? How does a local woman learn to open up again? What happens when an outsider upsets the applecart of a small community’s internal politics and status quo?
It makes sense, then, that the premiere isn’t really about solving Carlyle’s murder. It’s obvious from the very beginning that another elderly resident, George Wilcox (James Cromwell, always brilliant), is guilty of killing him, and every newly unearthed clue just cements his motive for doing so. Cassandra knows George, deeply and personally. His crime was justified to him, many decades in the making, and his present state – old, tired, dying – means he’s a danger to nobody else.
Murder in a Small Town | Image via Fox
The dilemma of how justice should be done under these circumstances, and how Karl’s pursuit of it absent of context affects his new relationship with Cassandra, is much more interesting than a straight-up whodunit, so I’m glad this is what “The Suspect” focuses on. Cassandra knows what George did before Karl can prove it, and her decision to stay quiet speaks to an idea of community and loyalty that is alien to Karl. Part of his personal reinvention is understanding her point of view.
I like all this, don’t get me wrong, but it’s weird for a premiere. I’m reminded of how Kenneth Branagh’s otherwise very good Poirot movies made a mistake by starting with Murder on the Orient Express. That’s the best Poirot story because it’s the one that challenges his own convictions enough to fundamentally change him as a person. His decision to – spoiler alert! – let everyone go because the victim deserved it is slightly mirrored by Karl’s own compassion to George here, but this moral pivot works better when you’ve already met the character and understand his principles. It’s less effective as the start of a movie series or, as here, the premiere of a new show.
But, again, the point is the journey the characters are on, especially the romantic one that is rekindled by premiere’s end after George’s confession expresses his desire for Karl to pursue Cassandra. Murder in a Small Town Episode 1 ends on a hopeful note for matters of the heart, if a slightly questionable one for matters of the mind. So, mileage may vary.
It also ends with an in memoriam card dedicated to Donald Sutherland, who died in June. He was Rossif Sutherland’s father.
