Murder in Sububria Season 1, Disc 2

Murder in Sububria Season 1, Disc 2

Episode 4:
Well, today I got online and discovered that this show only lasted two series. And even worse than that, the library only has one. I'm making a frownie face. No, I know that I always look a little like I'm making a frownie face, but this is a really obviously frowning face I'm wearing with my lower lip jutting out and everything.
Ash has a new boyfriend, Alex the Cryer. He's very in touch with his emotions and very stressed out by Ash talking about her job all the time. As counter-poste, Scribbs is going to the wedding of her ex-beau, the one that left her for best mate and then had a fling with her right before gettting engaged to her previously best mate. And the whole time, boss man is playing cheeky with the ladies.
I know this show is called Murder in Suburbia, but they really do seem to only investigate the murders of the upper middle class and above. Maybe in the U.K. in Middleford at least, those are the only people that get murdered? Who am I to judge?
There is a gala ball thrown so that we get a chance to see Ash and Scribbs all dressed up in fancy outfits and their boss in a tux. Sure, the scene is written to confront the murderer at her most vulnerable moment, but I think it's an excuse to show off the various actors ample boobage, particularly the murderer. I've got to say that in the show they play up Ash being the more attractive of the two attractive detectives, but I think Scribbs is the closet hottie and I'm not afraid to say it.

Episode 5:
As if they were lulling me into writing that this show was only about the rich people, they spring an episode on me about working class to middle class folk. Very sneaky of them.
This was also the first episode where Ash and Scribbs were not talking about specific boyfriends or former boyfriends. For the duration of this episode, or at least most of it, Scribbs is being pointed toward the local reporter that sometimes appears in episodes. Ash thinks they would make an interesting couple, meanwhile Ash and the bossman are having more knowing exchanges. I wonder where that's going if anywhere?
In what turns out to be an episode of firsts for Murder in Suburbia, they did something new with the way a clue was revealed to the viewing audience. We know from the opening scene that a car was used as a murder weapon in a fatal hit and run accident. When our coppers are leaving the house that had belonged to the victim and is not occupied by her sister, the camera follows the gals as they walk away, but then it stays on the car for a couple of seconds after they have left the screen. Very cheap. Hey, guess what producers? I didn't need the obvious hint. I had already picked the car out when they walked up to the place, because we see the sister coming to meet them and getting out of a different car. Please, do not assume that this is the first television murder mystery I've ever seen. Even if this were the first series, I would already have seen four episodes of this very show. And if it is literally my first show, why the hell didn't you explain what DI, DS and CID mean?

Episode 6:
Again with no boyfriends for our detectives and again in a working middle class part of the suburbs. Well, huzzah! Not that I have a problem with seeing the rich off each other, but it's nice to see a broader cross section of the suburbs being represented.
Ash and Scribbs each end with their boss at their flats under different circumstances, neither of which were expected nor I am assuming where what they would have wanted considering their on-going banter about DCI Sullivan. Ash ends up really stepping in it as far as Sullivan is concerned but he forgives her by the end. Usually it seems that Scribbs is the one that leaps before she looks. It was nice to see a bit of a change up.
There was lots of misdirection and subterfuge in this episode. It turned out to be who I thought it was, but there were a couple of times towards the end when I did doubt my choice until I realized they were just red herrings. I also thought I might be wrong because they waited so late in the episode to reveal the murderer, I thought that they were actually going to have the series finale be a cliff-hanger with the real murderer revealed at the start of the next series, the one that I don't have access to.
I'm a little sad that my time with Ash and Scribbs is done. I actually quite like this show. I described it today as being on the Midsomer Murders end of the police show spectrum when it came to grittiness, with the other end being cop shows like Prime Suspect. I do like the gritty shows, but I think I actually like the nicer, for lack of a better term, shows such as Midsomer Murders and New Tricks. When did I become so soft? Who am I trying to kid, I've always been a big softy. You can hardly call CSI or NCIS gritty shows, certainly not Criminal Minds or Bones, and yet I love those shows. They are graphic, I'll give them that. But if you're going to investigate a murder and the clues to solving it are often contained on the body or with the way the murder is executed, you have to get graphic. Murder in Suburbia, New Tricks and Midsomer Murders are less focused on the physical evidence than their American counterparts and less susceptible to 'drama via action or danger', but that gives them more time for character interaction and is probably why I love these shows. And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Murder in Sububria Season 1, Disc 1

Murder in Suburbia Season 1, Disc 1

Episode 1:
We meet Ash and Scribbs as they show up at the scene of a murder. An attractive young blond woman lies stabbed to death in a pool of her own blood in the living room of her house. There is no sign of forced entry and the murder weapon is near the body.
That's it. That's all the introduction we get before the two, who turn out to be Detective Inspector Kate Ashurst and Detective Sergeant Emma Scribbins, start working on solving the crime. We watch as two female detectives do their thing in what is awfully reminiscent of an American procedural. Except they're British and are a lot more self-effacing than any American show would be.
Over the course of the investigation of this woman, her fiancee, her ex-husband, her best friend and the singles club that ties them all together, we learn that Ash and Scribbs have worked together for a number of years on the Middleford police force, and that both are what you might call unlucky in love.

Episode 2:
This time round, Ash and Scribbs have traded the sexy singles club for the wife-swapping ways of a group of upper middle class charity minded couples. Of course, none of them are up front about the wife-swapping nor with anything else. And every time one of them is asked why they didn't come clean, they answer by saying that they didn't think it was relevant. I've noticed that this answer gets given a lot in British police dramas.
Meanwhile, we learn that Scribbs has been seeing a married man, and while she wants to break it off with him, she just can't bring herself to do it, until Ash finally convinces her to do it by text message. This whole back story would not have happened in an American cop show, or if it did, it wouldn't work out the same way, where Scribbs doesn't really want to break it off, but she is because the guys wife seems normal.
The first time out, Ash has the a-ha moment, but in this episode, it's Scribbs. It is nice to see the writers being equitable. I am liking this show because while there is that moment of insight, it's because they've been doing police work - interviewing witnesses and suspects, going over physical evidence, discussing important matters with their hunky DCI.

Episode 3:
It's DS Gavin! Wait, they're calling him Simon for some reason. Oh, that's right, this isn't Midsomer Murders, it's Murder in Suburbia. One of the things I love about British television is that you see actors popping up all over the place, in each others shows, in mini-series and made for television movies. Very different from American television where it's only acceptable to appear in various shows if you are either a relatively unknown actor, or a character actor that specializes in playing one-shots.
On their way to solving the murder of a former professional rugby star whom no one seems to terribly mind is dead, we get a peak into Ash's personal life and her maybe boyfriend whom she has lied to about her profession and told him that she's a doctor. Of course that ends badly but he does come around and asks her out again, but ruins it by wanting her to dress up in her uniform with a pair of high heels. This is not the kind of thing Ash goes in for.
This show is very reminiscent of Midsomer Murders in the way Ash and Scribbs do their policing. There is the same witty banter that reveals imperfect personal lives. Neither show is in your face and both feature cops that will do what's right by the law solving the crime, even if it is not personally advantageous. Let's hope that Murder in Suburbia is as well received as Midsomer Murders. It's something I would definitely watch, but I suspect it isn't on any more.