Kia ora and gidday everyone. I hope you've all been enjoying a lovely start to Spring in the northern hemisphere, or to autumn (aka Fall) for my pals back home in the south, and that wherever you are you're finding plenty of ways to stay grounded in what can at times seem like a pretty chaotic world. A couple of things that help me - along with spending time in nature and with my daughter - are reading, and watching favourite TV shows.
Unlike some of the other crime dramas I love, eg Luther or Bosch etc, it's now something Miss 10 and I can share.
I showed her one episode earlier this year, "From the Cradle to the Grave", for our regular 'movie night', curious to see whether she'd like it. She loved it, with the combination of mystery solving and fun characters, the New Zealand setting she recognises from many visits to the grandparents back in Aotearoa, and the way various settings/themes are woven in each time (eg an episode tied to 'Lord of the Ringz' tourism, to the local rugby club, to beekeeping, to the katipo spider, to deer hunting, to visiting carnivals with a Ghost Train, etc). So now we're powering through much of the first 10 seasons, and were both thrilled to see the recent news that Season 11 will drop soon.
When the Brokenwood book club gathers one evening at the Slim Volume bookshop, murder is on the menu alongside the sausage rolls and red wine, thanks to the visit of global bestseller Jack Rudd. The prodigal son returned to sign books and read from his latest novel Knife in the Back to booklovers adoring, curious, or merely hungry. But when the narcissistic Rudd’s body is discovered on the stairs between readings, its like one of his novels come to life. Or death.
“So, what’s your story Jack? Stabbed in the back, someone’s sending a message here. Betrayal? Revenge?” asks Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Shepherd of the corpse, after arriving on scene.
It’s up to the rumpled DSS Shepherd to solve the murder of the mystery writer alongside colleagues Detective Kristin Sims, who was already on scene as a fan of Rudd’s crime novels, and Detective Constable Sam Breen. Whodunnit, and why? Several suspects are on site on the night: a nervous local Reverend; a haughty Professor who sneers at his former student’s success with potboilers not literary fiction; the ex-classmate who showed greater talent but never broke through; the wealthy divorcee who funded Rudd’s visit only to have long-term romance spurned. Or maybe it was one of DSS Shepherd’s ex-wives, who’d been known to stray in the past?
In “A Real Page Turner”, the second episode of season six of The Brokenwood Mysteries, the cast and crew were clearly having plenty of fun giving a wink and a nod to the classic murder mystery genre that’s powered so much love and success for their show since it first hit screens.
Streaming in the United States on Acorn TV since 2015, The Brokenwood Mysteries is a ‘little show that could’, an unlikely global success that eschews the anti-heroes and sleuths genius or tormented, glossy forensics, gore or grittiness of many modern crime dramas. Instead, quirky small-town murders among bucolic New Zealand landscapes where a trio of likable detectives navigate plenty of suspects and red herrings among eccentric townsfolk to uncover the culprits.
Trying to pinpoint just what makes The Brokenwood Mysteries so quaffable is tricky. It’s a show that offers a mix of many familiar elements, yet still feels like its own special thing, different to what else is out there. There’s a low-key subtlety to its fresh take on the familiar, rather than any overt edginess or forced differentiation. Like drinking a great whiskey or wine that reminds you of things you’ve loved before, while still being just a little new, too.
It's a show where the whole is greater than the sum of some very good parts: offbeat murders and puzzling whodunnits, engaging and eccentric characters, quality writing and acting, lovely cinematography and settings. To distil it, you could say The Brokenwood Mysteries is a sort of blend of a rural Columbo with an ensemble Murder, She Wrote, seasoned with a dash of Twin Peaks and then made more unique with its Kiwi settings, humor, and sensibilities.
DSS Mike Shephard is a city homicide detective turned smalltown sleuth
MURDER AND WHIMSY
From the outset, the creators chose to go a different way to the gritty, bleak, and violent leanings of many modern crime dramas. When Head Writer Tim Balme began storylining the first season almost a decade ago, there were clear guidelines: no sex, gratuitous violence, or swearing.
The Brokenwood Mysteries is classic whodunnits and cosy mysteries, onscreen.
Debuting at a time when the violent anti-heroes of shows like Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy were at the height of international popularity, alongside gritty and bleak European-style detective dramas like The Killing and The Bridge, the little rural whodunnit series laced with irreverence from the far side of the world seemed anomalous. A throw-back.
Timeless or out of its time?
“I was quite surprised when I watched episode one, how jaunty it was,” said lead actor Neill Rea, who plays DSS Shephard, to the New Zealand Herald when the first season debuted in late 2014.
Rea and Fern Sutherland, who portrays ambitious and sassy young Detective Sims, both spent time with real-life New Zealand detectives in preparation for their roles. The irreverent humor and good-nature banter between the characters that viewers love grew out of those experiences.
“All the cops we talked to all had the blackest sense of humor, they would find the funny side, almost as a coping mechanism,” said Sutherland. “I think that comes through in the show.”
While every episode starts with a violent death, there’s a smile-inducing tone to The Brokenwood Mysteries, thanks to the character relationships, humor, and yes, the quirky nature of the murders. Bodies found in wine vats, fishing grounds, tied to football posts or displayed in fields as scarecrows, dressed as Santa, shot by arrow in a colonial re-enactment village, or impaled on yard glasses following 1970s-themed party. The talented creators of this eccentric show have no issue deftly riding the absurdity curve with varied elements of rural Kiwi life.
“Every episode, every week in Brokenwood someone does tend to get murdered, it’s our stock and trade,” says head writer Tim Balme. “And my philosophy on that is I want the murder to be as interesting and intriguing as possible. If it was just someone got knocked down by a car there’s only so many motives and things we can do with that. Whereas if an episode perhaps like the woman who was found in the bush in a Lord of the Rings location – that wasn’t Lord of the Rings – wrapped up in cobwebs having been killed by the only poisonous spider in New Zealand, it’s kind of interesting and it gives me somewhere to go.”
Balme began as a theatre actor then became a regular face on New Zealand television and film for more than two decades, with roles including a charming bad boy on Shortland Street, the local soap opera equivalent to General Hospital, and the young lead in early Peter Jackson horror comedy Brain Dead (1992), now a cult classic. He now spends his days sitting around trying to work out how to murder people. “It’s my job, and it’s quite fun,” he says with a grin.
The 'core four' of early seasons: Gina, Mike, Kristen, and Sam
THE DETECTIVES
While it may be Balme’s job to come up with fiendish murders, it’s the job of the Brokenwood CIB to solve them: a trio of very likable detectives whose personalities and interactions bring real heart and humanity to a show that’s full of secrets, betrayals, and violent death.
Viewers first meet Detective Inspector Mike Shepherd a few minutes into the pilot, as he drives his white 1971 Holden Kingswood towards Brokenwood to a soundtrack of country music. Why is the head homicide honcho from the big city, rumpled and informal yet highly skilled, so keen to head into the countryside to watch over the local investigation of a farmer’s drowning?
And why doesn’t he want the local Senior Sergeant to touch anything until he arrives?
Unfortunately for Sims, a promising detective keen to learn and make her mark, she first encounters Shepherd when she doorstops his parked Kingswood on a quiet Brokenwood street, implying he’s loitering. Sims continues to feel out-of-step with her boss’s big boss throughout what becomes a very twisty investigation entwined with crimes old and new: she relies on formal procedure, he’s more intuitive and empathetic and doesn’t yet trust her. We also met DC Sam Breen, a flame-haired junior detective who is handy with a quip while doing the dogsbody tasks.
By the end of the pilot, the reasons Shepherd wanted to get his boots on the ground in Brokenwood become clear. In fact, he decides to remain in town, even if he has to drop rank to do so. As three to four million French viewers every episode can attest, Brokenwood is the kind of place that gets under your skin, that makes you want to linger, or return to again and again.
“While the whodunnit is the thing that will keep people watching on the day, it’s the characters, and their relationships that will hopefully keep people coming back for the whole series,” said Rea back in 2014. As it turns out, that’s kept many millions watching through seven series.
DSS Shepherd is an amiable lead, a character who has a past and keeps some things close to the vest but isn’t dour or tormented. “It’s not a show about a detective who’s a twisted genius with dark secrets,” said Rea. “He’s not Cracker, he’s not an alcoholic, he’s not Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. Mike’s got a few secrets, a few ex-wives, but he’s not a really dark character.”
Much to the befuddlement of his colleagues, Shepherd is also an avid country music fan, proselytizing via the cassettes in his Kingwood about the “best three-minute crime stories ever sung – there’s heartache, jealousy, divorce, death; it’s all in there”.
For a show that has male and female leads, there’s a refreshing lack of sexual tension or ‘will-they, won’t-they’ intrigue between the two leads, even among the fans. Shepherd and Sims aren’t Castle and Beckett, or Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon in The Mentalist (other crime dramas that deftly balanced dark deeds with plenty of humor); duos that move from opposites to attraction.
“It's quite an interesting dynamic in that it's a man and a woman working together who don't want to have sex with each other,” said Sutherland to the TV Guide when discussing the show’s success on the eve of its third season. “They have a mutual respect for each other’s talents.”
The third musketeer in the Brokenwood CIB’s quest for justice has largely been DC Sam Breen, played by actor and standup comic Nic Sampson. Over the years Breen has provided some comic relief while doing the grunt work on investigations, often ending up in sticky situations or having to confront some of his fears (eg mannequins, spiders, clowns). In Season 7, Breen passed the baton to DC Daniel Chalmers, played by another Shortland Street alumnus, Jarod Rawiri.
Alongside the detectives for each case, bringing her own unique sensibilities and wry sense of humor, is Dr Gina Kadinsky (Cristina Serban Ionda), a Russian immigrant pathologist.
“People love a good murder mystery obviously, but I think what separates The Brokenwood Mysteries from other sad murder-town shows is it’s packed with gentle, offbeat comedy,” wrote Sampson in a farewell essay for The Spinoff last year. “It’s murder, but like, chill.”
Death by giant spider?
TOWN (sfolk) AND COUNTRY (side)
That gentle, offbeat comedy and chill vibe is also generated by the wider cast alongside the idyllic landscapes. Brokenwood is a fictional town of 5,000 people – a population declining episode by episode – that’s representative, weekly murders aside, of the real-life picturesque region north of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, where the series is shot on location.
“I got to see some beautiful parts of this country that I otherwise never would have known existed and it's not like they were very far away from Auckland either,” said Sutherland to the TV Guide on the release of Season 2.
Brokenwood is a provincial town close to beaches and surrounded by rolling pasture, orchards, vineyards, rivers, and forests. Among the nearby hills and valleys a diverse array of people live, from wealthy escapees from the city and alternative lifestylers to farmers, fisherman, and blue-collar workers barely scraping by. Over the course of seven seasons many local characters have popped up regularly. The show’s longevity allows the world of Brokenwood to keep growing.
“Like Springfield in The Simpsons, recurring characters grow and become fan favorites – Gina, Mrs Marlow, Frodo, Ray the publican, Kimberley, Neil Bloom the chemist/Mayor,” said Sampson. “We keep bringing them back because the actors are just so damn fun.”
Whether it’s one-off appearances like bumbling undertaker Warren and carnival fortune teller Madame Magdalena or recurring characters like Mike’s roguishly charming neighbor Jared Morehu (Pana Hema-Taylor), tough bar owner and one-time prisoner Trudy Neilson (Tracy Lee Gray) and mechanic turned ice cream vendor turned coffee cart owner Frankie 'Frodo' Oades (Karl Willetts), the folks of Brokenwood are fascinating and memorable.
All part of a tapestry of people and place that’s been woven over several seasons.
Looking back, it now seems easy to see why many millions of viewers across several countries regularly tune into The Brokenwood Mysteries. But that wasn’t always the case.
In fact, it was the show’s international appeal that got it renewed early on, despite an initially muted response from New Zealand critics. French viewers fell hard and early for the Brokenwood magic, and the show is now screened in countries including Denmark, Italy, Czech Republic, the UK, Australia, the USA and more than a dozen others. It’s won multiple medals at the New York Festival International Television and Film Awards.
The Brokenwood Mysteries is the kind of series that’s engaging from the outset then grows on viewers the more they watch (just as it did with critics). Like becomes love. There’s a wonderful tone to the show, an unhurried appreciation of landscapes and personalities that lets the clever storylines breathe, and a healthy dose of humor adds icing to the quintessentially Kiwi cake.
Seven seasons on from when Detective Inspector Mike Shepherd first drove towards Brokenwood with his country music playing in his Kingswood, the show has become New Zealand’s longest-running hour-plus drama, and its most internationally successful.
Reflecting on how the ‘little show that could’ has become such a global success, Rea told the Sunday Star-Times in 2018 that a couple of factors played a key part. “There is a universality to the whodunnit; we all want to guess it before anyone else guesses it, we want to be smarter than the detectives,” he said. “Married to that is the specificity of New Zealand culture, in its wry sense of humor, humanity and humility, which lends itself quite well” to the genre.
Whatever the reason, millions worldwide are hoping for many more murders in Brokenwood.
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