As I was considering writing a new detective novel, I checked out some recent books and shows in the genre. The show This Is Not A Murder Mystery was just released and stood out to me because of the title and the suggestion that it would be “different” (a detective with a twist, something new). When I saw that it also received quite favorable reviews, I decided to watch it.
No Spoilers
First, I’ll give my general thoughts without spoilers.
The audiovisual side of the show is amazing. It looks great, it has a nice soundtrack, it has a nice classic “cozy crime” vibe mixed with the theme of surrealist art.
I also love that it’s a collaboration between eight different production houses here in Europe. Such collaborations often lead to diverse multilingual projects, and it’s one of the ways in which our small countries can fight against the massive juggernaught of Hollywood (or just America in general). The story regularly includes dialogue in the actor’s native language. Just enough to make it work, not so often that it becomes annoying or hard to follow.
The actors are (almost) all great in their performance. I especially liked Salvador Dali. He seemed able to perfectly switch between different moods, languages, emotions, while staying in character. In my opinion, his acting is the best way to portray this kind of surrealist, dramatic, emotional, artistic mind. As an artist myself, I’m quite familiar with how such a mind works. We’re not as deranged or unstable as media often likes to pretend, we’re just naturally dramatic/artistic in everything we do and say ;)
The story is fine. This is one of those murder mysteries that’s not really about the mystery or the reveal. It’s about relationships, about a bunch of eccentric artists spending time together, and the “murder mystery” is just a trick/framework to pull you in and pull it together. This allows the story to keep your attention, to always have a cliffhanger at the end of an episode, to have some moments of real tension.
Having the art exhibition coming up is also great for storytelling. It provides a clear goal that everyone works towards, a natural countdown as you move through the episodes, the certainty of a climactic event near the end.
This is what kept me watching!
Because … the actual mystery is very shallow and predictable, and we sometimes get to plot points in pretty slow and roundabout ways. I pretty much guessed the perpetrator and motive halfway during episode one. Even then, some parts weren’t explained properly, while other parts received a lot of attention but ended up not being relevant at all to the actual mystery. The final bits and pieces of the story/mystery were all a bit … meh.
Oh, final thing, the detective (Thistlethwaite? What kind of name is that? Did I spell it right?) was great. Not just the acting or the general portrayal, but the fact that it’s a competent detective without being overly serious or dramatic. Far too often, these mysteries either have some brilliant detective that is basically a jerk but guesses right every time, or the detective is made out to be a joke or someone too silly and clumsy to realistically achieve anything. But in this one, the detective is reasonably good at their job, just generally a nice person, but they can also be funny or stern if the situation requires it. You know, the way a detective should be if they’ve done it professionally for 50 years.
I think that’s all I can say without giving spoilers.
So let’s do that now …
Yes Spoilers (Beware!)
First of all, there are a bit too many decisions that were clearly made to generate suspense and nothing else. They’re stupid, illogical decisions to fabricate the next thing that needs to happen.
The detective clearly figures out that they’re standing on the secret hiding place of the attacker. But then he sends everyone away and returns, alone, at night. The show wants you to believe it was to “protect the others”, but that’s silly. It’s much safer to enter a secret underground tunnel with 4(+) people in the afternoon than on your own at night :p
Then, the show implies (somewhat, maybe, kind of) that he knew he was walking to his death, because he’d always said he’d stop after his 365th case—and his death was the 365th one in his career. But the show doesn’t really support that enough to make me believe it. The detective’s character also doesn’t fit. He wouldn’t willingly walk into this much pain and torture just to frustrate their research even more.
Or, we can take a step back, and ask: why did they discover the secret hideout at all? Because Georgette (his wife) ran away from Rene (our protagonist) saying he had to “catch her”, and Rene was waaaay too slow to follow, and she blindly ran into the darkest part of the woods. This is a kind of playfulness or challenge that felt very forced/weird, especially as Georgette had been ma at Rene for an entire episode and even refusing to be touched by him. This felt very fabricated just to get her alone in that secluded spot. And then, after the biggest scare of her life, she happily returns to the spot again with the detective? And allows him to send them away? And then returns to the spot AGAIN one day later, now that the detective is missing?
If I’d come face to face with a killer in the darkest part of a forest, I would not happily go back there right after.
Things like that. They’re there at the start, too, but they get more egregious near the end. They stand out a lot to me, a writer, as fabricated plot points and silly ways to force the story in a certain direction. But perhaps this isn’t the case for other viewers, and perhaps it’s not so bad. It does lead to a pretty tense show that keeps you engaged most of the time.
Then, as for the actual “murder mystery”. It’s the butler. Of course it is. He’s the first one to spot Rene after the first murder and weirdly calm and protective afterwards. Then we get this really on-the-nose conversation where someone “mistakes” the butler for a struggling artist fifteen years ago. Then we get a lot of reminders that the killer must know the estate inside and out, must be able to move around quickly and unseen, etcetera. Yeah, it’s that one butler/servant. Of course it is.
Now, this would be fine if there was some stronger payoff or mystery here. But he was just jealous and mad about never making it as an artist himself. So he kills a few people in somewhat artistic ways, then kills himself, and … that’s it? It would make way more sense if this was a bigger thing, spread out across a larger time frame. If someone had been making “artistic killings” for years, gaining notoriety, becoming famous, and the story picks up when they finally find their first clue: evidence that it must be one of the people currently on this estate. If the way he kills himself is some much grander spectacle after a much grander journey.
And sure, the story ties the mystery into two other mysteries: the fact Lord James is broke and killed her own brother, and the secret father/mysterious death of a son. I thought these two elements were done better than the main mystery. The one interesting part about the ending is how Lord James is eventually killed as revenge for what she did. But the other element represents basically the entire main thread, with episode after episode of discussions and fights about who the father is or what happened when that child died, when in the end the answer isn’t really interesting and it hasn’t much bearing on the other mysteries.
I just think that the murder mystery/cozy crime genre has existed long enough now that it has to evolve. You can’t just write an “okay” or “solid” mystery where in the end the butler did it, in the usual ways and for the usual reasons. You have to try something more, a twist, something special, something that’s deeper and really lets viewers ponder who did it.
In that sense, the show did not deliver at all. Perhaps because it’s a collaboration between many different production companies, it’s an incredibly safe story. One that doesn’t fully use its unique setting and characters either. Yes, I know “This Is Not A Murder Mystery” refers to Rene’s painting of “This Is Not A Pipe”, but I expected them to do more with that. Play with perspective, play with surrealism, have a murder mystery that was all planned or a fake show, turn the genre on its head halfway through. But no, just a predictable cozy crime story.
On the other hand, because the show’s baseline quality was quite high, I still didn’t mind watching it in full.
One thing I did mind was our protagonist (Rene Magritte) in the first few episodes. He barely speaks, barely responds to anything, scrunches his face all the time. It feels like he’s ill and disinterested and wants to get out of the story. Now, of course, death will shock you, and he’s clearly an outsider who struggles to connect with other people. It’s fine and probably realistic to portray it this way … but not for a main character! The first person you see and the one you’re almost always following.
Main characters should be the ones always acting and driving the plot, you pick them because they are everywhere and they are so cool that viewers want to follow them and the story naturally revolves and dances around them. Now it felt like we were in a house full of interesting personalities en mysterious conversations, but we’re stuck in the worst perspective. Other characters were asking pretty reasonable questions, and Rene just said nothing in response. (In later episodes he seemingly found his groove and was suddenly much more capable of proper dialogue and functioning like a human being.)
Those were my thoughts for today.
