Murdoch Mysteries: It's About Time

by Matthew Hays

A grisly murder is committed. A team of determined police investigators dig into the case and, using trailblazing techniques, work to track down the killer. With the help of new technology, these well-meaning, if flawed, police find out whodunit. It could be the plot synopsis of any of a gazillion cop shows on TV today, given the continued growth of police mystery programming (especially ones involving forensics). But when Murdoch Mysteries premiered this year, it turned critical and audiences’ expectations on their ear, due to its central twist. Rather than examining sci-fi-like visions of a near future where police can track almost anything via fragments of DNA or surveillance cameras, the creators of Murdoch Mysteries decided to go back in time, to the turn of the 20th Century, when the dawn of modernity would see the beginnings of massive technological, social and political shifts.

This gives the show’s writers a wealth of opportunity, with our man Murdoch solving crime while riding a motorized bicycle and using nascent finger-printing methods. The Murdoch Mysteries writing team were, at press time, basking in the glow of a particularly warm review by Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle, who got the show’s distinctive combination of period setting (Toronto in 1895), characters dealing with varying degrees of repression, mind-boggling mysteries and self-conscious wit. The showrunner and co-executive producer Cal Coons is particularly happy, given that bringing Toronto-based author Maureen Jennings’ celebrated Detective William Murdoch to the small screen was his idea.

As Coons recalls, he ventured into a bookstore looking for a CanLit character with the legs for a series. That’s when he came across Jennings’ Murdoch books: “I knew we had enough talent in Canada that we could find a series that would work well,” Coons recalls. “I could hear people saying to me, ‘No one wants to do period.’ But I have this perverse thing about myself–I figure since no one will be doing period, that’s why we should be. That will make us stand out all the more. To me, the question was: How do we make a show that no one’s seen before?”

Murdoch Mysteries first arrived as three MOWs, produced by Shaftesbury Films and broadcast on Citytv in 2004. They proved a ratings success both in Canada and the UK, but then came a shift in the TV marketplace. “Movies of the week were no longer of interest to networks,” Coons explains. “But since the shows were so well received, there was the suggestion that Murdoch would work well as a regular series.”

Always hanging over the first 13-part season of Murdoch Mysteries is the TV-universe context in which it arrives: a place filled with contempo cop shows. Amid CSI Everything, Coons recognized writing opportunities galore. “I feel like the technology almost hinders the modern cop show,” Coons argues. “It gets in the way. There is so much stuff now in a cop’s procedure. Swab this, test that. Trying to get away with murder is tough these days. I liked the idea of looking back at crime through an earlier period rather than looking forward into the new technology.”

Derek Schreyer, one of the show’s writers, says he always thought of Murdoch Mysteries as “the anti-CSI.” And fellow series writer Alexandra Zarowny, for her part, said she dubbed it CSI: 1895.

For the complete article, please see Canadian Screenwriter Magazine