(courtesy IMDb)
It’s all in the name.
When I first came across the idea of “cosy crime”, the name didn’t seem to make sense – how could something so terrible be even remotely warm and lovely?
But then I thought back to the days of Murder, She Wrote, and yes, even Agatha Christie – yes, her murder mystery are socially incisive and quite brutal at times but they also feel like a weirdly reassuring hug too – and I realise all “cosy crime” had done was re-skin something that had been around for a while.
It’s a genre with a long and much-loved pedigree, and it’s now been joined by Blue Murder Motel, a New Zealand show which stars Michala Banas and Brett Tucker as Vanessa ‘Vinny’ Coleman and Brett Tucker as Peter ‘Cole’ Coleman, husband-and-wife ex-police detectives from Australia who have chosen to retire to a small NZ coastal town after some sort of professional trauma to run a small, retro motel.
But much like the equally cosy and crime-y The Bookshop Detectives series (#1 Dead Girl Gone, #2 Tea and Cake and Death and #3 Murder and Mojitos, which comes out 7 July this year) by Gareth and Louise Ward, which features two British detectives, again a husband and wife who can’t quite leave their pasts behind them, Vinny and Cole struggle to stay away from their professional former lives.
They end up volunteering to assist greener-than-green policeman Constable Jamie Haira (Jayden Daniels) who is fresh from training, a former accountant it later emerges, who is plunged in way over his head when the first of a number of episodic murders makes his quiet country posting in the town of fictional seaside community of Mōwai Bay (really Orewa on the Hibiscus Coast, north of Auckland) not the gentle learning curve he thought it would be.
While many crime shows thrive on the antagonism between the actual police and wanna-be amateurs, Blue Murder Motel – the name comes from the unofficial name locals give Vinny and Cole’s Blue Motel when people start turning up dead in or near the generously proportioned rooms – works because, some minor friction aside which is quickly smoothed over, Jamie needs Vinny and Cole, and they, whether they’ll admit it or not, need him.
The crime-solving threesome are joined by sassy lesbian motel cleaner, Saffron (Jamie McDermott), who doesn’t believe in the chain of command while proving she’s valuable in all kinds of ways that don’t involved refreshing guests’ towels, and forever motel guest, Maxine (Stephanie Tauevihi), who quickly becomes a part of the town, Vinny and Cole’s lives and yes, occasionally, part of the investigative team.
It’s a very cosy ensemble indeed, and while the boundaries of credulity are often tested to rubbery snapping point, you go along with any and all of it because the show, and the characters who populate it, are just so damn likeable.
The murders side, and even they are somewhat cosy in a Midsomer Murders lo-fi kind of way, you want to be in that town with those people because for all of the cranky guests and “Karens” Blue Murder Motel features, it all seems rather warm, and yes, cosy.
The extra something special that really elevates Blue Murder Motel is the chemistry between Banas and Tucker who previously starred together in Aussie TV shows, Neighbours and McLeod’s Daughters.
Their rapport then was palpable and it remains very much in evidence in their new TV vehicle with the two longtime friends convincingly portraying a still very affectionate married couple who have each other’s backs come what may.
And there appears to be something bigger than just a murder victim of the week troubling them.
In a couple of episodes, the two were clearly reluctant to have their images on the motel’s website and it became quite evident that they hadn’t simply retired to New Zealand but were actively trying to stay well below the radar.
That’s kind of hard when you’re up to your neck in consultant crime solving, at least then it’s contained to the locality in which you’re living; but online is a whole different story and it’s clear that Vinny and Cole do not want to be discovered and that their decision to buy a semi-rundown motel in a sleepy New Zealand coastal town isn’t just a quest for a quieter life.
But whatever that great mystery is, and it’s similar in scope to the one shared by the husband-and-wife ex-coppers in The Bookshop Detectives, it plays second fiddle, at least in the first five episodes watched so far to the rhythms of daily life and inconvenient murders that power the show’s charmingly engaging narrative.
As the episodes have gone on, the ensemble feel of Blue Murder Motel has blossomed, offering a delightfully compelling “found family” vibe that gives the show a beautifully human heart and soul.
That’s important because while solving murders makes for good television, there is a use-by date on any show that simply makes it about the crime and nothing else.
We need to feel like we have date with friends when we watch cosy crime shows, and that’s certainly the case with Blue Murder Motel which always comes back to the couple at its core and the idiosyncratically group of people who become part of their unexpected NZ family.
It’s the emotional anchor that carries us between the red herrings and the actual clues, between the “WTF?!” moments and the “A-HA!” epiphanies and which keeps us involved in what’s going on.
Sure, we all want to see justice served, but the more compelling driver to keep us watching is how are our favourite married sleuths coping with everything and will they be okay as people as they get to the bottom of criminal goings-on.
They are our people, and Blue Murder Motel works because it remembers that all the way through, giving us some escapist mystery solving, which is always in a wholly unjust world, but also some real heart and soul, because whatever happens at the end of all the sleuthing it’s the people at the heart of the show to whom we’ll always return.
Blue Murder Motel screens on TVNZ 1 in New Zealand and on ABC TV and its iView streaming service in Australia.