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Saturday, January 11, 2020

QUEENS OF MYSTERY FOR ITV CHOICE


(Sarah Woodward, Olivia Vinall, Siobhan Redmond & Julie Graham)

Tuesday, January 21 at 20h00 sees the start of a brand new six-part series on ITV Choice called Queens of Mystery.

Created by Doc Martin writer Julian Unthank, this British comedy-drama murder-mystery series stars Olivia Vinall (The Woman in White) as Matilda Stone, a perennially single female detective who has been assigned to the constabulary in her fictional hometown village of Wildemarsh.

There, she is reunited with her three crime novelist aunts Cat, Beth, and Jane, played by Julie Graham (The Bletchley Circle), Sarah Woodward (The Politician's Husband) and Siobhan Redmond (Alfresco), who help her solve whodunit style murders in the picturesque English village

But no matter how many cases they are able to crack, the unsolved mystery that haunts them all is that of Matilda's mother's disappearance. Between investigating murders from the curious to the bizarre and writing their own renowned novels, the three aunts also attempt to help their perennially single niece find love.

"I think first of all, it's quintessentially British," says Graham, when asked how she would describe the series. "Obviously we all take it desperately seriously, but it's quite tongue in cheek, and it's quite knowing and slightly heightened because of the stories. It's set in a very small village where probably not many people would be murderers normally."

Graham says the script has "got a lot of panache": "There are a lot of very funny moments. And, you know, there are a lot of dark moments and we sort of play up to that. So that's the way I would describe it. It's very British in that murder-mystery Agatha Christie tradition."

Writing for the TV Insider, John Griffiths described the series thus: "So you've already binged Murder, She Wrote? Pour a cup of tea and settle in with this delightful British mystery series, which has the colourful quirkiness of cult hit Pushing Daisies and a splash of cheekiness à la Absolutely Fabulous."