MARLOW MURDER CLUB: SEASON 1, EPISODE 3 .... i think

With the election last week, and my having a flu, I'm afraid I don't really know if I've lost a week or not ... but I don't think so

The ladies are up to their sleuthing still ... yet ... and Judith still hasn't learned to use a cell phone yet ....

but I'm jumping ahead already ...

Okay - I have to say ... for being a British show, and they are supposed to be way ahead of the USA on "equality" issues -- there's one male detective who needs a trip to HR ... or is it HC now??

Anyways - he is so condescending it almost makes him unbelievable .... Tikka (the lead detective) announces that she's bringing in the Club as "civilan consultants"  .... she has her supervisors okay to do this, so it's not like she's gone rogue ... but this - and pardon the potty fingers here - this ASS keeps giving Tikka grief over bringing them in.

But the three ladies (Judith/Susan/Beck) have done more than the police have!

In this episode, the ladies find out thatt there was a mysterious red-headed woman at the funeral of victim #1 (Judith's neighbor) - Beck says she remembers seeing her there and she knows the woman from her yoga class ....

The ladies go to speak to this woman ... and somehow get some trash she threw away - which they take to the police o get fingerprints off of ... 

They also find out that she had used the taxi service tha victim #2 provided, but she said she had never known him .... so the ladies go to his house, because Susan has his huose-keys - she needs those to be able to pick up/drop off the dog if he isn't home - and she seems to know exactly where to check to see who/where/when he may have picked up the red-head.

Judith opens the taxi drivers mail - which was still being delivered, btw - and reads a letter from a lawyer which the cab driver had hired.

It seems that Luna's previous owner had left all of his estate o the cab driver ... but a few weeks before the man's untimely death, he had gone to see a lawyer who had changed his will ... and appointed himself, the lawyer that is, as sole beneficiary of the will.

The ladies figure out a "sting" operation to see what he would do at the mention of Luna's former owners name .... or was it the taxi driver's name? I don't really recall now ... 

And humor insues!

First, there's Beck's use of code words ... OMG - "the chess piece is moving" for when he leaves the pub where he was eating his lunch ... and it gets better.

He then gets ttailed by Susan - no dogs though - and she almost gets caught while trying to stay on his trail.  You see, she is so intent on him, she didn't see the car driving down the road ,,, who slammed on his breaks to avoid hitting her ....

She hen pops in on the walkie-talkie thingy they are using to let Judith know he is coming her way.

Judith pops ou and says she needs to speak to him abut her aunt ... and then tells a tale, very simular to the swapping of the beneficiariies of Luna's previous owner's will.

I hope you can keep up with all this ...

Judith then sneaks into the law firm - without the lawyer knowing about it - and observes him shredding some papers in his office ... she tells the otthers about it.

Wait - the funny part isn't over yet ...

The gals plot to get the paper out of the shredder ... but they will need a distraction .... Which Beck figures out.
Susan and Judith need some sort of disguise.

Oh my - the entire show is worth seeing how they do this ... 

Beck sneaks up to he break room, where she stuffs jelly sandwiches into a toaster - one of her kids must have done it at one point - to set off the fire alarm.

But things go awry when the office gets evacuated out the front of the building instead of the back as the ladies thought it would .... so much for "fire drills" over in England!

Judith is supposed to be some wheelchair bound woman, Susan her health care aide, and they wait outtside a ground floor window for the evacuation to begin ...

Susan then uses the wheel chair to get enough of a boost to get partially up to the window ... ground floor my Aunt Petunia (I have never had an Aunt Petunia, btw) ... 

Seeing her try to struggle geting her 200 lb self through that window was hilarious!  But she did it ... and she gathered the shreds ...

But when someone finds the toaster, everyone re-enters the building too soon - Susan isn't out yet!
And there's a lawyer which entered the room - but Susan can't be seen - so Beck ttalks the lawyer ino going out for some "fresh air" ...

And Susan crawls ou from ... UNDER THE DESK!!

If she were 120 lbs, maybe - but this gal is 200 lbs and maybe 40-50 years old!  Seeing her crawl out made my back hurt!

So the ladies get away - and then they decide to look at what Susan grabbed ... the shreds ...and discover ...

This isn't going to be as easy as they thought ...

Judith remembers that the lawyer had shredded somehing shiny, like a magazine cover/paper - so hey've narrowed it dwon that far ... at least until Susan finds her fingers are sticky ...

The police in the meanwhile have gottten the fingerprints back from what they gotten from the Club ... and they are a match to the mysterious fingerprints at victim #1's house ...

The police, descend upon the boat club which the red-head and her husband own/operate ... and find her - DEAD - with anoher medallion ... this time it says "charity" on it.

When the husband shows up, he talks to Tikka (head detecive) abut his wife .... Susan is over-hearing the conversation when suddeny her phone rings ....

It's her daughter saying she has heard about the murders and will be coming home ... Susan tries to discourage her, but finally says to call her when she lands and she will pick her daughter up at the airport.

Tikka, who isn't deaf, comes around to where Susan is standing ... Susan pretends to have been checking the tires of the police vehicle ....

Tikka tells her "this isn't a joke" to which Susan replies "I know"

Well, of course she knows -- of all the members of the Club, she was the only one to actually find a body (victim #2)!!!

And that's where the episode ends.

I have left a LOT ou of this - so I highly suggest you find a copy of it someplace ....

or check my past posts to find a link to he audiobook version of it ... but I'm going to guess the humor may not be as obvious.

BODY COUNT this episode: 1

TOTAL BODY COUNT as we know it: 3

MARLOW MURDER CLUB: SEASON 1, EPISODE 1

OMG - so you might have gathered, I'm a bit of a murder mystery fan ... I was going to say "buff" but I don't dive in all that deeply.

I watch/lisen to Agatha Christie quite a bit - I have several posts about the episodes I've seen on PBS ...

I like the BBC series of Grantchester ... oh wait, that's aPBS offering too ...

And then there's Ridley - a new one for me, seems to be set in either Ireland or such ... all the red-heads which show up in the show kind of give it away, but I'm likely wrong ...
Hmmmm .... that's also on PBS ....

Hubby and I used to watch Lovejoy back in the 1990s ... oh so long ago, but very good .... but that's gone off air .... never saw that on PBS though - it was on a cable network, A&E, I think ....

Then there's Sherlock Holmes, in most of it's incarnations (not a huge fan of Robert Downing Jr's take on it hough) .... but Basil Rathbone .... Cumberbatch (at least the first couple seasons, until Mrs. Watson goes all "spy" but that's more writers than anything) .... even Young Sherlock intrigued me ....

Every notice how much Poirot resembles Sherlock? Interesting ... Miss Lemon seems the only difference to me ... oh and the cases, of course.

So .... I have found a NEW .... at least to me - I know most of these shows turn up "across the pond" well before we get them ... so .... anyways ....

THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB

OMG - it has twirled me in from the start ... I'm thinking it is likely to have been a book series first ... it makes me feel as if they have taken Miss Marple and plopped her into he 21st century!

There're cell phones .... computers .... minivans ... dog walkers ... antique pistols, but only a few generations old .... it's quite inticing.

Let's start from the beginning ....

It opens underwater, yup, a canal which butts up against residenal areas - houses, not apartments.
How quaint - to have a trickling creek/brook/canal right outside your backdoor.

An elderly lady, well, 60-70ish, so not tthat much older than me, I guess ... she is doing a crossword puzzle - not one like we know - she appears to be making the grid for it herself, and when she's finished, she snaps a shot of it on her ipad type device and saves it as "July's Crossword".

While working on the puzzle - and this is what drew me in, such a little thing, really - she opens a tin of "Traveler's Sweets".  It took quite a while for it to click in, but once it did .... it connected me to this woman.

You see, when I was a kid ... like grade school .... my mother would pick up for me these little round tins of hard candies.
They were just a little bit of fun to keep in my pockets .... kind of like Altoids are now, but these were actual candies - sweets, not mints.

They were small enough to put in my pocket ... small enough to put in my purse for Sunday Mass .... but too large to get away with taking them to school - teacher's didn't allow us sweets until the week AFTER Halloween, but then we had to bring enough for everyone - and then they'd get annoyed if you actually did it1

There wasn't a lot of candy .... but whatt sweet memories.  I would use my empty tins to hold cough drops, since the crinkling of the plastic on the boxes, or the paper lining of the box, could annoy people.

What a different world we live in now ...

So - now I'm hooked .... even after this old lady goes skinny dipping out in the canal .... they don't show nothing, but still ... yuck ...

Her neighbor puts on some opera - very familiear, but I can't place it - and goes out to sit on a bench in his yard, under a tree, near the canal/brook/creek (not really sure which it is) .... leans back to relax and listen.

Then - BOOM - there's where he gets shot .... well, I've left a bit of detail out .... 

We then get introduced to:
--Miss Judith Potts, the elderly lady, used to be an archeologist, and now is retired
--the female police detective (don' recall her name) who is in charge of the investigation.  Potts deals with her quite a bit.
--the dog walker (don't remember her name eiher), she apparently was waiting for her daughter to visit, but the daughter decided to spend extra time with her dad - I'm sure this will become more significant as time moves along
-- the vicar's new wife, but they don' t say what happened to the old wife ... she has at least 2 step children who don't listen (typical teens) ... and her husband, the vicar, is absolutely dimwitted about everything tha's being piled upon her.
-- the there's people in the village ... the Village of Marlow ... an antiques dealer who is selling forgeries (Miss Potts poins it out), his receptionist, the gal at the place where the victim worked (I think she's a receptionist as well), etc.

You HAVE to see Episode 1 if you want to understand the characters and where they are coming from ....

Death Count so far in the series: 2

The dog walker, after pulling into a driveway of a client, gets off a Facetime call with her daughter who just told her Mom she's not going to be coming home for a bit longer ... the walker then goes up to the client's door, finding it open - and NO DOG - she goes in to make sure he is okay ... and finds him dead.

So the question is .... what do an art seller and this client have in common??

Why were they killed ...

Why does Miss Potts need a posse??

More to come!

You've got to see this new series though ...

\\\\

\\\