Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Murder In A Small Town’ On Fox, Where A Harbor Town’s New Police Chief Solves Murders And Falls For The Librarian

The new series Murder In A Small Town starts like it’s going to be a gritty psychological drama but ends up being a cozy romantic series that just happens to have murders that need to be solved. If you’re a fan of Acorn TV , BritBox and Hallmark Channel, you’ll probably like this show, too.

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Opening Shot: A quaint harbor town. An older man tends to his plants. A teen sees a man with a limp go into his neighbor’s house. We hear a man talking harshly inside that house, then he gets smacked with something and falls to the ground dead, eyes open. Blood seeps out of his ear.

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The Gist: Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland) is the new police chief in the town of Gibsons, British Columbia, and he’s on a first date with Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk), the town librarian. They found each other on a dating app, and Cassandra is surprised to learn that the bearded man in the cardigan is the chief. She’s had such little luck on dates lately that she flat-out tells Karl that this won’t go well. He calls her out on her lack of self-confidence, and the two start to hit it off.

In the meantime, we see Corporal Edwina Yen (Mya Lowe), who just transferred to Gibsons from Philadelphia, start her first day on her new job, where she’s introduced to Sergeant Sid Sokolowski (Aaron Douglas), admin Isabella Harbud (Savonna Spracklin) and constable Andy Kendrick (Fritzy-Klevans Destine).

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Karl is called to the house where the older man was murdered, which is where he meets Corporal Yen for the first time. As he looks around, he senses something is missing, but just doesn’t know what. He talks to George Wilcox (James Cromwell), who discovered the body, but the cranky old man isn’t very forthcoming.

As Karl and Cassandra get to know each other, we find out that Karl was once a big-city detective, but the job was all-consuming, costing him his marriage. His older daughter doesn’t talk to him, but he stays in touch with younger daughter Holly (Dakota Guppy), who seems to be happy her dad met someone. His mother was a well-known painter and he never knew his dad.

As Karl keeps looking into the murder, he becomes convinced that George did it, especially when it comes to light that he and the victim more than just “knew each other,” as George indicated during Karl’s initial questioning. However, George isn’t letting on about any of it, even when Karl sees him rowing out into the middle of the bay late at night, supposedly to get rid of what Karl thinks is the murder weapon, which he saw in George’s kitchen.

Cassandra is friends with George, and when George admits something to her, she’s torn about saying something to Karl or damaging their burgeoning relationship.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Murder In A Small Town is like Murder, She Wrote combined with Sullivan’s Crossing . If it weren’t on Fox, it would have easily fit on Acorn TV or BritBox.

Our Take: Murder In A Small Town is a primarily Canadian production, and it will air on Global up north the same time it’s airing on Fox. It has the easygoing manner of many of our favorite recent shows from the Great White North, but the first episode was a little strange to us.

Creator Ian Weir and his writers keep us guessing a little bit, making us think that Murder In A Small Town is going to be an ongoing story about Alberg pursuing Wilcox and the wily old man constantly avoiding having the murder pinned on him. But what we ended up getting was a self-contained murder mystery which wasn’t all that mysterious. It was less a mystery than a character study about a very observant cop who is trying to build a new life for himself and a suspect who is one of the more nihilistic characters we’ve seen Cromwell play, and that’s saying something, given Cromwell’s extensive career.

It does seem that Gibsons is going to become the Cabot Cove of British Columbia, with dead bodies appearing every week, and Karl solving them with his ability to squint and swivel his head. We’ll also get to know the people who serve under him, as we wonder just what Corporal Yen is doing in Gibsons after what seems like a successful stint in her hometown of Philly.

But most of the show feels like it’s going to be about Karl and Cassandra deepening their connection with each other. Kreuk does her usual job of being warm, slightly goofy and down-to-earth in all of her scenes, and she has some fantastic chemistry with Sutherland. It does feel like their relationship will be what really keeps the show moving, along with all the murders, of course.

Sutherland plays a different kind of cop, certainly different than any law enforcement person his brother Kiefer ever played. He doesn’t wear a uniform, and most of the time he looks like he’s more dressed to curl up on the couch with a hot tea than to solve murders. His quips are dry and said softly, almost to the point where it’s hard to understand what he’s saying. And as Cassandra finds out, he’s got the heart of an artist. But, as he tells her, he likes figuring things out and likes to “serve and protect.” In other words, Karl Alberg contains multitudes, and multitudes are exactly what we want in the main character of a murder mystery series.

Sex and Skin: There’s post-coital sleeping, but it’s network television; you won’t see anything resembling sex on screen.

Parting Shot: After the Wilcox case resolves, Karl and Cassandra reconnect in front of Molly’s Reach, where they first met. The restaurant is familiar to fans of the Canadian comedy The Beachcombers.

Sleeper Star: We’re really intrigued by Mya Lowe as Edwina Yen, mainly because there’s a backstory for her just begging to be revealed.

Most Pilot-y Line: After a particularly good date, Cassandra follows Karl back to his place. He promises a nightcap of double malt scotch, but when she gets inside, all he has is beer. “Guys say lots of things,” he says. Somehow, Cassandra is charmed by this.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Murder In A Small Town is both a murder mystery series and a romance series. Can the two mesh? So far, it has, mainly thanks to the chemistry between Sutherland and Kreuk.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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