In some mysteries, the murder victim ends up being the perpetrator, the cause of his fatal injury being the circumstances of his own creation.
Blame “Miss Scarlet & The Duke” for this reflection, a six-part throwback to the pre-“Sherlock” era of “Masterpiece”, when Victorian mysteries could be based on politeness, good tailoring and eloquent conversations about Laudan. Those days they died with opium dens and high collars on their dresses.
I am well aware that “Sherlock” takes place in our time, not at the end of the 19th century. The setting is not the reason the series changed the game; the key lies in the sharpness of the writing, the double stroke of the performances of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and the fearless courage of their villains. “Enola Holmes”, a totally independent creation that lives on Netflix and focuses on Sherlock’s teenage sister, even follows some attitude tips from “Sherlock” and is a lot of fun.
Although Enola and Eliza Scarlet from this series (Kate Phillips, “Peaky Blinders”) are contemporary, the motivations of the first are adventure and a quest to find her radical and wonderful mother, while Eliza’s entry into the private detective game is a matter of survival.
I will say this – “Miss Scarlet & The Duke” is a killer title, right there some of the best pairs of detectives, like “The Scarecrow & Mrs. King” or “Cagney & Lacey” and it is much better than “McMillan and wife.” This also has the unfortunate effect of raising expectations to domains above the floor area that this series does not meet.
Like a Victorian “Veronica Mars” without any clever replication, Eliza’s father, Henry (Kevin Doyle), instilled in her an affinity for solving crimes from a young age, but forbids her to act when she matures beyond childhood.
Eliza rebels by sneaking around and trying to raise cases in secret, and it is a harmless hobby that receives a reprimand from her housekeeper and confidant Ivy (Cathy Belton). The sudden misfortune changes that tone, however, and soon Eliza is hiring her own clients to survive, becoming London’s first female detective.
She does not receive a queen’s welcome, however; thanks again, patriarchy. At every step in her efforts to gather clues and question suspects, Eliza encounters a repetition like “This is no place for a lady!” or “A lady detective? Snicker-snicker-snort“or” Please move your lady pieces under the block, as the murder scenes are the responsibility of the penis owners. “Oh, how I wish someone had actually said that third one, but no. I wasn’t that lucky.
Frustrated and blocked, Eliza turns to her friend Detective Inspector William “The Duke” Wellington (Stuart Martin), who obviously wants to find out what’s under the corset, but can’t get over how angry he is at Eliza’s insistent intrusion at the He-Man Woman-Haters Club, which is the local police station.
And yet he is also overwhelmed by the unsolved cases that pile up on his desk and reluctantly acknowledges that Eliza is excellent at what she does, although her feminine brain is constantly being pressured by one of the trendy hats in her collection. It’s their business: she pisses him off, he shakes his head and wags his fingers and gets very angry! She was almost harassed by her fellow police officers, he freed her from danger before the situation changed from appropriate for PBS to the time of the CBS crime.
“Are you a woman or a detective?” Wellington asks during, like, his millionth frustration crisis.
“Why should there be a distinction?” Eliza retorts, and this replica-free game keeps spinning and spinning, with Eliza giving clues and dancing a few steps ahead of him with each step.
The existence of Victorian-era sexism is not up for debate, and I fully understand what creator Rachael New and fellow writer Ben Edwards aim for in developing Eliza as a feminist ahead of her time in the first six episodes. The show does a good job of establishing Eliza’s green in relation to the more subtle politics involved in this line of work; she is always finding herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and escaping scratches from the skin of her teeth or emergency efforts of last resort.
Lack of experience is not the crime of this show. The real killer is the show’s total lack of spark, professional dialogue and uninspired performances. In looking at these times for something memorable to examine about Phillips’ performance, the only distinctive quality I have been able to discover is the way that director Declan O’Dwyer illuminates his skin. Seriously, you’re going to want her regime. . . and men, don’t think there’s anything about that for you, because Martin is working with some really impressive facial hair.
We had some fun with him, but let me end on an optimistic note and note that while “Miss Scarlet & The Duke” can be tedious and uninspired, it is also. . . good.
Many people are hungry for kindness and kindness now, and this show has everything under control. Phillips and Martin’s joke is good, even when he’s trying to be mean. Eliza’s relationship with a neighbor who beat him, a domineering mother, is good. Even his near-death experiences with criminals ended well. You may end up rooting for the bad guys just to add a little pepper to this pot, but nice and tasteless is something – that is, in addition to the complete opposite of what the title leads us to expect.
“Miss Scarlet & The Duke” opens on Sunday, January 17 at 8 pm on PBS.