Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020, Tony Tilse)

At no point does Miss Fisher & the Crypt of Tears introduce viewer unfamiliar with star Essie Davis’s television show, to which this film’s a sequel, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.” The movie opens with an action sequence setting up Davis as an exquisitely dressed combination of Indiana Jones and James Bond. The action—a title card tells us—starts in 1929 Palestine, where the British are mucking things up for the native people… Crypt of Tears is anti-British Imperialism… but from an Australian bent.

Davis rescues Izabella Yena, who’s in British jail for snooping around the destruction of her village ten years before. During the rescue sequence, Davis evades police in a rooftop chance and has a bunch of costume changes. It’s overindulgent and flamboyant but enthusiastic. It’s fun to watch Davis get to do an exaggerated character schtick thanks to the bigger movie budget.

Until they get to the CGI train sequence and it’s clear while Crypt of Tears might have a “movie budget,” it doesn’t have anywhere near a big enough one. The film tries and tries with the desert visuals, which does showcase Margot Wilson’s costuming, albeit not so much in the digital extreme long shots, but they’re always just there. Production designer Robbie Perkins does well, so at least Tears always looks good.

Until the end, which is more cinematographer Roger Lanser and director Tilse’s fault.

Anyway. After Yena’s rescue, the movie goes through some plot hoops to bring series love interest and Davis sidekick Nathan Page to England. There’s a single scene in Australia with the TV show’s cast, but since the movie’s not really a direct sequel to the series… they’re all just doing forced cameos. The movie’s not going to involve the TV cast (save Page, and him in very supporting role), though it’s fun seeing Miriam Margolyes if you’re a TV fan.

Once Davis and Page are reunited, there’s a laborious setup with the… residents of the house where Davis is staying in England. It’s as exciting as it sounds, as Tears becomes a traditional location-bound mystery, kind of a protracted, but somewhat suspect limited Agatha Christie.

Somehow the movie, with its TV show-experienced director and screenwriter (Deb Cox), manages to avoid all the show’s familiar tropes and go instead with bland mystery movie ones. Page being background would be understandable if they were spotlighting Davis as an action hero, but they don’t. We get a bunch with the suspects, who are extremely flat.

Maybe because they’re shooting Australia for England? Rupert Penry-Jones is the single Brit in the cast. Or is it just the suspects aren’t movie dynamic enough? Yena seems like she’s going to have a very obvious woman’s empowerment arc with Davis as her mentor but then she’s just… around. The movie doesn’t do anything with her. There aren’t any subplots for the suspects, if any questions do get raised outside the main plot, they don’t get answered.

The mystery is… blah.

To someone unfamiliar with the show, Tears is just going to be a confusing and often very charming—it’s not like Davis isn’t great or Page isn’t adorable—not great period mystery with TV movie CGI special effects (think CW, not HBO), but as a “big screen” effort from the show creators… it’s a disappointment. It’s like they targeted a very specific audience and gave them something intended for the general audience they decided to exclude.

Also most frustrating is how the fumble is probably going to kill any sequel possibilities. More Davis and Page isn’t going to ever be a bad thing, you just wish it had been a good thing in Tears.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s03e02 – Murder & the Maiden

Season three’s Jack (Nathan Page) jealousy is a lot less morose than previously. He’s jealous for Essie Davis’s history with Royal Australian Air Force captain Rodger Corser but it takes a while before Page lets it hinder he and Davis’s working relationship. Even when Corser’s withholding evidence in a murder case—a woman’s body is found outside the fence and the RAAF’s official position is it can’t have anything to do with them.

The mystery is a very complicated one, involving White Russians and Red Russians and the local communists and Fisher agent Travis McMahon’s potential girlfriend, Kasia Kaczmarek, and a missing pilot. Turns out the missing pilot was knocking boots with not missing pilot Tom Hobbs and the rest of the base—Corser aside, apparently—suffered a mass wave of homophobia.

Meanwhile, Hugo Johnstone-Burt wants to set the date for the wedding with Ashleigh Cummings but he also doesn’t want her to keep her job, which isn’t cool with her.

Also this episode—for the first time, I think—Davis refers to Cummings as her assistant, not her companion, suggesting Cummings becoming a detective in her own right. Very cool.

Shame the year is 1929 and Black Tuesday is imminent.

Davis does an excellent job with the Corser subplot; it takes most of the episode for their full history to come out and even Page can’t fret about it once he hears the whole story. Corser’s… fine, though a little less compelling a Phryne fellow than usual. He’s a bland flyboy type, which makes sense since they knew each other during the war, but he hasn’t got any of the burning internal passion. Maybe because he’s a bit too much of a dick to Page in the RAAF vs. coppers peeing contest.

But it all works out, with a very well-executed final action sequence—Tony Tilse’s direction is quite good—as well as a lovely finish.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s03e01 – Death Defying Feats

“Miss Fisher’s” season three premiered almost a year and a half after the second season concluded, so the opening run-through—confirming returning cast members and breaking the show’s usual murder sans Miss Fisher intro—makes sense. Ashleigh Cummings is at a magic show with Travis McMahon and Anthony J. Sharpe, Essie Davis is getting ready for her dinner date with Nathan Page; everything is as it should be.

Until Pip Miller (who isn’t Jon Voight but looks enough like him I thought they’d “scored” Voight as a guest star) shows up at Davis’s door and she cancels plans with Page… and when the guillotine act at the magic show results in an actual decapitation. Then everyone’s evening is ruined.

Davis and Page meet at the magic show and Page is in a bad mood because of the stood-up dinner date, which is going to be his subplot through most of the episode (at least until we find out more of the story with Miller, who’s the magic show’s new investor). But he’s glad to have Davis along, as she used to perform in magic shows and knows how the tricks work. So they can ascertain quickly the guillotine was tampered with and the magician’s assistant murdered.

Grant Piro’s the magician; he was also engaged to the victim. Other suspicious characters around the show are prop guy André de Vanny, contortionist Eloise Mignon (who’s gets a fantastic sequence), and Kate Mulvany. Mulvany’s father used to own the magic show and she’s been teaching de Vanny tricks, which suggests they might be trying to get the show back (to Davis and Page). But Mignon and de Vanny have something else going on too. So lots of suspects and entertaining ones.

Plus there’s Page being very jealous of de Vanny, Cummings taking her investigating up a notch—to the point beau Hugo Johnstone-Burt has to finally take notice of it and appreciate it—and then a fantastically tense conclusion.

Tammy Macintosh makes a couple appearances—she’s now the coroner, which is a great way to keep her around—and Miriam Margolyes, who’s also got history with Miller, is around. It’s a very fun, very steady episode, with some great twists and turns, both in the mystery and the subplots.

Though it really doesn’t seem like Johnstone-Burt and Cummings’s engagement has made much progress in the sixteen months since their last appearance… ditto Page and Davis, but with the latter it’s part of the charm, with the former… you just wish Johnstone-Burt would get his Protestant head out of his ass.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s02e13 – Murder Under the Mistletoe

Murder Under the Mistletoe is the “Miss Fisher’s” Christmas (in July) special I obviously needed but didn’t know I needed. The episode opens with Essie Davis taking the girls—Ashleigh Cummings, Miriam Margolyes, Tammy Macintosh—to a ski lodge; Southern Hemisphere, snowy summers. But when they get there, of course there’s a murder—people are finally giving Davis crap for finding murder wherever she goes—and then they get snowed in. So everyone’s trapped up there with a killer.

Lots of great suspects—Simon Burke, Greg Saunders, George Shevtsov, Alicia Gardiner, Sylvie de Crespigny. There’s also teenager Emily Milledge, who proves you can be Goth in the 1920s. There’s a big backstory—there was a mine collapse in 1919 and it killed a bunch of the workers; widow de Crespigny married mine co-manager Burke; who does he co-manage the mine with—Margolyes. There’s a lot of good Margolyes stuff this episode. Anyway… Milledge is de Crespigny’s daughter.

There are secrets and flashbacks and Ruby Rees coming home from school early and having to hang out with the boys (Richard Bligh, Travis McMahon, and Anthony J. Sharpe, which is adorable). Plus Macintosh gets a bunch to do and not just doctor stuff.

Great direction from Tony Tilse, really fun script from Elizabeth Coleman.

Nathan Page and Hugo Johnstone-Burt brave the snow storm to get to the lodge and assist in the investigation, but the episode focuses on the multiple suspects and the entire cast being in grave danger. There are numerous murders throughout, including one with a complicated Rube Goldberg setup to get the job done.

Really good villain.

Great postscript with the titular mistletoe figuring in.

It’s a perfect Christmas special.

Also—there’s a John Noble cameo; he plays Margoyles’s since deceased husband in the flashback scenes. It’s very cute to see Margoyles opposite a husband.

Oh, and Cummings—she’s doing the full investigating again. “Miss Fisher’s” season two—with this episode as its victory lap—did a lot of character development on Cummings. Did a little on everyone else, but a lot on her and rarely spotlighted it, just let it happen. Very nicely done indeed.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s02e12 – Unnatural Habits

The episode opens with Hugo Johnstone-Burt and Ashleigh Cummings on their day off, Johnstone-Burt in his civvies somehow clashing with Cummings in her regular clothes; they’re fishing and dreaming of their honeymoon.

Rude awakening when they discover a dead body in the water. Even ruder awakening when it turns out to be the latest in a series of dead girls who worked at a Catholic convent’s laundry. Somehow the convent’s abusive treatment of the girls, which horrifies touring Essie Davis and Nathan Page—the show takes a deep stab at Catholic hypocrisy (well, some of them)—but then it manages to get even worse as we slowly find out what’s happening to the girls and who’s doing it to them.

But running up against the Church means Page’s ex-father-in-law and boss Neil Melville gets involved, especially since he’s just gotten a promotion; Melville bans Davis from investigating and reassigns Page.

Also back this episode are Page’s ex-wife, Dee Smart, who’s openly hostile to Davis at this point, and her cousin fiancé Daniel Frederiksen. Miriam Margolyes is around too—turns out her cook was one of the missing girls—and has some great scenes with current girl-in-crisis Alice Cavanagh. Very nice work from Margolyes this episode. Shayne Francis and Sally-Anne Upton are excellent as the meanest laundry bosses.

There’s eventually a big action sequence where Davis and her sidekicks arm up—turns out butler Richard Bligh has been assembling an arsenal for just such an occasional—and try to save the day while Melville has the cops dillydallying in fear of upsetting the Church.

All the outstanding story threads from the season get resolved here and the episode ends on quite the tease. Writer Ysabelle Dean does a good job fitting in a bunch of content but it some of it is still very rushed. The investigation leads Davis all over the place, from the laundry to high society to the docks and so on. Nice direction from Tony Tilse, who’s really able to ratchet up the tension in that big action finale.

One of the two main villains—motivated by pure greed—doesn’t get the best performance, while the other one gets a phenomenal one. Though maybe the suspicious behavior is less obvious when the solution is confirmed instead of suspected….

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s02e01 – Murder Most Scandalous

Season Two starts off with a bunch of flashy character reveals, with finally meeting Nathan Page’s ex-wife (Dee Smart) not even being the main one. Very prim, very proper, very Catholic Ashleigh Cummings’s sister, Anna Bamford, is a sex worker and works in a brothel where one of the girls has just turned up dead. So Bamford hires Essie Davis to investigate, with Davis not realizing the victim was found dead in a locked room with anti-sin copper Neil Melville, who survived.

Turns out Melville is Smart’s father.

And Page’s ex-father-in-law.

“Miss Fisher” does an amazing job with the pro-sex worker stuff, giving Cummings a great couple scenes throughout as she processes the information. It makes up for Davis’s episode long Hispanophile arc, which has her going from learning the tango at the beginning of the episode to impersonating a Spanish exotic dancer when she goes undercover at Bamford’s brothel.

The accent is a lot.

Though Davis has been supremely unproblematic so far in the show, so giving her an “mkay” character detail like this one is long overdue given she’s still an infinitely wealthy White woman in the 1920s.

The mystery is better than the resolve, which is nowhere near as interesting as a locked room mystery, a hypocrite bureaucrat suspect, and a madam’s blackmail stash.

Davis’s gets a cool Catwoman sequence where she has to climb up to get to the stash room, then has a fight scene with madam Belinda McClory. Oh, and there’s also Davis doing a fan dance, unintentionally to most of the supporting cast, shocking Cummings and sensationalizing Hugo Johnstone-Burt.

What also stands out about the resolution is it seems more like there’s season subplot building with is-he-or-isn’t-he suspicious Melville and then a creepy young, buff priest, Lyall Brooks, not to mention Page getting attacked on the street by thugs left unidentified.

Maybe the most impressive thing about the episode is how well it defers Davis and Page’s chemistry, post-divorce—Smart’s already engaged again, which solves the moral dilemma—and there are some great Phyrne and Jack chemistry moments throughout. But where it’s all going is a left for another day… and episode.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e04 – Death at Victoria Docks

This episode lacks the spark of the previous ones; it’s still solid and well-acted—even by the less sparkly supporting characters—and has nearly all the supporting favorites back (meaning aunt Miriam Margolyes and Essie Davis’s ward, Ruby Rees), but the main plot is a bit of a shrug.

Also—the main plot and the subplot only intersect at the beginning, they’re otherwise unconnected, which might have something to do with it. Or maybe Shelley Birse’s teleplay isn’t the best or

Tony Tilse’s direction. Maybe it’s the combination.

Or maybe it’s how police detective Nathan Page is barely in the episode and most of his scenes are just giving constable Hugo Johnstone-Burt a “right on” even though everyone knows Johnstone-Burt’s success is because of Essie Davis.

The subplot also has a very dark resolve without really offering any bright spot—avoiding it, in fact. The show concentrates on the salacious instead of the human. It doesn’t fit Davis’s character, who’s all about helping the humans.

The main plot has an anarchist dying in Davis’s arms, apparently the victim of some guards at a dock riot. Only Davis knows it’s not related to the dock-workers and finds herself in a bunch of intrigue involving Latvian anarchists. One of them, Jack Finsterer, gets to be Bond Girl #2 this episode (though there isn’t a #1 and Page isn’t around enough to fit his chaste #3 slot). Also, I’m thinking they either need to be called Fisher Boys or Phryne Lads. I haven’t decided yet.

If the episode were better, Finsterer would be fine.

Also the episode opportunistically endangers Ashleigh Cummings, which isn’t cool.

There’s a lot of good stuff still. Johnstone-Burt and Cummings are adorable, Rees is a hoot, Margolyes is delightful, and Davis does get in some nice character development.

Nothing stands out about the subplot—involving missing teenage girl Isabella Clark—other than the indifferent to Clark resolution and the very amusing scenes with Davis facing off with a convent’s Reverend Mother, Penne Hackforth-Jones.

It’s like the B plot should’ve been the A plot and Page should’ve been around. The episode’s got all the right ingredients but the wrong recipe.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e01 – Cocaine Blues

Of course, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” is based on a novel. How did I miss it was based on a novel… Not because Deb Cox’s script ever feels too much like an adaptation—quite the opposite—but because it does such a good job setting up the supporting cast. Lead Essie Davis meets her eventual team of detecting irregulars through this episode’s main plot, so it’s never quite for sure she’s putting the team together. Not until the end, which is a glorious celebratory scene, rewarding characters and viewers alike for the rather intense third act.

The third act is also where the show reveals Davis isn’t just a wealthy woman with a title, a big heart, and an analytic mind for solving crime, but she’s also basically… Catwoman. If Catwoman had more of Batman’s wealth, anyway. Davis (or, more likely, her stunt double) needs to get into a second story window so she scrambles up and then leaps through the air, catching the fire escape landing or whatnot. Even more impressive is how Davis makes it seem totally reasonable not just for the character, but also in her evening gown and heels. Because the show’s already confidently established Davis is a badass, but it wasn’t clear she was a no-power superhero levels of badass.

The mystery involves the death of Davis’s friend’s husband. Miranda Otto plays the friend, who’d invited newly arrived in Melbourne Davis over for lunch. Also at lunch is Miriam Margolyes, as Davis’s aunt. Margolyes is a delightful prude, constantly horrified at Davis’s modern ways. The show’s set in the 1920s, very Gilded Age. Gorgeous production design and costumes.

Davis starts investigating the case because she’s good at solving mysteries, which is nice. Davis is active throughout the episode, getting ahead of cops Nathan Page and Hugo Johnstone-Burt not out of their incompetence but due to her own excellence. She’s back in Australia, we soon learn, because her sister’s murderer, Nicholas Bell, is due to get out of prison soon; Davis visits him and lets him know if he gets out, he’s dead. At best.

Outstanding scene.

Lots of good supporting players in addition to Margolyes, particularly maid Ashleigh Cummings who’s afraid to use technology because the Catholic Church told her it was bad. Tammy Macintosh is great as Davis’s friend and Dr. Watson (Macintosh too is a doctor).

The show says a lot about class and gender, showing it in the context of the 1920s and how that period allowed for less patriarchal restrictions in many ways (so long as you’re rich enough and White enough). It’s not just about Davis being the hero for the women in the story—Cummings, Otto, Macintosh—but for the men as well. 1920s European dancer himbo Kristof Piechocki is most definitely a don in distress, for instance. And although communist activist taxi drivers Travis McMahon and Anthony J. Sharpe do the right thing, it’s Davis whose influence turns them into sidekick do-gooders.

With a surprise finish—though with just the right hint to the audience—great characters, casting, production, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” is off to a fantastic start.