My Life Is Murder (2019) s02e08 – Hidden Gems

Now I’m confused. I thought the difference this episode—when all of Ebony Vagulans’s jokes at Lucy Lawless’s expense land instead of miss—was because of director Katie Wolfe. But she also did the previous episode, where they all flopped. Must be writer Claire Tonkin.

There are a handful of good ones for Vagulans, who otherwise spends the episode in reduced support because they’ve got a name guest star to center. And this time, the guest star’s actually in the episode, not just Zooming in a performance.

The guest star is Bill Bailey, who’s not in a comedy role, just a sympathetic oddball one. He’s a potential witness and possibly a potential murder suspect in Lawless’s latest case. Though his tall tales and endlessly annoying presence might make him another victim by the end.

This time it’s a straightforward murder mystery, no questions about the cause of death; it’s just a jewelry robbery gone wrong, with no suspects, no motives, no opportunities, and copper Rawiri Jobe needs some help. Or maybe he just wants an excuse to hang out with Lawless. The first scene, where Jobe always gives Lawless the cases, is particularly rife with chemistry this episode, which is nice because Lawless has got a lot of frustrations.

In addition to the case itself being a stumper, Bailey’s an underachieving rich kid who’s desperate to be relevant and keeps getting in her way. Plus, she’s got brother-in-prison Martin Henderson pestering her about bonding. Plus, some third act reveals.

A lot is going on, and it’s all pretty great. Like, Bailey’s a lot of fun, the other guest stars—Antonia Prebble and Cian Elyse White—are good. And then the character development moments all connect. It took the show eighteen episodes to realize it can keep details about Lawless’s present obscured for dramatic effect instead of just ignoring everything about her past. So maybe it is Tonkin’s script.

The script is definitely the winner for the case; no questions there. The resolution is perfectly threaded throughout the episode, with some great visuals on top of Lawless’s expository dump. It feels a little too forcefully centering Bailey the guest star; the finale more than makes up for it. And there are a lot worse things than more Bill Bailey than you actually need.

My Life Is Murder (2019) s02e07 – All the Better to See You

This episode is one of those “for my sins they gave me one” situations. Most of the episode is character work for Lucy Lawless, and it’s really cool for a while, and then it goes to pot. It’s a bummer. It’s also not a particularly good mystery. Malinna Liang’s script has got all the right details and a whole lot of black humor for them. Unfortunately, the mystery has to get unnecessarily complicated to drag out the investigation and red herrings. Worse, even though the postscript’s kind of funny, it’s funny so it doesn’t have to do any character development for Lawless.

I got what I wanted, and they screwed it up.

Joy.

It’s another suspicious death and widow-bonding episode, only this time there are two widows, and Lawless knows one of them. An actor dies when the prop knife fails to engage the spring, his costar (Greta Gregory) doing the stabbing. Gregory’s not just the costar; she’s also the mistress, so she’s widow number one. Widow number two is Lawless’s childhood New Zealand bestie, Sara Wiseman, who she abandoned when they had to skip out thanks to Lawless’s dad being a conman. Regrettably, Lawless and Wiseman never get past character revelation exposition to character development because they tend to drink and get into trouble while hanging out.

Despite Lawless being a widow literally one of the show cornerstones, it’s never something to be explored.

The death (or murder) happened during a filmed performance—and it’ll turn out the case could’ve been closed earlier if copper Rawiri Jobe had done a better job watching the YouTube—at a cultural fair. So there’s a subplot about Ebony Vagulans bonding with all the artistic types while Lawless rolls her eyes at creative expression. It’s a bunch of busywork to kill runtime, but at least there’s personality to it. Lawless and Vagulan’s investigation—there’s Gregory, the obvious suspect since she actually stabbed the guy, and stagehand and understudy Jordan Mooney. Wiseman’s in the clear because she was out of town. And she didn’t have a motive. Or at least she didn’t know she had a motive.

Lawless and Vagulan go over the case erratically so as never to discover too much because then there wouldn’t be an episode. Or if Jobe had just asked two more questions during the initial investigation.

It’s an unfortunate outing. There’s some mildly amusing not-flirting flirting with Lawless and Jobe at the beginning, but, just like almost everything else, it goes nowhere. Kind of like the play being an elaborate feminist critique of Little Red Riding Hood; the whole episode feigns being interesting but never delivers anything of substance.