Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s03e08 – Death Do Us Part

I didn’t realize until five episodes into Season Three there were only eight episodes this season. I knew it was the final season, but I didn’t realize it was a short final season. Director Daina Reid handles the series finale with aplomb; there’s a list of things the show seems like it’s going to get done in the last episode and then the list of things we hope it’ll get done. Writer Kris Wyld creates a lot of tension between the two, with Ashleigh Cummings and Hugo Johnstone-Burt’s nuptials seemingly the only positive guaranteed element. Not because it’s really part of the plot, just because… well, just because.

But the other inevitability is villain Colin Moody. His vendetta against Essie Davis’s no account, albeit royalty and wealthy father, Pip Miller, is drawing a lot of blood and quite viciously. Moody’s physically imposing, but he has this standing energy about him. Moody’s dangerous in every frame in every scene, even when he’s hanging out with an old friend. Like, sincere friend. It’s incredible what the show’s able to get away with as far as performance sincerity when the viewer’s got more of the facts to Moody’s violence.

There’s also a regular mystery—with Moody somehow involved—with a noted scientist (David James), who plays a character named Tode but it’s pronounced toad so the whole episode is the cast talking about Professor Toad. It’s very Wind in the Willows. Anyway. He gets killed off in some strange way by someone, possibly even local Catholic priest, Dennis Coard, which would be one hell of a twist, wouldn’t it?

Cummings is beside herself—even with everyone in danger, including herself—at the idea of now revealed to be un-Christian to scientists Coard being the one to marry her. It’s very cute. There’s only so much time for Cummings this episode and she does get a very nice finish to her series arc, so the cute little moments are nice to have.

The episode’s so full there’s no time for Miriam Margoyles and Tammy Macintosh didn’t get her episode this season. Having her around more was okay but not a substitute. Ruby Rees never made it back, leaving Jane the either.

As for Essie Davis and Nathan Page… how do the Honorable Phryne Fisher and Inspector Jack Robinson leave things? As successfully as they can. Wyld finds a certain way of framing things to get it done. Maybe not the hoped for, but better than the good enough. I’m sitting here with a smile thinking about it.

It’d be preferable to have more “Miss Fisher’s,” but as is… it’s just right. Enough.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s03e07 – Game, Set & Murder

Given it’s the penultimate episode, I don’t feel too bad about generally picking the murder from the opening scenes. There are just certain “Miss Fisher’s” tropes in play—it’s episode thirty-three overall—and there are certain things the show’s never done and if it’s going to do them, now’s the time.

And I didn’t have any predictions on motive or whatnot. It was just… a sense of how things were going to go.

Essie Davis is throwing a tennis tournament at (away) Aunt Prudence’s estate, hosting old friend Jeremy Lindsay Taylor and his new wife, Lauren Williams. Williams is one of the best tennis players in the country, second only to American Ella Scott Lynch (who’s not American but better than usual with the Aussies playing Americans on the show). Ashleigh Cummings is a big fan of Williams, which leads to some fun awkward scenes.

But another thing the show finally gets around to addressing is whether or not Davis has an actual fears. It finds one for her in the murder method, leading to some more fantastic scenes for Nathan Page and Davis. Speaking of Page and Davis, there’s a really nice subplot about his support of her professionally when they get in trouble thanks to a lurking paparazzi (Fletcher Humphrys). Page also goes out in support for finally back Hugo Johnstone-Burt—was he busy during filming this season or something—as Johnstone-Burt and Cummings get to prepare for their impending nuptials with a little more security.

It’s a complicated plot involving mistaken victim targeting, some women’s rights issues—Australia doesn’t pay for women’s international sports travel but does pay for the men’s—old romances, and so on. There’s also Scott Lynch coming on to Page with an intensity to do rival Davis.

Elizabeth Coleman’s script is thorough and careful—the mystery and red herrings all get unpacked with just the right amount of detail—and the finish is sufficiently complicated for the characters involved. Really good supporting performance from Williams.

And Davis and Page finale is quite cute.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s03e04 – Blood & Money

“Miss Fisher’s,” as a rule, doesn’t do children in danger episodes. There’s been at least one other one, maybe another (but I don’t think really think so), but this episode opens with a kid buried in a shallow grave. It’s very intense right off.

Though it’s also got some post-war things to work through and they’re not as intense as usual so it sort of evens out.

Essie Davis’s client this episode–though Dr. Mac (Tammy Macintosh) is also going to have need of her)—is young Jarin Towney. He and his brother live on the very mean streets of Collingwood, where they hear of heroic Miss Fisher and her golden revolver. It’s pretty awesome to hear about the lore; Davis is a real-life (non-powered) superhero, she should have a fan club.

Towney’s aforementioned brother is missing; will Davis take the case and find him? Pretty soon, Macintosh is calling with some bad news—that dead boy in the shallow grave from the cold open? They find him near her hospital.

And it turns out there are three boys missing in total, so even if it’s not Towney’s brother, there’s still something very unpleasant going on.

The prime suspects are a nurse (Diana Glenn) and a severely disfigured war veteran (James O'Connell), who Davis and Ashleigh Cummings espy being up to strange shenanigans but maybe not illicit ones. Macintosh and her boss, Dan Spielman, are trying to get a donation to the hospital to fund a veteran rehabilitation program and the dead kids thing is really not helping. So Davis is doubly on the case.

And not just because she’s the Collingwood girl made (quite) good.

It’s a good mystery, with some excellent twists, and a decent enough finish. Besides the danger to the kids, there’s also the surprising unpleasantness of Hugo Johnstone-Burt’s subplot. He’s been cast out of home because of his conversion to Catholicism (for Cummings) and he’s keeping that situation secret from her. It’s the darkest Johnstone-Burt’s ever had to go and it’s rather affecting.

No drama for Nathan Page and Davis this episode, just the comfortable flirting—though there is a touch of some significant, which Cummings interrupts. It’s a good episode; Towney and Davis are excellent together.

When you think about it, it’s kind of a surprise she hasn’t assembled The Esplanade Peculiars yet. She does live at 221B, after all.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s03e03 – Murder & Mozzarella

So I thought this episode was one of those pre-1980s Mafia stories where they never referred to the Mafia by name because they call it the Camorra here but the Camorra is actually a different Italian criminal organization. The more you know.

Miss Fisher (Essie Davis) and Inspector Jack (Nathan Page)—or should I say, Inspector Johnny—versus the mob was not an episode of “Miss Fisher’s” I was expecting. But I also wasn’t expecting Page to have another chaste love interest… you get the impression he spends most nights drinking with Davis.

But no. He’s off at an Italian restaurant making eyes at comely widow Louisa Mignone, who’s making just as many eyes back. We finally get to see Davis jealous. And Page reveling in it; well, at least as much as Page would revel in it. Until things get serious with Mignone, whose restaurant is part of a feud.

Mignone’s father-in-law Vince D'Amico is both chef and mob boss and he says the other Italian restaurant has been stealing their recipes. Given the other restaurant’s chef, Annette Serene, is super-mean, it seems possible. In fact, D’Amico and his family are sure Serene’s family had D’Amico’s son (and Mignone’s husband) killed. Because they take cooking very seriously.

There’s also kids Danielle Horvat and Paul Pantano—then Robert Mammone, who’s Horvat’s father and Serene’s son-in-law—he’s also a widower—plus enforcer Alex Andreas.

It’s a very full episode, which director Peter Andrikidis maneuvers quite well. Especially since there’s also the big subplot about Ashleigh Cummings finally convincing Hugo Johnstone-Burt to convert to Catholicism and it turns out he’s all for it once he discovers Cummings has to do whatever he says because he’s the husband. Cummings, on the other hand, thinks maybe the Church has got that one wrong.

Really good performance this episode from Page—the closest he’s had to a showcase maybe ever—and the finale’s excellent.

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) s02e11 – Dead Air

It’s a pure delight episode of “Miss Fisher’s,” outside the murders and murderer, obviously, with Essie Davis and company going to hang out at a radio station in the pre-Golden Age of Radio. The format has caught on—especially with Ashleigh Cummings, who is the one who gets Davis involved in the investigation because the victim was an old school chum—but the format isn’t stable. But because the newspapers are waging a war on the radio stations, including sabotage, arson, and maybe murder.

The show never gets into the conflict enough but if it’s based in reality… there’s definitely the potential for a good book or TV show or something. Sounds very interesting.

The newspaper-related intrigue in the episode involves newsstand vendor Travis Cotton and whatever racket he’s got going with obnoxious, suspicious, and quite funny in a terrible sort of way radio presenter, Rhys Muldoon. Muldoon’s one of the two prime suspects, along with mysteriously ill presenter Pip Edwards, who’s apparently been stealing victim Amy Arnott’s work. Marco Chiappi is Edwards’s husband and seems to be the guy who runs the radio station. At least he’s the one who panics the most when a show gets delayed because another body drops.

Besides the setting, which gives everyone something a little different to do—like Hugo Johnstone-Burt running the investigation on his own, with Nathan Page on special assignment but helping Davis out when he can. Page even tells Davis to keep an eye on Johnstone-Burt, who might not be up to the task of solving the crime on his own.

There’s also some trouble in paradise for Johnstone-Burt and Cummings’s (so far unannounced) engagement, as Johnstone-Burt makes it clear Cummings will become a homemaker upon the announcement. Not even the actual wedding, which Cummings doesn’t like and Davis doesn’t like and Page doesn’t even seem to like.

There’s a lovely postscript to it all, playing up the fun Davis and Page get to have throughout, and the showdown with the murderer is awesome.

Really good supporting performances all around this time; Edwards takes a while to get going but then she’s probably the best of the very good bunch.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s02e10 – Death on the Vine

The show’s hit a nice stride lately; this episode’s rather good, with little in common with the previous two other than Ashleigh Cummings’s detective skills continuing to develop. Otherwise, the setting is all different—Essie Davis has drug Cummings out to a vineyard (after telling her they were going to a farm but didn’t want to tell her about the wine) to meet a new client. Only the client’s dead when they get there and everyone in town is giving them the cold shoulder and worse.

Even more concerning is the local law enforcement (David Field) seems to be covering up evidence and whenever Davis tries to call him on it, he threatens her. Though the whole town is threatening them, complete with snakes hidden in their room and guns getting stolen.

It’s very tensely executed, Davis and Cummings far from home and their regular supporting cast. Davis calls and gets Nathan Page to head out—it’s a rural town—before they’re able to get the investigation going properly.

Almost complicating the investigation is the victim’s brother, James Saunders, being unhelpful to the point he’s suspicious. Everyone in the town—save maybe kindly doctor Geoff Morrell and his daughter, Ramona Von Pusch—is hostile. Hotelier Geneviève Picot is terrifying.

So lots of rural empty night tension and scares—excellent direction from Catherine Millar. Even when Page arrives, it doesn’t seem like Field is going to let the big city copper make any difference. Very interesting to see Page’s authority ignored.

Meanwhile, Hugo Johnstone-Burt has decided it’s time to propose to Cummings and is trying his best to make it romantic—with Page’s help—only Cummings sees it as Johnstone-Burt doing a slapdash job of investigating. It’s real cute, real funny. This episode’s the second time I’ve noticed Chris Corbett’s credit as writer; he’s doing a rather good job.

The acting—from Field, Picot, Morrell, Von Pusch, Saunders, Davis, Page—is particularly excellent.

Also there may be another Phryne Fellow but it’s unclear how far things went when Davis was stomping grapes….