The new PBS Masterpiece series Marble Hall Murders is a sumptuously filmed “cozy” with an unthreatening structural complexity. The Viking Cruises crowd will eat it up with a Christofle spoon.
Like its predecessors, Magpie Murders (2022) and Moonflower Murders (2024), the new show is based on a book by Anthony Horowitz, who returns here as showrunner and screenwriter. As before, Horowitz presents us with a bifurcated narrative. In one branch of his plot, editor Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville) stumbles upon a real-world murder involving a mystery novel. In the other, the book itself comes to life, and the detective in the novel, Atticus Pund (Tim McMullan), solves a case of his own.
The gimmick of the three shows, effective for the most part, is that the same actors feature in both stories. Thus does the always reliable Patricia Hodge (All Creatures Great and Small) get poisoned twice: first as children’s author Miriam Crace in Susan’s narrative, and next as Lady Margaret Chalfont in Pund’s. Thus, too, do British screen veterans Mark Bonnar (Shetland), Harry Lloyd (The Fear), and Rupert Penry-Jones (The Strain) make their marks in both present-day London and Pund’s 1955 Greece.
Helping to ease any possible confusion is the fact that the most important supporting player appears only in Susan’s timeline. Eliot Crace (Jamie Blackley), the long-dead Miriam’s grandson and self-appointed literary heir, has been commissioned to write an Atticus Pund “continuation novel” following the death of the fictional detective’s creator. (That fellow, Alan Conway, was a victim in the original series, Magpie Murders.) When, desperate for the project to succeed, Eliot brings on Susan as editor, he sets in motion a chain of events that will end only when our heroine has identified Miriam’s erstwhile killer.
Let us pause to reflect on the believability of book editors as solvers of crimes. Such figures presumably have vast experience searching for vanished things — a customer base for bound prose, for example. That they are accustomed to brainwork is no detriment, either, particularly when it comes to sorting a puzzle box of potential leads. In Susan’s specific case, we consent to the notion largely on the basis of Manville’s abundant charm. Who wouldn’t want to spend a half-hour in her company, even if a damaging admission were sure to be pried loose?
Indeed, the recent Emmy nominee (The Crown) and Tony winner (Oedipus) may well be the most endearing late-career sleuth since Angela Lansbury starred in the now-criminally neglected Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996). Manville’s Susan is engaging, cosmopolitan, and casually elegant, with just enough frumpiness to feel fully observed. Think Miss Marple with a Mayfair flat and a favorite Hermès scarf. Best of all, Manville knows how little is needed from TV performers possessed of natural allure. Through the show’s six episodes, now airing weekly following a premiere on Sept. 6, I never once caught her acting with a capital “A.”
If the same is not true of McMullan, whose Pund is perhaps overly accented and mannered, we are inclined to forgive all on the basis of the stunning natural beauty featured in his plotline. Set on the Greek isle of Corfu, the detective’s case concerns the murder of the fabulously wealthy Lady Chalfont, but looks at times like a travelogue — or, forgive me, like a Viking brochure. Was Lady Chalfont killed by her grasping second husband (Bonnar)? A duplicitous son (Penry-Jones)? Someone else? Pund will tell us sooner or later, I’m sure. In the meantime, have you ever seen water so blue?
In typical mystery fashion, Pund’s narrative expands to fill the allotted space, eventually encompassing extramarital intrigue, Nazi artifacts, and a fiance who might not actually exist. So does Susan’s, which incorporates family estrangement and a $200-million Netflix deal for Miriam’s literary rights. These are, I suppose, clues. Certainly, our respective investigators take careful note. But they work just as well as the soapy goings-on of the beautiful and rich in splendid places. Isn’t that, after all, why Americans watch Masterpiece on PBS in the first place?
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Marble Hall Murders is so unapologetically what it is — a sop to the well-heeled old — that one can’t help admiring its lack of pretensions. Even those narrative elements that fail cast no shadow and are easily overlooked: a congested character list, say, or Pund’s bad habit of speaking in cliches (“A murderer takes one life but destroys so many more”). For my money, the series could have done without a scene in which Eliot’s break from writing is remarked upon by his fictional hero. Yet even that — harmless postmodern frippery, played for a laugh — is an error of the gentlest kind.
Perhaps the best thing to say is that Marble Hall Murders goes down as smoothly as a second gin spritz after a long day of checking one’s portfolio. And having now told and retold my joke about the show’s target audience, allow me to confess that I loved it myself, despite my relatively modest net worth and age. Regular PBS viewers will have seen the production’s trailers by now and formed their own expectations. Those hopes will not be dashed. If you think Marble Hall Murders is for you, it probably is.
Graham Hillard is the TV critic for the Washington Examiner magazine.