What we generally see from mystery shows coming from New Zealand is that they’re set in small towns, not big cities like Auckland. They also seem to involve someone coming back to this hometown from time away, generally in Australia, who has to reorient themselves to the goings on in the town, but who has enough institutional knowledge of the town’s secrets to make connections others don’t. A new series on Acorn TV has all of those elements, including a continuing story that’s as interesting as the episodic mysteries the main character tries to solve.
Opening Shot: A beautiful shot of mountains, and an SUV driving almost out of control on a dirt road, perilously close to going over the edge.
The Gist: Anais Mallory (Chelsie Preston Crayford) lands at the airport in her hometown of Queenstown, a resort town set against The Remarkables, a mountain range in New Zealand. At the same time, that SUV goes over the edge, tumbling and crashing as it heads to the bottom. The body in the driver’s seat looks like he’s already unconscious or dead.
Anais has returned to Georgetown from a stint as a homicide detective in Sydney, and she’s taken a gig as a detective sergeant at the local police department. But she’s also there to help her mother Veronica (Rebecca Gibney), two years after the death of her younger sister Lynne (Tara Canton), and four years after her father died. Lynne died much the same way as the man in the SUV did, going over the edge into Skipper’s Canyon. Things seem tense between Anais and Veronica; when Anais plays the piano at the house, Veronica tells her to stop because it makes her sad.
At work, she checks in with Inspector Sharon Li Feng (Lynette Forday), whom she came up the ranks with before leaving for Sydney. Her old friend and new boss introduces her to patrol cops Hona Rata (Roimata Fox) and the very raw rookie Jarrod Renner (Dahnu Graham). She also introduces her to Detective Simon Delaney (Matt Whelan), who immediately resents this supposed newcomer becoming his superior. He puts his foot in his mouth talking about “another idiot gone over the edge at Skipper’s.”
The medical examiner, Ithaka Cooper (Alex Tarrant), whom Anais knew from school, finds that the condition of the body doesn’t match the time of the death. In other words, the man was likely dead when the car went over the cliff. This makes it a murder investigation, which involves the Van Heusens (Mike Edward, Nathalie Boltt), a prominent couple in town whose car was the one that went over the edge, a skeevy hostel owner named George Sterling (Barnie Duncan), and Anais’ ex-fiance, Luke Staunton (Charles Jazz Terrier), who owns the restaurant where the Van Heusens were seen before they reported the SVU was stolen.
She won’t say it to anyone, but Anais is also back in Queenstown to look into Lynne’s death. She knows her sister wasn’t a careless driver, so the idea that she purposely went off the cliff at Skipper’s seems wrong to her. She grabs the file for her sister’s case and takes it home with her to examine.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? A Remarkable Place To Die fits in with Acorn’s other mystery series, like The Chelsea Detective, though its continuing storyline is more significant than what we’ve seen in similar shows on the streamer. The New Zealand scenery gives the show a similar feel to Top Of The Lake.
Our Take: Created by Philly de Lacey, A Remarkable Place To Die takes advantage of each episode’s 90-minute runtime, giving audiences a murder mystery in each episode that is relatively satisfying while not sacrificing attention on Anais’ investigation into her sister’s death. It certainly helps that the entire regular cast is very watchable and create an ensemble that viewers want to follow. And it definitely helps that Crayford gives Anais a warmth that we don’t generally see in detective shows like these.
Anais isn’t a hard-bitten detective that’s trying to solve the case that has dogged her; she’s a woman who has suffered a lot of loss over the past few years and ended up leaving the country to deal with it. Her return is welcomed by some, like Sharon and Ithaka, but not quite others. For instance, the first person she runs into in town is Maja Staunton (Indiana Evans), her former best friend and now Luke’s wife; she got together with Luke not long after Anais broke up with him and moved away.
We’re also curious about how things went sour between Anais and her mother Victoria. They may not have had the warmest relationship even before Lynne’s death, but whatever relationship they had was completely torn apart after Lynne went over that cliff. It’ll be interesting to see Anais dig into that, as well, and repair their relationship while trying to figure out who might have been after Lynne.
As far as the mystery at the center of the episode, it was fine. There seemed to be logic to it, and the conclusions Anais and Simon come to don’t come out of left field. Anais doesn’t possess any particular skills other than just being good at her job, and that’s sometimes all that’s needed to provide a satisfying murder mystery in an episode.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: After a fight with Victoria, Anais decamps to the family lodge. She finds a bag of drugs and paraphernalia stuffed up the chimney of a wood stove. She stares at it and goes, “What the fuck?”
Sleeper Star: Rebecca Gibney is always a pleasure to watch, though we’re used to her being more upbeat in her other Acorn series, Under The Vines. Here, she’s excellent as a still-grieving Victoria.
Most Pilot-y Line: Ithaka phones Anais with information about the dead man. He’s talking to her about going to dinner to catch up when Anais finishes the call, with Ithaka still talking. A strange funny note in a mostly not-funny show.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The 90-minute episodes of A Remarkable Place To Die move along because both the episodic mystery and the continuing story are both very satisfying to follow. The stunning New Zealand scenery always helps.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.