Welcome to the Acorn TV Dispatch — and our "mysteries and detectives" issue.
Acorn TV mysteries are filled with a wonderful array of investigators and sleuths, so we decided to put the spotlight on some of our new and popular crime-busters. It would be a crime to miss out on any of our marvelous mysteries in this issue.
In this issue:
- Executive producer Philippa Braithwaite takes us inside the U.K.'s most-watched series of the year — Acorn TV Original Manhunt, starring Martin Clunes.
- Ahead of the April 8 premiere of Acorn TV Original Queens of Mystery, series creator Julian Unthank talks to us about the art of crafting detective stories that keep audiences hooked — and with shows like Doc Martin under his belt, he's got plenty to share.
- Learn about the hierarchy of British detective ranks like DS and DCI — then take our "Which Acorn TV Detective Are You?" quiz to see where you rank!
- Acorn TV is also home to detectives of a slightly different sort. Explore some of the investigators looking for clues in paintings, beneath the topsoil, and along the shoreline.
Keep on streaming – and keep on sleuthing!
Philippa Braithwaite on the Making of Manhunt
How she and Clunes have become partners in crime
She’s the lesser-known half of the highly successful Philippa Braithwaite-Martin Clunes partnership. And there’s an obvious explanation for that. While Clunes works in front of the camera for their popular Doc Martin series, Braithwaite (the producer) works behind it. The husband-and-wife team are longtime collaborators in television ventures. With the newest Acorn TV Original series, Manhunt, they’re venturing into a new genre – true-crime drama.
A NON-SENSATIONAL APPROACH
Braithwaite (Doc Martin, Sliding Doors) recently shared with Acorn TV what went into the making of Manhunt. The series is the highest-rated U.K. drama of 2019, but it is, she acknowledges, quite a departure for her and Clunes. The subject matter – murder – has never been her “cup of tea.”
“We were not interested in sensationalizing the story in any way... Or in showing the horrible crimes — only in the solving of the crimes.”
So what changed her mind? What first got her interested in this project? For Braithwaite the strength of the script was the biggest reason. Also key was the fact that it was based on the memoirs of a real person – the man who led the hunt for the killer, DCI Colin Sutton.
“We were not interested in sensationalizing the story in any way,” Braithwaite makes clear. “Or in showing the horrible crimes – only in the solving of the crimes.” She wanted to do crime drama in a different way from the usual. That meant telling the story and portraying events in the most realistic manner possible, “as if you are there in the operations room with the detectives.”
Braithwaite had another major concern. “We wanted to be as respectful as we possibly could in how we approached the story,” she says. Throughout she was mindful that what they were depicting were real events – and that there are families involved whose feelings had to be considered. “That was a necessary and difficult thing to do.”
AN ELUSIVE LEADING MAN
How did Clunes land the role of DCI Sutton? It wasn’t immediate. “Very early on, Martin made it clear he had no desire to play a detective,” she admits. But that would change. “He began to understand what we were trying to do and wanted to learn more about it.”
Clunes read over the script Braithwaite was working with. He could see that Sutton and his firsthand accounts were central to it all. When she told him she was meeting the former detective for lunch to talk about the project, Clunes asked if he could join them. His behavior at the restaurant was something Braithwaite had never seen from him before.
“Martin was uncharacteristically quiet during lunch,” she recalls. “That was very odd for him.” Then she began to realize what Clunes was doing: “He was intently watching Sutton the whole time.” The actor had decided this was an individual he wanted to try to capture on-screen.
Did he succeed in his efforts? Braithwaite has no doubts: “He got him as closely as anyone has ever gotten a character.”
MORE DETECTIVE AND MORE "DOC"?
We might just see more of Martin Clunes as the detective in the future. “There is another Sutton case we are looking into at the moment,” Braithwaite confides. As producer, she will have the same exacting criteria about any possible new venture: “It all comes down to how good the script is.”
Speaking of good scripts and future projects, we couldn’t let Braithwaite go without asking her about the upcoming season of Doc Martin, which premieres on Acorn TV in the fall. “I’ll get into trouble if I try any teasers about the new episodes,” she says. “But I can tell you that the Doc will have a challenging time.”
If you recall, we left him at the end of Season 8 in a bit of trouble. He’s facing an official inquiry over his “bedside manner.” Says a smiling Braithwaite of the new season, “It will be business as usual in Portwenn.”
Acorn TV Original Manhunt is now streaming, only on Acorn TV.
Taking the Mystery Out of Mystery Writing
The Queens of Mystery Creator Shares His Secrets
Julian Unthank is a writer who thinks deeply about the crafting of mysteries and detective stories. In past projects he’s been “a gun for hire,” brought in to share the writing responsibilities for an ongoing series. But in Queens of Mystery, he has been able to create something out of whole cloth. He tells us about it in a recent interview with Acorn TV.
PRESENT AT THE CREATION
So where did he start with this current project? Was it the plot? Or perhaps the people? For Unthank, it was neither – it was place. “I started with the location,” he says. “The first episode unfolds at a crime writers festival. I thought that would be a fun place to set a murder mystery.”
There is more than a bit of “fun” in Queens of Mystery, as you’ll discover when you watch it. But Unthank is keen to get back to place. “When I find a location,” he says, “I begin to populate it with characters who would fit that particular environment. The next thing to be decided is who is going to die – and why. Then I build the rest of the show from there.”
THE REASON FOR EIGHT GUESTS AND FOUR DETECTIVES
The first episode opens with eight guest characters. One of them will be the victim. What unites the remaining seven? “Each of them has a deadly sin,” confesses Unthank. “It’s their flaw, the thing that makes them a suspect.” And the role of our four detectives? “Their job is to uncover all the secrets of the seven – to find out what their sins are. Then to whittle the suspects down, until we get the right sin and the right suspect.”
"Mysteries are also a very interactive way to watch television. You're not just a passive member of the audience..."
The detectives (aka the “queens of mystery”) are DS Mattie Stone and her three amateur-investigator aunts. Each represents a different type of detective. Cat is the loner. Beth is the intuitive type. Jane is the uber rational. And Mattie herself is “the normal.” The four women have their own distinctive methods and ways of solving crimes. In the end, they all come to the same conclusion.
THE ENDURING POPULARITY OF WHODUNITS
“People love a puzzle and figuring out a whodunit,” says Unthank. “Mysteries are also a very interactive way to watch television. You’re not just a passive member of the audience – you share your suspicions with the rest of the family, with the people you’re watching it with. In other words, you participate.”
Unthank also identifies another appeal of mysteries. “Detectives are our guardians,” he declares. “We’re all afraid of the dark. So it’s comforting to know that however bad things get, there are people who are going to protect us, to keep the wolves from the door.”
DOUBLE ENJOYMENT
Unthank brings all the elements of good mystery-writing to bear in Queens of Mystery. He has scripted the series so that it can be enjoyed on two different levels. First, you can watch each episode by itself and follow a single case. Second, you can also follow the subplots that run between episodes. These include the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Mattie’s mother when Mattie was a child.
How will Acorn TV viewers respond to this particular British mystery and whodunit? “Knowing this audience, I think they will really connect with Queens of Mystery,” says Unthank. “I hope they get to know the characters as friends. And to see that this show has a massive heart!”
Oh, and it has a great sense of humor, too.
Acorn TV Original Queens of Mystery premieres April 8, only on Acorn TV.
Pulling Rank
A Hierarchy of Detectives
In Britain, police ranks range from Detective Constable (think Dinah Kowalska in No Offence) to Detective Chief Superintendent (think Christopher Foyle in Foyle's War). In between come Detective Sergeant, Detective Inspector, and Detective Chief Inspector. George Gently’s John Bacchus is a DS who wins promotion to DI. Gently himself? He’s a DCI, as are Vera Stanhope, Loch Ness’s Lauren Quigley, and both Barnabys in Midsomer Murders.
(Pictured: DC Bill Wong from Agatha Raisin)
Detectives in Australia and New Zealand go by similar ranks to their counterparts in Britain. Miss Fisher’s Jack Robinson is a DI, for instance, and Brokenwood’s Kristin Sims is a DC. Confusingly, perhaps, Sims sometimes refers to her boss, Mike Shepherd, as “Senior.” That’s because Shepherd has a rank that the British don’t have – he’s a DSS, or Detective Senior Sergeant.
In casual conversation, British cops often just call their boss “guv,” which is short for “governor.” They may address a female ranking officer as “ma’am” – which can often sound like “mum” (and is what one calls the Queen once introduced!). However, many female bosses prefer to go by “guv,” too. Sharp-eared fans of Line of Duty may have picked up another gender-neutral term for boss – “gaffer.”
(Pictured: DS Kate Fleming from Line of Duty)
A few other British police acronyms and abbreviations:
- SIO – the senior investigating officer (like Colin Sutton in Manhunt)
- CID – the Criminal Investigation Department (like Causton CID in Midsomer Murders)
- SOCO – the scenes of crime officer/forensic crime scene investigator (as in “Let’s get the SOCOs in”)
- PC – police constable (an officer in the uniformed branch)
- The Met – not New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, but London’s Metropolitan Police Service
(Pictured: DI Vivienne Deering from No Offence)
Take the Quiz
Which Acorn TV Detective Are You?
The detectives in our Acorn TV mysteries come in all shapes and styles. Some rely on instinct, some on hard work. Some collaborate with others, and some operate as lone wolves. Whatever their approach, all make for irresistible viewing. Whether you’re Viv Deering from No Offence, Detective Murdoch from Murdoch Mysteries or Miss Fisher from Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, our Acorn TV Detectives quiz will solve the case! Find out which of these detectives you’re most like by answering the questions – following the clues! – in our Acorn TV Detectives quiz.
(Pictured: DCS Christopher Foyle from Foyle's War)
Detectives of a Different Kind
Looking for Clues in Paintings, Beneath the Topsoil, and Along the Shoreline
Whether it’s George Gently in the north of England or Rebecka Martinsson in the far north of Sweden, Acorn TV detectives all face the same tasks. They have to sift evidence, consult experts, and collaborate with colleagues. Then they must work with incomplete information and use logic and imagination (their “little grey cells”) to solve the mystery.
Investigators of crime aren’t the only ones who work this way. Acorn TV is also home to investigators who look for clues of another kind in order to solve riddles and piece together the past.
Artistic Fingerprints
Investigators often have to look at things that are hidden from the general public. In the case of The Art Detectives, that means the more than 80 percent of Britain’s publicly owned art collection that is locked away in storage.
The hosts of the art-historian series visit locations across the UK and run the magnifying glass over rarely seen masterpieces. Like crime investigators, their inquiries sometimes take them into the corridors of power, to remote country estates, and into the homes of the great and the good (including prime ministers and earls). Among the suspects under investigation by the Art Detectives? The works of Rembrandt and Rubens.
Digging for Evidence
The sleuths of Time Team have to dig back even further in time than The Art Detectives. Here, the digging is literal. To get it done, the investigative team is bigger – archaeologists, historians, surveyors, geophysicists, and other assorted experts. They all work to uncover the mysteries concealed by topsoil and time.
Time Team travels back to Anglo-Saxon England and Roman Britain – and sometimes beyond. How did a suspiciously pagan-looking statue end up embedded in the wall of a medieval village church? Why was a once-thriving settlement in heavily Romanized West Sussex so suddenly and inexplicably abandoned? Is a huge hill near Cardiff the vanished Iron Age capital of south Wales? Where is Westminster Abbey’s lost sacristy?
In police dramas, hard-pressed detectives sometimes face a deadline of 24 hours to close a case. Tony Robinson and his Time Team colleagues also have to operate under tight time constraints. In each episode they’ve got just three days to solve the puzzle.
Shoreline Sleuths
Abandoned villages, forgotten harbors, lost fortresses, Elizabethan shipwrecks, and footprints that date back 7,000 years. How did they get there? What do they tell us about the people who made them? What secrets do they still hold?
These are just some of the coastal mysteries the Shoreline Detectives set out to solve. They must do so in the teeth of unrelenting nature: rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and sudden storm surges. And as in Time Team, these sleuths are under time pressure to get it all done. They must collect the evidence and make their discoveries before the tide comes back in.
Their ultimate detecting challenge? It just might be this one – the search for a unique Iron Age monument that only emerges from beneath the waters of the English Channel for a few hours a year.
Step Into Your Favorite Series
The Best of Acorn TV: A 7-Day Tour of England
"The Best of Acorn TV was more than just a tour, it was a sneak peak into Agatha Christie's dressing room, chatting with TV personalities, hoisting a beer at Black Swan and eating scones with a well-known author, or two. My husband and I say 'jolly good' and thank you!"
If you've dreamed of strolling through the quaint Cotswolds villages of Agatha Raisin, dining at the luxurious Elizabethan manor where Delicious is set, or visiting the gorgeous Cornwall fishing village made famous by Doc Martin, The Best of Acorn TV: A 7-Day Tour of England is the dream vacation for you! A limited number of seats are still available throughout June and July 2019.