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Recipes for Love and Murder: Series 1
R0 - United Kingdom - Acorn Media Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (18th October 2024). |
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The Film
 For the past twenty years, Maria Purvis (Orphan Black's Maria Doyle Kennedy) has been Tannie Maria, a recipe columnist for The Karoo Gazette operating out the back rooms of the local butcher shop of savvy Doep (Terence Bridgett) in the small South African desert town of Eden. When owner Hattie Wilson ('s ) has to drop Maria's feature in favor of an advice column, Maria puts herself up for the position along with the young Jessie September (Kylie Fisher) who has been covering the town's human interest stories with investigative reporter ambitions but sees the column as a means of connecting with the local disenfranchised in trying to get them to speak up about inequality. Maria's first letter from the town's shopping center Koop's staff accountant Martine Burger (Tinarie van Wyk Loots) expresses her fear of her husband Dirk's (Bennie Fourie) anger and abuse, as well as his jealousy of her close friendship with neighbor Anna Pretorious (Daneel Van Der Walt). This hits close to home as before Maria returned home to South Africa she had a life in Scotland as the wife of cop Mickey (Ashley Dowds) and how long it took her to realize she was in an abusive relationship with a man who disregarded her emotionally, refused to take care of himself, and reacted violently to she tried until she was nearly dead inside. Maria softens her advice that Martine should get out of the relationship complicated by the fact that Dirk does care for and provide for their privately-schooled special needs daughter with a recipe, a touch surprisingly leads to an increase in the gazette's circulation. Maria receives a private response from Martine in which she hints at her plans to get herself and her daughter away from Dirk and that Maria's recipes have allowed her to tread water with her husband until she can act. She also receives a letter from Anna expressing her frustration with Martine's reticence about getting away and pondering whether killing Dirk herself can be considered self-defense. Maria is devastated when Martine is found bludgeoned to death in her kitchen, and even more bewildered when Anna is arrested for the crime (her fingerprints on the weapon and Dirk apparently having an alibi). Acting chief police detective Khaya Meyer (Invictus' Tony Kgoroge) dismisses Maria's insight along with the attempted input of half the town including Martine's gardener Lawrence (Sipho Mahlatshana) whose subsequent murder might be unrelated or suggest that Martine's murder was not a crime of passion with Anna and Dirk having alibis landing in the hospital after putting bullets in each other. Jessie maneuvers her relationships with her overworked night shift nurse mother Charlene (Khadija Heeger) and young love interest deputy Regardt Snyman (Blood & Water's Arno Greeff) in attempting to get information on the case. Maria herself is also drawn into the case out of a feeling of duty to Martine's memory galvanized by the more positive outcomes of her responses and recipes for other writers to the column illustrated throughout the show along with some nudging encouragement and roundabout information from constable Piet Kasan (Elton Landrew) who is more community-minded than Meyer and suspects that Lawrence's mother (and Martine's domestic) Grace (Lee Duru) knows more than she claims about what her son was desperate to tell the police. Hattie, meanwhile, is at war with the town's business counsel and the objections of Koop's owner Cornel van Wyk (Alan Committie) and chauvinist real estate agent Marius Rabie (Dracula 3000's Grant Swanby) to Jessie's coverage of the town's marginalized as communism. When Martine's glamorous fashion designer cousin Candy (Rolanda Marais) arrives from New York to make funeral arrangements and spills the beans about their wealthy family, Meyer turns the investigation in one direction but a series of death threats to Maria and Jessie suggest the motives of the killer and their identity lie elsewhere. Based on the Tannie Maria mystery novels by Sally Andrew, Recipes for Love and Murder with its South African setting seems to be Acorn's attempt to add to their line of modern cozy detective shows something along the lines of the well-received but regrettably-canceled BBC/HBO/Weinstein Company The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (with a side of New Zealand-set The Brokenwood Mysteries with its heavy reliance here on local musicians including covers of songs more familiar to American and British audiences). While South Africa during and after apartheid had long been a recurring tax break haven for foreign productions usually with projects shot there but set elsewhere in the world the country's own film and television product has been largely unexported and what has been was usually as technically-rough as it was bewildering in its tonal whiplash (see Indiepix's lines of "Retro Afrika" DVDs for example). A British/South African co-production Recipes for Love and Murder benefits from stunning backdrops, colorful production design and costumes, and high definition videography but it too can sometimes be as shaky in its camerawork and editing as its "stagey" master shot staging of sequences that veer suddenly from suspense to screwball comedy; which is quite a feat in a show that opens darkly with a domestic violence storyline only for the two main suspects to shoot each other respectively in the big toe and shoulder before drunkenly screwing up their joint attempts at going after other suspects before the show goes back into darker territories (including the implication of cannibalism as well as the potential of a Fatal Attraction-esque fate for Maria's confidante Morag the Chicken) in the finale. Despite these comic elements, the shadow of domestic violence hangs in the background with both flashbacks to Maria's domestic misery in Scotland captured in cooler tones and desaturated colors and modern cutaways to the ambiguous threat of the attempts of Maria's former friend Aileen (Robyn Scott) and her husband (and Mickey's colleague) Gordon (Black Sails' Richard Wright-Firth) to track her down, possibly believing her responsible for Mickey's death which may or may not be as Maria recollects it in a sequence that subtly reference Roald Dahl's much-adapted story "Lamb to the Slaughter". Once the viewer realizes that this is not going to be a "case of the week" show but ten episodes depicting one investigation, the case does feel drawn out and the solution not that fantastic; however, while the show does spin its wheels at times with regard to some plot elements, it does have the space to develop character and a sense of place. While there is no overt racism, it is still evident in the way certain characters pretend that there is no inequality or exploitation along with some subtle condescension and are far more shameless in their sexism, particularly when it comes to females of color while treating any argument with a white female character as pretense to flirtation. Kennedy makes for an interesting and more somber alternative to the other cozy amateur detectives who need diversion at a turning point in their lives, driven by a sense of duty and the feeling of having failed someone who needed help more so than advice (the vignettes depicting her more successful attempts at recipe therapy provide some light as well as sometimes too-broad comedyod as well as some tantalizing food porn imagery). Fisher provides a nice counterpoint as a college-educated black woman who wants to do serious journalism in what some of the locals regard as merely a newsletter, the content of which is beholden to the desires of advertisers. While Steyn is saddled with the clichι of the bold, sexually-active older woman character who says things that shock her younger colleagues, but the actress manages to turn her character into more than a pseudo-matron of the group while still attempting to rein the other two in. Kgoroge gets to show his character's vulnerable side in scenes talking to his daughter over the phone, overlooking the way she takes him for granted as a virtual ATM due to his feelings of inadequacy as a single father after his wife's death; and it is satisfying when he is brutally frank with her during the climax in which her problems pale compared to those caught up in the murder investigation. Fourie and Van Der Welt have some rare emotionally resonant moments but are subject to the series' need for comic relief. Landrew, Heeger, and Duru provides some effortless gravitas as the wise and warm secondary characters while Greef gets to sing and play lovesick (although presumably in the second series there will be conflict between Regardt and Jessie over her desire to go out into the world and the pride he takes in being a police officer). The rest of the characters including the villain and villainous characters are quirky cliches, and one wonders whether a switch to a "case of the week" format or devoting one or two episodes to each case might bring out more "character" in the supporting cast and the village setting. The photography is handsome when it incorporates characters into the authentic locations while scenes shot on set look rather flatly-composed in almost a mutli-camera setup. It will be interesting to see if the next series follows one of the books or merely riffs on them. 
Video
Ten episodes running roughly forty-five minutes each are spread over three dual-layer DVDs. While the backdrops are attractive and detail is good in close-ups, it appears as if a certain softness is as much due to stylistic intent as just the rough edges of the South African co-production with some rolling shutter and flickering undercutting the slickness elsewhere and the beauty of the scenery. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track. Dialogue is always clear and is a mix of English and Afrikaans. Optional HoH subtitles transcribe the English dialogue while burnt-in subtitles in a smaller font translate the Afrikaans. For lines of dialogue in which only part of a phrase or even a single word is in Afrikaans, the burnt-in subtitles transcribe and translate the entire line (and it in these instances where the optional subtitles appear over the burnt-in subtitles requiring the eye to adjust). 
Extras
The sole extra is a very short making-of piece (2:00) featuring sound bytes from the cast, producers, and directors. 
Overall
Recipes for Love and Murder is one of the better Acorn attempts to recreate the classic cozy detective shows of the eighties and nineties thanks to a lovely setting, some subtle social commentary, and a charismatic lead cast.
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