Art Detectives – U&Drama
Murder most foul was once the preserve of the aristocracy. Golden Age writers Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham all cast toffs as their sleuths.
Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes counted half the titled families of England and Europe among their clients.
But nowadays, it’s rare to see an earl accused of murder, especially in his own country mansion. That’s the classless society for you.
So it was a pleasantly familiar sensation to see Lord Astleigh, the 13th Earl of Halesby, chief among the suspects in Art Detectives, a brisk whodunnit starring Stephen Moyer as DI Mick Palmer, head of the Metropolitan Police Heritage Crime department.
Heritage crime has nothing to do with historic crime, which mostly involves Radio 1 DJs and BBC children’s presenters.
DI Palmer is an expert on every aspect of art, from Grecian marbles to post-surrealists.
He’s Scotland Yard’s answer to forgery spotter Philip Mould from Fake Or Fortune — the sort of policeman who takes one look at a suspect and identifies the ‘cadmium red’ of her lipstick as the trademark colour of painter Francis Bacon.
Art Detectives is a brisk whodunnit starring Stephen Moyer (pictured, right) as DI Mick Palmer, head of the Metropolitan Police Heritage Crime department
Philip Mould would be lost without his partner Fiona Bruce, and Palmer, though he is prickly and mistrustful, has discovered he needs an assistant of his own.
I’m shocked the Met imagined one man could manage all the art-related serial killers and homicidal maniacs on his own.
In the first episode, first broadcast on AcornTV earlier this year, Palmer recruits PC Shazia Malik (Nina Singh) from Yorkshire police, where she is threatened with traffic duties despite her eye for an original Old Master.
Her old boss is such a Philistine that if you mention The Girl With A Pearl Earring, he thinks of the Scarlett Johansson film and not the Vermeer masterpiece.
What do they teach ’em at police college these days?
Palmer and Malik are investigating the murder of a National Gallery expert, bopped over the head with a hammer as he prepares for a portrait exhibition — all the 13 earls of Halesby, beginning with wicked Lord Percy.
Lord P, it transpires, made the family fortune in the Transatlantic slave trade, when it could be more profitable to sink a ship and claim the insurance, killing hundreds of people, than to complete the voyage.
The current earl, naturally enough, is quite keen to keep this fact out of the guidebooks. It’s a convincing motive, there’s no doubt about that.
In the first episode, first broadcast on AcornTV earlier this year, Palmer recruits PC Shazia Malik (Nina Singh, pictured, right) from Yorkshire police
Palmer is an engaging eccentric in his red duffle coat, like Paddington Bear turned private eye.
But the format feels slightly formulaic, clearly conceived for the U.S. market, with a self-contained mystery each week and a set number of suspects squeezed into each hour-long episode.
It falls short of the standard of complexity and cleverness set by mystery maestros such as Anthony Horowitz with his Magpie Murders. This is no Old Master, then, but a passable imitation.
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