They go where saner souls would never tread, sticking their noses into situations almost guaranteed to turn troublesome.
“The amateur sleuth is alive and well,” said Kellie Martin, one of three green gumshoes who will track crime in prime time on a new mystery series on cable’s Hallmark Channel.
Mystery buffs will get plenty of chances for guesswork, as Hallmark features a different two-hour program each Friday at 9 p.m. “Mystery Woman” begins the rotation this Friday. Then “McBride,” starring John Larroquette, airs on Jan. 14 and “Jane Doe,” played by Lea Thompson, debuts Jan. 21.
“The mystery is a perennial, familiar kind of storytelling, and yet it’s a neglected form that has not had a lot of TV play,” said Dean Hargrove, who created “McBride” and is executive producer of “Jane Doe.” Hargrove, who also created “Columbo,” said most of what viewers think of as mystery programming today – such as “CSI” – is all about forensics.
“The star of the show is the flashlight and the microscope, and although they’ve been clever with casting, you don’t know anything about the people as characters.”
That’s hardly the case on the Hallmark mysteries.
“Mystery Woman”: As photographer and mystery bookstore owner Samantha Kinsey, Kellie Martin reprises the role she played last year in a Hallmark film of the same name.
“She’s your basic Nancy Drew-Jessica Fletcher combo,” Martin said. “She’s so nosy, she’s really smart, she can’t keep quiet and she wants to help.”
In the first episode, Samantha hosts a book signing for three famous mystery authors, one of whom is the target for murder.
“It’s a classic murder mystery,” Martin said. “… This is set in a small town, but every three weeks, people die, usually by murder.”
Joyce Burditt, executive producer of “Mystery Woman,” credits Martin’s performance as one reason viewers will want to watch more.
“The person playing that central character is crucial,” Burditt said, citing veterans Andy Griffith in “Matlock” and Dick Van Dyke in “Diagnosis: Murder,” which she created.
“An amateur sleuth has to deceive people,” Burditt said. “She can’t flash a badge. She has to do it in other, more devious, ways. Kellie is very good at this, playing it absolutely straight.”
“McBride”: John Larroquette described cop-turned-lawyer Mike McBride as a cynic whose “humor has to come out sideways.”
In the first episode, McBride, who prefers underdogs as clients, defends a young, beautiful wife who stands accused of poisoning her wealthy, elderly husband with a glass of warm milk at bedtime.
McBride’s sidekicks are a trust-fund public defender who quits his job to be a well-dressed errand boy for McBride, and a tan mixed-breed pooch named Jesse, an unlikely partner for McBride, who isn’t exactly an animal lover.
“Jane Doe”: Cathy Davis is a suburban mom who hauls groceries in an SUV and works at home as a freelance puzzle creator. But she also juggles another part-time gig: solving complicated, top-secret government-related puzzles for the national security council. Her husband and two kids have no clue about Mom’s secret sleuthing.
“She is a really fun character because you see all her possibilities,” said Lea Thompson, who plays Cathy Davis. “If they decide she can fly a plane or be a sharpshooter, or a dancer – she is supposed to be so great at disguising herself, so she could do anything. She’s an odd superhero mom.”
Davis has sprightly interplay with cohort Frank Darnell (played by Joe Penny), which Thompson likened to “those 1930s movies, where people wisecrack back at each other.”
In the first episode, Cathy helps hunt down a missing scientist and his highly classified software, all the while refereeing bouts between her adolescent son and her aspiring-cheerleader daughter.
“It’s how all moms feel, like they’re saving the world but nobody notices,” Thompson said.
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