‘Murder in a Small Town’ Review: Fox’s Canadian Mystery Drama Is Almost as Forgettable as Its Title

The title Murder in a Small Town is, at once, perfectly descriptive and not at all. On one hand, the new Fox procedural is exactly what it says on the tin. It is indeed about a homicide — or presumably homicides, plural, though I can’t say for certain since I was only sent the first episode in time to write this review. And it does in fact take place in a tiny village, specifically one called Gibsons, off the west coast of Canada.

On the other, it’s such a generic name that it conveys almost nothing. It offers no indication of what distinguishes this premise from the likes of, say, Hulu’s Under the Bridge or HBO’s True Detective or Peacock’s Poker Face, all of which are also about murders in small towns. Maybe that’s because, at least in the premiere, the show itself doesn’t seem totally sure.

If anything, the most notable quality of Murder in a Small Town, created by Ian Weir and based on the novels by L.R. Wright, is the general vibe exemplified by the hamlet’s perpetual drizzle: gray and chilly, but too soft to seem all that harsh. Much of the plotline gives itself over to a blossoming romance that at times can feel downright cozy in a Hallmark manner.

Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland) is a police chief who’s just moved to Gibsons from the big city, in hopes of a quieter and more peaceful life. Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk) is the local librarian, who’s never been lucky in love but nonetheless finds herself intrigued by this handsome stranger.

After meeting on the apps, the pair hit it off over lunch at a cute café, a leisurely stroll through lush green woods, an impromptu tea party with another neighbor, and for a while the path to happily ever after looks like a smooth and easy one. But Murder in a Small Town is first and foremost a mystery, not a rom-com, and so the flirtation inevitably takes a backseat to crime-solving when 85-year-old Carlyle Burke (R.H. Thompson) is found dead in his home by George Wilcox (James Cromwell), a cantankerous retiree with a soft spot for Cassandra.

Despite the mystery being promised right there in the title, the actual execution of it tends to be lackluster. The clues, especially the red herrings, are exaggerated to the point of parody; you will not believe how hard this show works to try and convince you that a guy depositing small bills into an ATM is inherently suspicious. The solution is ultimately no surprise at all, to either the characters or the audience, and is arrived at more by gut instinct than by clever police work. The “why” is not much more satisfying, rooted as it is in the not-terribly-detailed backstory for a character we barely get to know before they’re written off.

Perhaps in an effort to make up for the dullness of its plotting, the series tries to visualize Karl’s detective skills by having the camera whip around the room, ping-ponging between points of interest, even using flash photo-negative images for further emphasis. But not only are these effects even cheesier than they sound, they’re at odds with the very character the show is trying to spotlight.

Karl isn’t some eccentric, nigh-superheroic genius à la Sherlock Holmes or Will Graham from Hannibal. On the contrary, his whole appeal is that he’s just a regular guy who’s good at noticing things. Though perhaps not very good at explaining them: Even after he spells out to a particularly dim colleague (Aaron Douglas’ Sid) why he’s so sure a certain object has been taken from the crime scene, I could not follow what on earth he was talking about.

The entire case feels like a missed opportunity for world-building. Gibsons seems like it should be a tight-knit community comprised of colorful locals with interwoven histories and probably some dark shared secrets, but only because that’s what we’ve been conditioned to expect from every other tale of murder in a small town. In practice, Karl and Cassandra are the only characters we really get to know in that first 90-minute (including commercials) chapter. Even supporting characters who will presumably become more important later — like Phyllis (Fiona Vroom), Cassandra’s one friend, or Yen (Yellowjackets‘ Mia Lowe), a police transfer fresh out of Philly — barely get a chance to establish more than their names.

At least the two leads are — if not exactly delightful to know, then painless enough to watch. As played by Sutherland, Karl comes across as withdrawn but fundamentally decent, with an air of faint melancholy that might inspire a gal (or a viewer) to trawl for hidden depths. And Cassandra seems up to the challenge, as a girl-next-door type whose natural bubbliness is tempered by a bracing pragmatism.

Though their chemistry doesn’t exactly burn up the screen, there’s a thoughtfulness to the way they’re written as a pairing. He’s so stoic she playfully calls him a sphinx; she’s so blunt he teases that she’s prone to self-sabotage. They’re believable as two closed-off people who find themselves drawn to each other nonetheless. Perhaps in time Murder in a Small Town might take a page of out their playbooks, and finally open up enough to let us know what’s supposed to be so special about this place.