Watched any good mystery/detective shows/movies?

[KyriakosCH]

In general I avoid them, because the plots in most of them just aren't realistic and so wouldn't play out that way irl. A good example of that would be, imo, Columbo.



(that's Johnny Cash, by the way)

While Falk is a very sympathetic character, the plots in Columbo tend to be resting on convenient errors and are rather forced. That's certainly not only a trait of Columbo, which at least has redeeming elements (tone, entertainment value), for example it is much worse in that Mentalist tv series where (in my impression) really everything is artificial.

I found that some of Agatha Christie's works are a little more serious and believable, though even in her case (despite the higher level when compared to tv writers) convenience and forced action/mistakes also exist. It's just that those coexist with good ideas for diversions/misleading of the police, which might actually work, so are more authentic in that sense.

Anyway, enough with the intro If you have any suggestions for good detective shows, I am interested to read!

[arj0n]

Here are a few. This little list is a mixed bag of series and mini series (no movies), ranging from serious to more funny lighthearted shows:

Series / Mini Series:
Dark Winds (2022)
Magpie Murders (2022)
Only Murders In The Building (2021)
The Pale Horse (2020)
The Head (2020)
The ABC Murders (2018)
Ordeal By Innocent (2018)
Rig 45 (2018)
Beau Séjour (2016)
And Then There Were None (2015)
Trapped (2015)
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012)

Movies:
The Outfit (2022)
Death on the Nile (2022)
The Silencing (2021)
An Inspector Calls (2015)

[KyriakosCH]

Thank you, arjOn!
I will check out those I haven't already watched... Which of these would you say is the "most serious"? I don't mind some lightheartedness, but not at the expense of believability 

[arj0n]

Very roughly sorted from serious to lighthearted:

Series / Mini Series:
Dark Winds (2022)
Ordeal By Innocent (2018)
Trapped (2015)
The Head (2020)
Rig 45 (2018)
Beau Séjour (2016)
The Pale Horse (2020)
The ABC Murders (2018)
And Then There Were None (2015)
Magpie Murders (2022)
Only Murders In The Building (2021)
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012)

Movies:
An Inspector Calls (2015)
The Outfit (2022)
The Silencing (2021)
Death on the Nile (2022)

[KyriakosCH]

Thanks again, you rule 

[Stupot]

@Arjon, where can one watch Magpie Murders? I enjoyed the book but had no idea they’d made a TV series out of it.

[arj0n]

@stupod, one can watch Magpie Murders via Amazon Prime.

Spoiler

(or dl the ION10 release)

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[KyriakosCH]

 

Hm, I will try to find An Inspector Calls...

[arj0n]

Hm, I will try to find An Inspector Calls...

That one has a great storyline.

[KyriakosCH]

A good adaptation of a story (then play, with some ending changes, which this movie uses) by Agatha Christie is this one:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051201/

Due to how old it is, you should easily be able to find it online (possibly also on youtube)

The two main actors are good, and the plot is imo very elegant 

[Danvzare]

While Falk is a very sympathetic character, the plots in Columbo tend to be resting on convenient errors and are rather forced.

If you're ever interested in the epitome of forced convenient errors, may I recommend Dirk Gently. It was originally a pair of books by Douglas Adams (known for making Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) that manages to tie together a series of completely random and unrelated events into somewhat compelling mysteries with brilliant humour to boot. It even got two TV shows, one by BBC 4 (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and another one by BBC America (which I didn't enjoy as much).

But as for proper head scratching mysteries that can be legitimately solved by the viewer without trying to anticipate the inevitable twists that the writer will shoehorn in. Those are unfortunately quite rare.
May I recommend Veronica Mars though. It had three seasons, followed by a movie, followed by another season. I found the individual mysteries to be quite engaging, and the overarching mystery to be solvable in my opinion. Although I'm probably not the best judge for those kind of things. 

[arj0n]

A good adaptation of a story (then play, with some ending changes, which this movie uses) by Agatha Christie is this one:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051201/

Due to how old it is, you should easily be able to find it online (possibly also on youtube)

The two main actors are good, and the plot is imo very elegant 

The 2016 2-ep miniseries is also a nice one

[arj0n]

May I recommend Veronica Mars though.

Interesting, somehow this series slipped under my radar. Gonna check it out for sure, thanks for the recommendation.

[KyriakosCH]

While Falk is a very sympathetic character, the plots in Columbo tend to be resting on convenient errors and are rather forced.

If you're ever interested in the epitome of forced convenient errors, may I recommend Dirk Gently. It was originally a pair of books by Douglas Adams (known for making Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) that manages to tie together a series of completely random and unrelated events into somewhat compelling mysteries with brilliant humour to boot. It even got two TV shows, one by BBC 4 (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and another one by BBC America (which I didn't enjoy as much).

But as for proper head scratching mysteries that can be legitimately solved by the viewer without trying to anticipate the inevitable twists that the writer will shoehorn in. Those are unfortunately quite rare.
May I recommend Veronica Mars though. It had three seasons, followed by a movie, followed by another season. I found the individual mysteries to be quite engaging, and the overarching mystery to be solvable in my opinion. Although I'm probably not the best judge for those kind of things. 

I will have a look at that too
Regarding believable plots, at least the overarching plot (not all parts of the films, and I haven't read the original stories) is solid in Christie's (similar to each other) 4.50 from Paddington and After the Funeral. The second one is much more famous and had a decent film adaptation (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057334/) which is ok as far as the main plot/diversion goes. The tv series with Suchet also has an episode on this, but imo they made the family needlessly convoluted.
The trick used in 4.50 from Paddington is imo a parallelism to that used in After the Funeral, and could work to fool the police/authorities.

[Snarky]

(Vague spoilers for various Agatha Christie mysteries.)

I sometimes wonder if Agatha Christie suffered from face blindness or something, because a disturbing number of her plots depend on people failing to recognize people they meet. (Most infamously in one novel where a woman has married the same man twice without recognizing him.) This is also a problem in adaptations, where you can always see where things are going as soon as the outrageous theater disguises show up. Though as Ali has pointed out on Twitter, in the 1957 Witness for the Prosecution they actually do a great job with Marlene Dietrich's makeup; it's the cockney accent that's the problem.

Which is to say that I don't quite agree that the plots of (at least one of) the mysteries you mention are entirely solid and believable, Kyriakos.

Spoiler

In After the Funeral, the family hasn't seen their aunt Cora lo these many years, and don't realize that she's actually an impostor. Fair enoughâ€"perhaps. But then they all meet the impostor again in her real identity within a few days, and none of them recognize her. That I find very hard to believe.

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(In fact, Christie's obsession with this theme goes back to a Capgras-like recurring nightmare she used to have as a child, of a monster she called "the Gunman," who could transform and impersonate anyone she lovedâ€"like her mother or sisterâ€"and would only be recognizable by his pale blue eyes. As she writes in Crooked House: "Because this is just what a nightmare is. Walking about among people you know, looking in their facesâ€"and suddenly the faces changeâ€"and it's not someone you know any longerâ€"it's a strangerâ€"a cruel stranger.")

[KyriakosCH]

(Vague spoilers for various Agatha Christie mysteries.)

I sometimes wonder if Agatha Christie suffered from face blindness or something, because a disturbing number of her plots depend on people failing to recognize people they meet. (Most infamously in one novel where a woman has married the same man twice without recognizing him.) This is also a problem in adaptations, where you can always see where things are going as soon as the outrageous theater disguises show up. Though as Ali has pointed out on Twitter, in the 1957 Witness for the Prosecution they actually do a great job with Marlene Dietrich's makeup; it's the cockney accent that's the problem.

Which is to say that I don't quite agree that the plots of (at least one of) the mysteries you mention are entirely solid and believable, Kyriakos.

(In fact, Christie's obsession with this theme goes back to a Capgras-like recurring nightmare she used to have as a child, of a monster she called "the Gunman," who could transform and impersonate anyone she lovedâ€"like her mother or sisterâ€"and would only be recognizable by his pale blue eyes. As she writes in Crooked House: "Because this is just what a nightmare is. Walking about among people you know, looking in their facesâ€"and suddenly the faces changeâ€"and it's not someone you know any longerâ€"it's a strangerâ€"a cruel stranger.")

Interesting quote!

Hm, yes, in Witness the make-up act isn't ruining the film at all, as you said they did a great job. And the fact that it was originally a story (then play) means the writer wouldn't be to blame for lack of realism in such a case (and yes, that motif is there in other works, which I won't refer to so as to avoid spoilers). But even in Witness, it isn't very important since the heroine is a stage actress/performer in the first place.

I don't agree that (at least the ones I mentioned) Christie's plots are as artificial as one tends to see in tv shows. At least Christie doesn't have the "killer made a stupid mistake/miscalculation" all that often (it does happen, but isn't central/things spiral down by that point). Compare to something as ridiculous as the 7-season The Mentalist, where essentially half the episodes are solved by "instant hypnotism" 

[Snarky]

I added in a more explicit discussion of why I don't find one of the plots you mentioned very believable:

Spoiler

In After the Funeral, the family hasn't seen their aunt Cora lo these many years, and don't realize that she's actually an impostor. Fair enoughâ€"perhaps. But then they all meet the impostor again in her real identity within a few days, and none of them recognize her. That I find very hard to believe.

[close]

I think the difficulty many Christie adaptations have had in making believable disguises when the same character appears under multiple identities demonstrates the flaw in those plots: they wouldn't actually work in reality. That objection may be harder to demonstrate when reading a book and you have no portraits to refer to, but it's still a problem with the realism of the story.

As for the other one you mention:

Spoiler

I had huge issues with the logic of the murder in 4.50 from Paddington, but I forget exactly what it was. Perhaps that the killer would obviously fall under suspicion for the mass poisoning towards the end of the book? I do recall being frustrated because Miss Marple doesn't actually solve the case in a meaningful sense: she never demonstrates a chain of deductions or inferences from the evidence at hand that points to the murderer. Instead she goes the cheap "TV detective" way of just intuiting who the guilty person is and then setting them up to incriminate themselves.

[close]

I don't agree that (at least the ones I mentioned) Christie's plots are as artificial as one tends to see in tv shows. At least Christie doesn't have the "killer made a stupid mistake/miscalculation" all that often (it does happen, but isn't central/things spiral down by that point). Compare to something as ridiculous as the 7-season The Mentalist, where essentially half the episodes are solved by "instant hypnotism" 

I'm a huge Christie fan, but I think by any standard her plots are highly artificial. They are very ingenious puzzles, but they are not realistic crimes, or realistic investigations of crimes. (And that's not what she was going for.) And of course, in real crimes killers make stupid mistakes all the time.

To take a favorite, Five Little Pigs:

Spoiler

the crime itself is fairly realistic for Christie, in that it's a pretty straightforward murder that gets obfuscated by a cover-up based on a misunderstanding. And the investigation (with the twist that Poirot has to investigate retrospectively, fifteen years after it happened) is well-plotted and engagingâ€"but it is not realistic. The testimonies are far too accurate, far too revealing (the murderer provides a written testimony that includes key facts that allow the murder to be brought home to them, while other witnesses give away secrets they've desperately tried to conceal), and Poirot's deductions hinge on recollections of details that simply could not be reliably recovered after all that time. (Like, what flower smell was in a room on a certain occasion when you entered it fifteen years ago, even though you didn't note it at the time, or precisely what words were used in an argument you overheardâ€"and misunderstoodâ€"as you were passing by a room.)

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It's artificial as hell, but very satisfying.

[KyriakosCH]

I personally like the use of believable misdirection, and don't focus on the more debatable part of "couldn't identify person x was the same as y".
In the case of 4.50 from Paddington (and After the Funeral) :

Spoiler

A known fact, which is coincidental, is used to misdirect the police into thinking the murder has to do with a specific location and family. In Paddington the victim could have been a person whose looks the family wasn't really aware of, but knew she existed, and in After the aunt hasn't been seen in years. But in both plots this element (mistaken identity) is secondary to the trick, which is about implicating a location/group of people in something they have nothing to do with.
It may seem artificial to you, but I don't agree and in my view it is elegant and self-supporting; it creates developments naturally, instead of forcing them (which is what happens with convenient/inconvenient inputs in shows where very visible x is inserted to bring about y). Compare to things in tv-written shows, that don't even bother to aspire to elegance and rely blatantly on favorable coincidence - a good example would be the Cassavetes episode in Columbo, where Cassavetes not only makes a series of mistakes, but somehow isn't seen while moving in and out of a car garage because his raincoat and sunglasses make him invisible.
But even worse than that is how he got caught, because he was too stupid to prepare a story about how he got the flower back, despite Columbo very clearly asking him about it and in the meantime being a pest and suspecting him 

[close]

[Snarky]

I'm not disputing that Agatha Christie is a highly skilled constructor of elegant and satisfying puzzles, and I think the misdirect functions well as a twist in these stories (and other times she employed the same trick, particularly in The A.B.C. Murders; The Body in the Library also has a good variation on the gimmick). But are they "believable" in the sense of "these are plans a murderer would in reality make and carry out in order to not get caught" and "these plans would in fact work" (that is, reduce their risk of getting caught)? Hardly.

And again, realistically speaking, criminals do make mistakes, and difficult cases are often solved by fortuitous coincidences. Insisting that the successful solution of the case should not rely on mistakes by the criminal or on coincidence is not to insist on realism or objective believability, but on what is elegant and narratively satisfyingâ€"i.e. artificial.

To get back on topic, I haven't seen many detective mysteries I liked on TV or film recently that aren't on arj0n's list. (Hugh Laurie's adaptation of Why Didn't They Ask Evans was a disappointment after a promising start, with the third episode so rushed as to be almost incoherent.) But let's see…

Series:
Sharp Objects
Big Little Lies
Trial & Error (comedy)
American Vandal (true-crime spoof)

Films:
The Dry (haven't actually seen it, but it got decent reviews and I liked the book a lot)
A Simple Favor
Knives Out (the solution is far-fetched, but still a good film)
A Hero (more of a drama, but has some mystery elements)
Burning

I'll also throw in a book series: The A Good Girl's Guide to Murder trilogy (plus wholly unnecessary prequel novella) by Holly Jackson. Like Veronica Mars, it's a very satisfying mix of YA tropes and proper hardboiled detective mystery (the books ultimately get very dark, as events take their toll on the main character and the people around her), and like Only Murders in the Building it uses the idea of a true-crime podcast host as amateur detective. The books are also really well produced, full of reproductions of the various evidence (photos, interview transcripts, web records, Google Maps printouts, etc.), very much like an updated version of the old-school whodunnits that featured a map of the scene of the crime, and the audio books similarly take advantage of the podcast conceit, with the interview transcripts performed by a full cast. I had some quibbles with each book, both in plotting and prose, but overall they are very compelling. Only, if you do check it out, make sure which version you get: the original version is set in the UK, but the American version of the books relocates it to New England, along with some other changes.

[KyriakosCH]

I will have a look