Kristin Kreuk in Fox Thriller Drama

The title Homicide in a Small City is, directly, completely descriptive and in no way. On one hand, the brand new Fox procedural is strictly what it says on the tin. It’s certainly a few murder — or presumably murders, plural, although I can’t say for sure since I used to be solely despatched the primary episode in time to jot down this overview. And it does the truth is happen in a tiny village, particularly one known as Gibsons, off the west coast of Canada.

On the opposite, it’s such a generic title that it conveys nearly nothing. It presents no indication of what distinguishes this premise from the likes of, say, Hulu’s Below the Bridge or HBO’s True Detective or Peacock’s Poker Face, all of that are additionally about murders in small cities. Perhaps that’s as a result of, a minimum of within the premiere, the present itself doesn’t appear completely positive.

If something, probably the most notable high quality of Homicide in a Small City, created by Ian Weir and based mostly on the novels by L.R. Wright, is the overall vibe exemplified by the hamlet’s perpetual drizzle: grey and chilly, however too delicate to appear all that harsh. A lot of the plotline provides itself over to a blossoming romance that at occasions can really feel downright cozy in a Hallmark method.

Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland) is a police chief who’s simply moved to Gibsons from the massive metropolis, in hopes of a quieter and extra peaceable life. Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk) is the native librarian, who’s by no means been fortunate in love however nonetheless finds herself intrigued by this good-looking stranger.

After assembly on the apps, the pair hit it off over lunch at a cute café, a leisurely stroll via lush inexperienced woods, an impromptu tea social gathering with one other neighbor, and for some time the trail to fortunately ever after seems to be like a clean and simple one. However Homicide in a Small City is before everything a thriller, 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 discovered lifeless in his residence by George Wilcox (James Cromwell), a cantankerous retiree with a delicate spot for Cassandra.

Regardless of the thriller being promised proper there within the title, the precise execution of it tends to be lackluster. The clues, particularly the purple herrings, are exaggerated to the purpose of parody; you’ll not imagine how arduous this present works to try to persuade you {that a} man depositing small payments into an ATM is inherently suspicious. The answer is finally no shock in any respect, to both the characters or the viewers, and is arrived at extra by intestine intuition than by intelligent police work. The “why” will not be rather more satisfying, rooted as it’s within the not-terribly-detailed backstory for a personality we barely get to know earlier than they’re written off.

Maybe in an effort to make up for the dullness of its plotting, the sequence tries to visualise Karl’s detective expertise by having the digital camera whip across the room, ping-ponging between factors of curiosity, even utilizing flash photo-negative pictures for additional emphasis. However not solely are these results even cheesier than they sound, they’re at odds with the very character the present is making an attempt to highlight.

Karl isn’t some eccentric, nigh-superheroic genius à la Sherlock Holmes or Will Graham from Hannibal. Quite the opposite, his complete enchantment is that he’s only a common man who’s good at noticing issues. Although maybe not excellent at explaining them: Even after he spells out to a very dim colleague (Aaron Douglas’ Sid) why he’s so positive a sure object has been taken from the crime scene, I couldn’t comply with what on earth he was speaking about.

The whole case seems like a missed alternative for world-building. Gibsons looks as if it ought to be a tight-knit group comprised of colourful locals with interwoven histories and doubtless some darkish shared secrets and techniques, however solely as a result of that’s what we’ve been conditioned to anticipate from each different story of homicide in a small city. In apply, Karl and Cassandra are the one characters we actually get to know in that first 90-minute (together with commercials) chapter. Even supporting characters who will presumably turn out to be extra necessary later — like Phyllis (Fiona Vroom), Cassandra’s one buddy, or Yen (Yellowjackets‘ Mia Lowe), a police switch contemporary out of Philly — barely get an opportunity to ascertain greater than their names.

At the least the 2 leads are — if not precisely pleasant to know, then painless sufficient to look at. As performed by Sutherland, Karl comes throughout as withdrawn however basically first rate, with an air of faint melancholy that may encourage a gal (or a viewer) to trawl for hidden depths. And Cassandra appears as much as the problem, as a girl-next-door sort whose pure bubbliness is tempered by a bracing pragmatism.

Although their chemistry doesn’t precisely expend the display, there’s a thoughtfulness to the best 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 susceptible to self-sabotage. They’re plausible as two closed-off individuals who discover themselves drawn to one another nonetheless. Maybe in time Homicide in a Small City may take a web page of out their playbooks, and at last open up sufficient to tell us what’s alleged to be so particular about this place.