Game, Set, Murdoch has so many things to love, it’s hard to know where to start. It’s got my favourite sport, it uses the Battle of the Sexes to tackle gender equality from a fresh angle, it features a great ensemble cast working with a wonderful director at a beautiful location, the costumes and inventions are among the best I’ve seen on this show, and it’s genuinely funny. Yet, while it does improve on subsequent viewing, these great elements never gel into a great episode. There’s simply not enough at stake, and it’s about as slow as 1913 tennis.

Writer Maureen Jennings makes an inspired choice to transplant the 1973 Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs to the York Lawn Tennis Club in Toronto sixty years earlier. Sure, it’s wildly anachronistic, but it offers the chance to yet again shine a light on how women are viewed by men and how they struggle against the restraints put on them by a society that’s patriarchal through and through. It’s also the starting point for an And Then There Were None type story, except instead of getting murdered, the ladies vying to battle washed-up tennis champion Noah Renard (Tim Rozon) are injured just enough to prevent them from competing. Not due to their innate frailty but because of sabotage.

My mind has probably been warped by watching too much Murdoch Mysteries, but I kept waiting for the sabotage to escalate into murder – in vain, it turns out: Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) never got to make the sign of the cross. That would have been fine – it’s rare, but it’s not the first time – had there been anything more at stake than the financial future of two not particularly likeable people, club owners Pippa and Jeptha Pearson (Jann Arden and Christian Lloyd).

Margaret Serves!

To be fair, if dodgy Oscar Lubbock (Craig Warnock) is to be believed, there could also have been consequences for the Brackenreids (Thomas Craig and Arwen Humphreys): I hope you enjoyed your brief time in high society. And we know Thomas Brackenreid may not care about their social standing, but his wife Margaret very much does. Usually, anyway. Here, she has other things on her mind. I love how it only takes one disparaging comment from her husband to go from rolling her eyes at the idea of a Battle of the Sexes to fully embracing the women’s side of the battle. In fact, the entire episode builds up to the moment where she is the only female tennis player left standing and – with a little data-based coaching from Murdoch – manages to defeat Renard despite being absolutely rubbish at tennis.

It’s just one of many scenes where Arwen Humphreys steals the show with her priceless facial expressions and wonderful comic timing – just look at that determined jaw set when Renard calls her due for the retirement home. Margaret is the star of the episode, and not just because she won the match. However, she is not the only woman spurred into action by men’s belittling comments. Violet Hart (Shanice Banton) protests she is more than capable when Brackenreid suggests they wait for Murdoch to examine the sabotaged racket, and Effie Newsome (Clare McConnell) only needs a teenage boy to ask her How did you become a lady lawyer? Shouldn’t you be at home raising children? to investigate the school gambling ring and drag the boy into the station house.

A Visual Delight

Speaking of this gambling ring, Jennings does a clever job weaving Murdoch and his son Harry (Etienne Kellici) into the story, first by having Detective Watts (Daniel Maslany) ask for his help in getting Miss Hart ready for her tennis match, and later through the gambling ring, which links the school storyline to the tennis club. Having Murdoch build a ball machine to improve Violet’s return speed is very Murdoch, and using the cannon arm of the mechanical man from last season’s The Incredible Astonishing Adventures of Constable George Crabtree is a nice touch.

Visually, the episode is a delight. Filmed amid the fall colours at the oft-used Woodlands Estate in Barrie, Ontario, the tennis club and court look splendid – although I have my doubts that a 1913 tennis court would have an artificial surface. Director Elsbeth McCall makes the most of the contrast between the green of the court and the cream of the tennis costumes, uses sweeping camera movements, and finds multiple interesting camera angles – I particularly liked the scene where Murdoch looks into the ball machine, then steps away to show Miss Hart standing ready with a racket in her hand.

Costume designer Joanna Syrokomla and her team have come up with the most spectacular outfits for the tennis club members, including the somewhat more practical tennis costumes that serve as a metaphor for women’s rights: Short skirt, short sleeves. A sash instead of hat. You can’t be serious. As an aside: I wasn’t too impressed with Jann Arden’s portrayal of a character who is supposed to be all about etiquette yet sounds harsh and loud, but kudos to whoever came up with the John McEnroe reference.

A Funny Ace

If the number of times I laughed out loud is an indication for a successful episode, Game, Set, Murdoch serves an ace. From Watts’ interactions with Brackenreid – All right, get your tongue back in your mouth – to the underwhelming first iteration of the ball machine to Margaret’s Are you sure you don’t mean sober up, it’s all very well written and even better executed. Murdoch is pretty cool at times, for instance when he casually catches a ball in the midst of arresting a suspect (though perhaps less so when wearing the dealer visor – I do hope you don’t plan on wearing that hat outside, says Harry).

And yet, and yet… Despite all these great elements, the episode seems to choose style over substance. In addition to it being slow and therefore predictable (viewers have plenty of time to think about who the culprit is) and lacking grit, there are a couple of unfortunate errors. Most glaring of them is Violet Hart saying that Jack Pritchett burned down a man’s shop, whereas in Fashion Crimes she found it was Ephraim Currant (Emmanuel Kabongo) who burned that shop and paid Pritchett to take the fall. It’s the type of continuity error that really shouldn’t occur, especially not in the same season.