One of the advantages of doing a show for nineteen years is an ever-growing roster of memorable returning characters. Every so often viewers get to enjoy people like Terrence Meyers, James Pendrick, Louise Cherry, and the entire Newsome clan, and the worlds they inhabit. Not all of them may be particularly likeable, but they’re certainly remarkable and always hilarious, and they play just as big a part in Murdoch Mysteries’ ongoing success as the main cast does.

Twelve years ago, the character of Roger Newsome – of the Mimico Newsomes – burst onto our screens. Since then, out of Roger has grown an entire world of zany characters: his sister Ruth (Siobhan Murphy) and brother Rupert (Cyrus Lane), Rupert’s wife Lucinda Helmsworthy (Kira Guloien), her brother Bernard (Graham Cuthbertson), their dear departed Dadah, and their cousin Effie (Clare McConnell) and her parents (emphatically not of the Mimico Newsomes and therefore a lot saner). Not to mention their neighbours, the Fanshaws (or Featherstonhaughs), who are as unapologetically bonkers as the Newsomes.

Viable Suspects

This ecosystem is perfect for a period murder mystery show. These people are as rich as Croesus, so they get to explore every new fad (cars, aeroplanes) and while away their time on leisure activities (games, cricket, fox hunts). They’re not particularly scrupulous, so if there is a murder, every one of them is a viable suspect. Rupert and Lucinda only got married because Rupert was afraid not to, and have since tried to stage a fake affair as a reason for divorce (Rupert), ordered someone to behead the other (also Rupert), tried to kidnap their spouse (still Rupert), staged their own kidnap and cut off their own finger (Lucinda), and vowed to spend every day for the rest of my life to make you as miserable as I possibly can (Lucinda again). No wonder, then, that when Lucinda is murdered, Rupert is the only suspect.

In a nice bit of storytelling, The Fall of the House of Newsome enters the episode some time after the murder and jumps straight into the court case. Rupert, apparently not familiar with the adage a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, has eschewed representation by Effie and is defending himself. He soon admits I don’t know what I’m doing! and escapes from the law library, setting up a madcap investigation by Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) that I won’t even attempt to summarise – but believe me, Simon McNabb’s script does make sense in the end. I promise.

Built Different

While the murder mystery itself is perfectly enjoyable in its own right, it’s the characters’ glorious quirks that elevate the episode. People like Rupert, Lucinda, and Ruth may be entirely over the top, but they’re still layered. From one scene to the next, they may swing from clueless to intelligent and from loving to cavalier. Well, mostly clueless and cavalier, but still. In Mimico, the rich are simply built different. Their view of the world is so warped that Lucinda would think that killing her brother’s favourite horse and feeding it to him is the most wondrous joke, that Rupert is fine with Lucinda getting lucky with Bucky because somebody had to, and that Ruth would ask her husband Henry Higgins (Lachlan Murdoch) to arrest someone else for murder … one of those people that’s just sort of around, you know? Not a real person.

It’s not that they are amoral, exactly – they just don’t have their priorities in order and have more money than common sense. As we’ve seen in pretty much every episode featuring Rupert, he would rather hang for murder than have his pride hurt or admit to cheating at a game. Bernard was sentenced to six years in prison for murdering his neighbour over the death of a horse, and now kills his own sister when he finds out what was in that tartare he enjoyed so much – so she can no longer transfer half the estate to him. And when Murdoch tells Effie she is no longer part of this investigation, Rupert wags his finger at her in mock disapproval, even though she’s the one who helped him and that’s how she got into trouble in the first place.

Social Linguistics

I love how McNabb uses language to show where on the social ladder his characters are. Someone like Rupert, who is a non-practising cardiac surgeon, enjoys playing with language – a soupçon of confusion – and is clearly intelligent, but doesn’t feel the need to show it off all the time. His neighbours used to be called Fanshaw but are now the Featherstonhaughs – it’s pronounced the same, but it certainly looks more posh. Still doesn’t mean that Bucky Featherstonhaugh recognises a simple word like abet, though. Bernard tries to bamboozle Ruth with his deeper understanding of their impasse: I assume you’re familiar with criminal forfeiture? – Why would you assume that?, sprinkling (but mispronouncing) buzzwords like ergo, ipso facto, prima facie into the conversation. In contrast, Effie simply uses words because they are in her vocabulary, not even noticing she does so until Ruth calls her out on it: You always have to be so high and mighty.

Pluses and Minuses

At the risk of sounding just as high and mighty, I did notice a couple of things in this episode that did not make a lot of sense. Apparently, Lucinda’s finger has grown back since she cut it off in Season 15. Then again, maybe that’s a Mimico thing, since Rupert seems to have the fastest-growing beard ever. I also thought Lucinda killing a horse to spite her brother was out of character: she loved horses more than she did people. And finally, in what looks like an editing error: why was Effie standing stock-still while Murdoch was crouching down in the library?

But these are minor quibbles, more than offset by everything I loved about this episode. For one thing, Murdoch was as sharp as a tack, seeing right through Effie, Rupert, and Bucky (Kyle Gatehouse). By the way, I can totally see why Rupert and Bucky would be top chums. I liked the subtle clues in the very first scene: Effie pushing her plate away, Lucinda looking at Bernard as he eats the tartare, the mention of Bernard’s time in prison. I adored Sherren Lee’s direction, for instance the way she used the barbershop mirror to frame four characters in the same shot, and how she visualised Rupert revising his statement by dissolving two shots of him standing up from the couch together. And as always, the locations (filmed at Cruickston Park) and costumes (Rupert’s motoring clothes!) were wonderful.

Poor dear departed Lucinda. Nothing, nothing, shall ever replace her in my heart.