Frankie Drake Mysteries Review: Ladies in Red/Summer in the City (Season 1 Episodes 2 and 3)

Frankie Drake Mysteries continues its first season with a pair of episodes that delve further into the cast of supporting characters that surround the series’ leading lady.

Neither Season 1 Episode 2, “Ladies in Red” nor Season 1 Episode 3, “Summer in the City” are particularly twisty or exciting mysteries, in and of themselves. But they do provide a great showcase for characters who aren’t Frankie to take center stage.

And there are plenty of them. Who happen, not incidentally, to all be women.

This show is honestly so refreshing. Where the actual 1920s like this in Toronto? Just girl power all the time? Way to go, Canada.

In “Ladies in Red,” Frankie and Trudy are hired to investigate the workers at a local factory after its owner is the victim of a home invasion. Somehow, his obsession with communists comes into play, and Trudy finds herself going undercover to root out the red scare.

For those, like me, who may have found the Communist stuff a little jarring, especially given that this show takes place in the early 1920s, surprise, that’s actually vaguely historically accurate. Turns out that there was an initial widespread panic about this very issue in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution in 1917 that at least kind of explains his attitude.

Luckily, the Communist stuff isn’t really the point of the story, thank goodness, though it does make for some awkward moments. “Ladies in Red” is much more about the idea of labor equality, fair working conditions and sexism, which leaves plenty of opportunity to do the sort of girl-power signaling that this show seems to love best.

There’s literally a moment where Frankie and a virtual army of women workers appear outside their corrupt boss’s office to rescue Trudy and demand fair wages and working conditions.

I can’t lie, it’s a wildly satisfying scene. Is this remotely realistic? No. But it sure is fun. It’s what we wished would have happened back then, even though we know it probably didn’t.

But the bulk of “Ladies in Red” – and “Summer in the City,” – is really about the characters, though. We spend some proper time with Trudy, and Frankie Drake Mysteries rather deftly manages to portray the very real concerns of families and people of color during this time period.

Trudy may get to be a private investigator and go undercover in glamourous outfits, but her family is still a victim of racism and poverty in ways that Frankie’s clearly never has been. Her younger brother is torn between getting an education and leaving school to get a job, and her mother has to ask Trudy for money to pay the rent.

Mary Shaw’s character is also something of a feminist statement. Raised in a law enforcement family, she’s currently employed as a Morality Officer, which means she’s stuck reprimanding women for wearing skirts that are too short and giving local business tickets for conducting business on a Sunday.

It’s not exactly the career she dreamed of, to put it mildly.

But, Mary is also extremely determined and dedicated and, through her friendship with Frankie and Trudy, still gets to learn about the art of investigation – even if it doesn’t really appear as though she can tell anybody about it.

Nevertheless, she still gets to play a significant part in solving the murder at the heart of “Ladies in Red,” doing some investigating on her own and putting several key pieces together. (With the help of a charming local horse. Yes, really.)

Even Flo gets to show off a little bit, thanks to her apparently vast knowledge of maggots and dead bodies. (Yikes!)

This all makes the world of the Frankie Drake Mysteries feel very full and rich, and as though it’s inhabited by real people, not just folks who are there to make Frankie herself look smart. Instead, these other women all have their own equal and complimentary talents.

Unfortunately, “Summer in the City” is less focused on the women of Drake Investigations, and more a group of irritating men, who include everyone from the son of one of Frankie’s wartime flings to the man who looks like he’ll be her next one, Ernest Hemingway.

At the moment, it feels as though Frankie Drake Mysteries kind of wants us ready to ship Frankie and Hemingway, but I’m so not there yet. And don’t particularly want to be.

Part of this is due to the fact that I really dislike the actual Ernest Hemingway, and have some idea of what his real-life life story was like. (Which, if you didn’t know, involved a lot of booze, womanizing and generally treating the women in his life like crap.)

I know this is a fictionalized version of the famous author, but ugh I have only spent three episodes with Frankie and I already know she can do better.

But, maybe terrible men are kind of her thing, if her ongoing flirtation with her boxing friend, the story of her wartime ex, and her inability to tell said ex’s son, who turns up with a dead body in his trunk, to take a hike after he lies to her about his case repeatedly.

At least we get to see Chantel Riley sing in a really glam outfit. That’s got to count for something?

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• I am going to need extremely regular updates on Mary and Murph!!
• There’s honestly something so refreshing about watching this show and just seeing capable, diverse women doing the jobs (detectives, cops, pathologists) that are traditionally held by men in this genre. I know that many women went into the workforce during the war and stayed there afterward, so this trend is fairly historically accurate, but also it kind of feels like magic at the same time?
• The one thing that kind of bothers me is that Trudy is apparently Frankie’s employee rather than her partner? I think? I sort of don’t like the power dynamics that kind of implies, but I guess it is ultimately Frankie’s name on the door?
• The best man we met in these two episodes was probably the drunk milkman. I mean, I understand that Frankie Drake Mysteries is all about girl power, but whew, there must be some non-terrible men somewhere in Toronto?

What did you think of this episode of Frankie Drake Mysteries? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Frankie Drake Mysteries airs Saturdays at 7/6c on Ovation.

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