Frankie Drake Mysteries Review: No Friends Like Old Friends (Season 3 Episode 1)

Frankie Drake Mysteries returns in Season 3 Episode 1, “No Friends Like Old Friends,” an installment that feels fairly different from the series’ first two seasons. Whether that will be a good thing or not, we’ll have to wait and see.

When Frankie Drake Mysteries kicks off its third season, some things feel very different. And not just Frankie’s hair, though that is one of the most jarring changes. Gone are the sleuth’s signature red locks, replaced instead by a very modern blonde bob. 

Presumably, this hairdo change is because star Lauren Lee Smith got tired of dying her natural hair color every year for the show. (And if Game of Thrones has taught us anything, it’s that we can all spot an unfortunate wig at 50 paces.) 

But Frankie as a blonde is strange — and it’s not the only thing that seems off about the show’s return. 

Part of the problem is that “No Friends Like Old Friends” ignores the formula that has made this series so successful in the first place — the women at its center.

Instead, Frankie is off on her own for most of the episode, visiting old friends in London for some unidentified reason, while the rest of the Drake Detective Agency is still in Toronto, suffering through the most banal of B and C plots. 

On the plus side, Frankie gets the chance to solve a mystery with Agatha Christie herself, which is precisely the sort of story that this show loves to have fun with. 

Actress Honeysuckle Weeks, best known to British TV fans as Samantha Stewart from Foyle’s War, is a charming guest star, and if Frankie has to solve crimes with a famous writer, she makes a much better partner than Ernest Hemingway ever did. 

(Do we think she could maybe come visit in Toronto?)

The case of the week is actually surprising complex, involving a near-deadly poisoning and a shocking double life. Frankie’s old friend Louise — also a former dispatch girl who used to race around on motorbikes through enemy territory — stands her up for a lunch date at the Savoy hotel.

There, Frankie meets Agatha, who hires her to find their missing friend. And the two women dig into Louise’s past. Her new husband claims Louise just likes to go wandering off on her own for no reason without telling anyone, which is the sort of obvious lie that one expects from pulp thrillers.

(No offense, Mrs. Christie.) 

The women eventually learn that Louise had been forcibly dragged off to a sort of nursing home, a place which Agatha describes as where “husband send unruly wives in need of a ‘rest'”. She’s also been dangerously drugged, with what our intrepid sleuths deduce is poison.

If anybody’s going to know a lot about poison, it’s Agatha Christie, after all. 

When asked who did this to her, a groggy Louise slurs that the culprit was her “husband”. Boom, case closed, right? Not quite. (We’re only halfway through this hour, after all.)  

Because it turns out that Louise doesn’t have just the one husband. No, she has two. 

It’s Christie, in fact, who figures out that Louise is living a double life, and has a past she’s more than a little bit eager to hide. She spent three years in jail for her involvement in a black market ring back in the East End of London, and her husband, Gregory Snow, abandoned her rather than face prison.

She assumed he was dead, so the two were never officially divorced. Therefore, if he successfully poisoned her, he would still be her legal next of kin, not poor clueless Jason. He’d be instantly rich, and no one need be the wiser that he’d ever seen her again.

It all honestly feels like the kind of twist Agatha could work into one of her mysteries.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that even Frankie’s friends from back in the day are as extra as possible. 

Frankie’s return home to Toronto — with gifts of hats for her girls — lasts all of five minutes, but feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s the first time this episode really feels like Frankie Drake Mysteries, Mary and Flo talking their way into a stranger’s safety deposit box aside.

Here’s hoping this premiere episode was just a weird one off, and its coda was our reminder that things will get back to more of an even keel next week. 

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• The abrupt shift in tone and location in the Season 3 premiere means that a lot of random plot points and characters are just left hanging from previous seasons. Season 2 ended by establishing an ongoing antagonist for Frankie in female mob boss Bessie Starkman and a potential love interest in Detective Grayson. Neither of those characters are so much as mentioned here. That could, of course, change as the season continues, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me at this point if both disappeared entirely.
• I…am not that interested in whatever the romantic history between Frankie and her former Captain happens to be. I’m not shocked at all that they were involved in some way during the war. In fact, it seems precisely like something Frankie would do – hook up with her commanding officer during a time of crisis. But, I don’t find the “twist” that her Captain sent her off on a mission to kill someone during wartime to be that compelling, so I rather hope it’s something we don’t come back to. Especially when, as previously mentioned, Season 2 worked so hard to lay the groundwork for ongoing arcs that don’t get so much as a mention here. 
• Seeing Frankie get to beat up a random baddie is always fun to watch. And this one was particularly sleazy. 

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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