The Marlow Murder Club Season 2 Episode 1 Review

A locked room mystery takes center stage on The Marlow Murder Club Season 2 Episode 1 when a man is killed by a falling cabinet with no one else in sight.

Sir Peter Bailey suspects the threat before it plays out, inviting Judith to a party with Suzie and Becks as plus ones. He’s getting married to his (much younger) nurse Jenny, but the bliss is interrupted when his estranged son Tristram arrives.

There’s some yelling followed by a brief calm, quickly interrupted by a crash. Peter’s body is found beneath a cabinet. The only door to the room is locked and the window hasn’t opened in years. But, of course, our heroes still know this is murder.

The aftermath soon leads to talk of Peter’s will. He’d initially left everything to Tristram– and nothing to his daughter, Rosana– but may have changed that in a new will that is nowhere to be found. Tristram is soon the primary suspect.

By the end of the episode, the ladies have tracked down his girlfriend and possible accomplice, but that still doesn’t explain how he or anyone else actually committed the murder. At least Tanika is on board, officially inviting them onto another case.

Full disclosure: having read all the Marlow Murder Club books after the first season of the show, I already know who’s guilty and how they did it, which skews my perspective a little in judging how effectively suspects are presented so far.

Without giving too much away, I will say that if the effort to play some characters as ungrateful villains and others as innocent victims feels a little over-the-top, it’s probably intentional, pushing us to look more closely at what at first seems obvious.

Though the hiatus between seasons has been about a year, the plot of the second outing starts just a few days later, wasting no time on recaps. And with good reason: this season will cover three(!) mysteries at two episodes each. 

As in the first season, the heart of this show lies in the dynamics between the almost entirely female main cast. Then, we had to wait two of the four episodes before Judith, Becks, and Suzie really knew each other. Now, they hit the ground running.

It leads to both heartwarming scenes of them supporting each other and hilarious ones, such as  the moment all three of them pile onto a single borrowed mobility scooter while trying to chase down Tristram on his bike.

It’s also nice to see Tanika get on board so quickly, especially when she doesn’t strictly need to. At this point, the case for this being more than an accident is thin. But Tanika knows enough to trust her citizen sleuths as well as her own gut instinct. 

Another fun twist is the appearance of clues in a local newspaper’s crossword puzzle. I’ll encourage you to let Judith do most of the thinking on that one. The solution might not be what you expect, but it’s worth sticking around for, too.

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The Marlow Murder Club airs Sundays at 9/8c on PBS.

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