The title Homicide in a Small City is, directly, completely descriptive and by no means. On one hand, the brand new Fox procedural is strictly what it says on the tin. It’s certainly a couple of murder — or presumably murders, plural, although I can’t say for sure since I used to be solely despatched the primary episode in time to jot down this evaluation. And it does actually happen in a tiny village, particularly one referred to as Gibsons, off the west coast of Canada.

On the opposite, it’s such a generic identify that it conveys nearly nothing. It presents no indication of what distinguishes this premise from the likes of, say, Hulu’s Below the Bridge or HBO’s True Detective or Peacock’s Poker Face, all of that are additionally about murders in small cities. Perhaps that’s as a result of, at the very least within the premiere, the present itself doesn’t appear completely positive.

If something, essentially the most notable high quality of Homicide in a Small City, created by Ian Weir and based mostly on the novels by L.R. Wright, is the final vibe exemplified by the hamlet’s perpetual drizzle: grey and chilly, however too tender to appear all that harsh. A lot of the plotline provides itself over to a blossoming romance that at instances can really feel downright cozy in a Hallmark method.

Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland) is a police chief who’s simply moved to Gibsons from the large metropolis, in hopes of a quieter and extra peaceable life. Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk) is the native librarian, who’s by no means been fortunate in love however nonetheless finds herself intrigued by this good-looking stranger.

After assembly on the apps, the pair hit it off over lunch at a cute café, a leisurely stroll by lush inexperienced woods, an impromptu tea occasion with one other neighbor, and for some time the trail to fortunately ever after seems to be like a clean and simple one. However Homicide in a Small City is at first a thriller, not a rom-com, and so the flirtation inevitably takes a backseat to crime-solving when 85-year-old Carlyle Burke (R.H. Thompson) is discovered useless in his house by George Wilcox (James Cromwell), a cantankerous retiree with a tender spot for Cassandra.

Regardless of the thriller being promised proper there within the title, the precise execution of it tends to be lackluster. The clues, particularly the purple herrings, are exaggerated to the purpose of parody; you’ll not consider how onerous this present works to try to persuade you {that a} man depositing small payments into an ATM is inherently suspicious. The answer is in the end no shock in any respect, to both the characters or the viewers, and is arrived at extra by intestine intuition than by intelligent police work. The “why” just isn’t way more satisfying, rooted as it’s within the not-terribly-detailed backstory for a personality we barely get to know earlier than they’re written off.

Maybe in an effort to make up for the dullness of its plotting, the collection tries to visualise Karl’s detective expertise by having the digital camera whip across the room, ping-ponging between factors of curiosity, even utilizing flash photo-negative photographs for additional emphasis. However not solely are these results even cheesier than they sound, they’re at odds with the very character the present is making an attempt to highlight.

Karl isn’t some eccentric, nigh-superheroic genius à la Sherlock Holmes or Will Graham from Hannibal. Quite the opposite, his complete enchantment is that he’s only a common man who’s good at noticing issues. Although maybe not superb at explaining them: Even after he spells out to a very dim colleague (Aaron Douglas’ Sid) why he’s so positive a sure object has been taken from the crime scene, I couldn’t comply with what on earth he was speaking about.

All the case appears like a missed alternative for world-building. Gibsons looks as if it ought to be a tight-knit group of colourful locals with interwoven histories and possibly some darkish shared secrets and techniques, however solely as a result of that’s what we’ve been conditioned to count on from each different story of homicide in a small city. In follow, Karl and Cassandra are the one characters we actually get to know in that first 90-minute (together with commercials) chapter. Even supporting characters who will presumably turn into extra necessary later — like Phyllis (Fiona Vroom), Cassandra’s one pal, or Yen (Yellowjackets‘ Mia Lowe), a police switch contemporary out of Philly — barely get an opportunity to ascertain greater than their names.

At the least the 2 leads are — if not precisely pleasant to know, then painless sufficient to look at. As performed by Sutherland, Karl comes throughout as withdrawn however essentially first rate, with an air of faint melancholy which may encourage a gal (or a viewer) to trawl for hidden depths. And Cassandra appears as much as the problem, as a girl-next-door sort whose pure bubbliness is tempered by a bracing pragmatism.

Although their chemistry doesn’t precisely dissipate the display screen, there’s a thoughtfulness to the best way they’re written as a pairing. He’s so stoic she playfully calls him a sphinx; she’s so blunt he teases that she’s susceptible to self-sabotage. They’re plausible as two closed-off individuals who discover themselves drawn to one another nonetheless. Maybe in time Homicide in a Small City may take a web page of out their playbooks, and eventually open up sufficient to tell us what’s alleged to be so particular about this place.