Tara Ward watches TVNZ’s sleek and scenic new murder-mystery series.
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It’s a beautiful day in Central Otago for a car to plummet off a cliff. Somewhere deep inside Skipper’s Canyon, a car leaves the road and tumbles down the hillside, rolling and twisting and bouncing off rocks as it crashes to the valley floor below. Nearby, a plane has a much safer landing in Queenstown, as a woman wearing a wooly hat and scarf disembarks and sighs a sigh that can be heard from Glenorchy to Glendhu Bay.
It’s the opening moments of TVNZ’s new series A Remarkable Place to Die, and we’ve just met Detective Anais Mallory (Chelsie Preston-Crayford). Anais hasn’t a moment to lose on her return to her hometown of Queenstown, because the body in the car has no identification, other than a snazzy pair of red sneakers. Suicide, or murder? Either way, it’s the third recent fatality in Skippers, another “idiot gone over the edge,” as Anais’ grumpy colleague Simon Delaney (Matt Whelan) puts it. Anais’ sister Lynne (After The Party’s Tara Canton) was one of those “idiots” two years earlier, a young woman known for her careful driving but who inexplicably drove off the road.
Something is wrong in paradise, and nothing will stop Detective Mallory from finding out what it is.
In its first scenes, A Remarkable Place to Die feels a lot like fellow New Zealand cosy crime drama The Brokenwood Mysteries, from the twang of the country music theme song to the team of small-town officers who have to unravel the tangled strands of this unusual murder mystery. But where Brokenwood has a quirky, rural charm, Remarkable leans more into swanky aesthetics: it’s a ridiculously beautiful show to watch. All the murder suspects live in expensive, architecturally designed homes with lake views and huge windows, and Central Otago is a vision, all golden hills and jagged mountains and gravel roads that lead only to heartache.
Each 90-minute episode features a self-contained murder case, with the mystery around Lynne’s accident running through the four-episode series. Anais returns to a changed Queenstown: her friend and colleague Sharon (Lynette Forday) is now her boss, her best friend is now involved with Anais’ shady ex-fiance, and her relationship with her mother Veronica (Rebecca Gibney) has also fallen off a metaphorical cliff. Veronica hates it when Anais is late home for tea, and doesn’t care that her daughter is a clever detective who carries a red folder everywhere and says things like “speaking of sneakers, anything back from traffic on that moped?”
It’s no wonder Anais is late for tea, given how much talking there is in this show. Chelsie Preston-Crayford is brilliant here, appearing in nearly every scene and making every line feel believable. She brings a convincing depth to Anais, who at one point has to break into fluent Spanish while interrogating a suspect in front of a pie cart about a pair of stolen shoes. Inevitably, she’s going to hook up with sensitive pathologist Ihaka (Alex Tarrant), who definitely wouldn’t get all passive aggressive if Anais was late for tea after a hard day of solving crime. “Let me hold your red folder for you,” Ihaka would probably say, “and you can tell me about your day – in Spanish, por favor”.
A Remarkable Place to Die is sleek and glossy, and clearly a vehicle to take New Zealand to the world. It’s an international co-production between Screentime NZ and Real Film Berlin, and as well as screening in New Zealand, will air across Germany and the US on ZDF and Acorn TV. The show has to appeal to a broad, global audience, which explains why it embraces an all-too-familiar storyline: troubled detective returns home, finds secrets at every turn, and by uncovering the truth, risks destroying the only family she’s ever known.
It’s also a well-made, quality drama that’s safe and easy to watch, with some unique New Zealand aspects, like the conversation between two Māori police officers about a tangi, or when Ihaka talks about caring with manaaki for a murder victim. The stunning scenery will no doubt have overseas tourists itching to jump on a plane immediately but, beyond that, it doesn’t push any boundaries. It feels a lot like shows we’ve seen before, like Brokenwood or One Lane Bridge, the latter also a crime drama set in picturesque Queenstown.
But as linear TV dies away and the struggle for funding continues, perhaps we can expect to see more shows like A Remarkable Place to Die – New Zealand-made co-productions by international funders who want stories that pull in international audiences. Does this mean we’re less likely to put our more unique and unconventional stories on screen? Are we moving into an era of low-risk storytelling? And does that even matter, if Remarkable finds the same level of international success and keeps the industry working as with Brokenwood?
There’s more to unpack here than just a pair of red sneakers at the bottom of a cliff. Better get Detective Mallory on the case.
A Remarkable Place to Die streams on TVNZ+ and screens on TVNZ1 on Sundays at 8.30pm