Stream It Or Skip It?
Everyone loves small-town-with-dark-secrets stories. But sometimes they get too dark. We actually enjoy the ones where, yeah, there is an inordinate number of murders, but there’s also a rivalry regarding a chicken recipe or other quirky stuff. The South African-Scottish series Recipes For Love And Murder, whose first season debuted in September 2022, has that combination.
Opening Shot: An overhead shot of a pot of soup.
The Gist: Maria Purvis (Maria Doyle Kennedy), aka “Tannie Maria,” is offering the soup to her unexpected visitors: Aileen McClintock (Robyn Scott), the sister of her late husband, and her husband Gordon (Richard Wright-Firth). They’ve come all the way from Scotland to the remote Karoo region in South Africa because Gordon believes that, according to the community property law and his brother-in-law’s will, Aileen is entitled to at least half the house in Eden that Maria inherited from her own mother. Aileen is going to stay there while Gordon tries to sort things out. But Gordon is also determined to prove, after 15 years, that Maria killed her husband.
A few weeks later, Maria is driving her old truck on a local road and it breaks down. Luckily, someone new to Eden drives by: Ricus (Gérard Rudolf), who calls himself the “Satanic Mechanic.” He fixes cars and motorcycles, but is also a licensed psychologist who offers group therapy sessions at his garage. There is certainly an attraction as Maria feeds him macarons as he fixes the truck.
Back at the Karoo Gazette, where Maria writes her recipe/advice column, Jessie September (Kylie Fisher) pushes the paper’s editor/publisher, Hattie Wilson (Jennifer Steyn), to let her do a regular crime column. Hattie, however, has other things on her mind, namely the idea that she’s going to run for mayor of Eden. She has competition, though, mainly from her ex-husband Marius (Grant Swanby).
Khaya Meyer (Tony Kgoroge) comes back from Cape Town, where he was recovering from getting an arrow in the shoulder from the Crossbow Killer, and he and Maria continue their flirtation; he even wants to bring his teenage daughter to dinner when she comes to visit. But Gordon, back in Scotland, has put in a formal request that he investigate Maria’s involvement in her former husband’s death.
In the meantime, Maria gets a letter from Frank (Anele Matoti), the husband of Georgie (Kazi Khuboni), a previous letter writer that Maria befriended. He feels that she’s cheating on him, and Maria suggests a stew with mysterious, layered ingredients as a way to spice things up. But things take a turn when Frank and Georgie’s guest house, plus a few other neighboring buildings, catches fire.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? While the mysteries in Recipes For Love And Murder follow a season-long arc, the light tone of each episode reminds us of other Acorn mystery series like Signora Volpe and Agatha Raisin.
Our Take: What we appreciate about Recipes For Love And Murder, based on a novel by Sally Andrew, is that writers Karen Jeynes and Annie Griffin manage to balance the darker parts of Tannie Maria’s story, plus the case that occupies her for the season, with the small-town quirkiness that makes shows like this appealing. The murder that’s at the center of the second season is certainly dark, as it takes place at some point before a half a block of buildings burn down. But the heart of the show is still the relationships — romantic and otherwise — that are formed in Eden.
While Maria, Khaya and the Eden police try to figure out exactly what happened, there’s going to be a lot of other things going on. There’s Hattie’s run for mayor pitting her against Marius. Jessie has to deal with the trauma of being run off the road by the Crossbow Killer. Her boyfriend Regardt (Arno Greeff) has to deal with his brother Jaco (Wynand Ferreira) coming into town and struggling with his sobriety. Khaya and Maria struggle to grow their relationship as he continues to be tasked with investigating her; in the meantime, Khaya starts spending a lot of time with Jackie (Hlubi Mboya), the mom of his daughter’s bestie. And the mysterious Ricus will throw a monkey wrench — literally and figuratively — into everyone’s lives.
Of course, the overriding alternate story is Gordon going after Maria, which is actually our least favorite storyline, mainly because it’s repetitive. Almost every scene with Gordon in it has him saying that he wants to finally prove Maria killed her husband back in 2008. And almost every scene with Aileen has her trying to tell Maria and/or Maria’s rooster that Gordon is looking out for her, with Maria not at all believing or trusting her. It feels like a distraction from what is already a pretty busy show.
Sex and Skin: Some light snogging between Jessie and Regardt, but that’s about it.
Parting Shot: Maria holds Georgie as the fire at her guest house accelerates; Maria fears that Frank is inside.
Sleeper Star: Terence Bridgett is Doep, who owns the butcher shop that fronts the newspaper offices, and he comes into his element when Hattie asks him to be her campaign manager.
Most Pilot-y Line: Chantal Simpson (Casey B. Dolan), who is also running for mayor, not-so-subtly tells Hattie “You’re so brave for considering running at your age.” Wow.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Between Kennedy’s continuing warm performance as Maria and the well-established relationships among the people in the small town where she lives, Recipes For Love And Murder continues its successful formula of a meaty season-long murder arc combined with lighter small-town fare.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
