More Murdoch Mysteries vs. Strange Empire

[snacky]

When he posted this review, Yannick felt obliged to mention he was a fan of Strange Empire - he's such a booster for Canadian TV!

www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/can-the-dark-strange-empire-ever-touch-the-success-of-cozy-murdoch/article21500089/?cmpid=rss1

This article is not outright insulting like the Toronto Life one and the Dork Shelf one, but I still find this kneejerk urge to contrast the two shows in order to make Strange Empire seem grittier at the expense of Murdoch Mysteries to be the wrong move. I get the feeling this Kate Taylor is a pal of Emily Landau but thought it wiser to throw a soft ball this time.

So in this article Murdoch Mysteries is successful, but it's a "classic cozy". Um. Not sure it's that - isn't that what all those PBS mysteries are? Murdoch Mysteries does have a resemblance, but then it gets all blendy in the Dr. Who direction, so it's hard to call it "classic" anything. Reviewers need to be using adverbs like "avant-garde" and "nouveau" instead of "classic". Okay, I'll take "neo".

Anyway, Even if Yannick is fine with this, I'm still not satisfied. I think CBC should ask reviewers to just stop contrasting Strange Empire to Murdoch Mysteries. Why do they feel the burning need to do this in the first place? In the effort to make Strange Empire look edgy, they are always going to end up makeing Murdoch Mysteries look too milque toast.

#appointmenttv
#crumpetgate

[CosmicCavalcade]

Nov 10, 2014 7:53:25 GMT snacky said:

When he posted this review, Yannick felt obliged to mention he was a fan of Strange Empire - he's such a booster for Canadian TV!

m.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/can-the-dark-strange-empire-ever-touch-the-success-of-cozy-murdoch/article21500089/?service=mobile&cmpid=rss1

This article is not outright insulting like the Toronto Life one and the Dork Shelf one, but I still find this kneejerk urge to contrast the two shows in order to make Strange Empire seem grittier at the expense of Murdoch Mysteries to be the wrong move. I get the feeling this Kate Taylor is a pal of Emily Landau but thought it wiser to throw a soft ball this time.

So in this article Murdoch Mysteries is successful, but it's a "classic cozy". Um. Not sure it's that - isn't that what all those PBS mysteries are? Murdoch Mysteries does have a resemblance, but then it gets all blendy in the Dr. Who direction, so it's hard to call it "classic" anything. Reviewers need to be using adverbs like "avant-garde" and "nouveau" instead of "classic". Okay, I'll take "neo".

Anyway, Even if Yannick is fine with this, I'm still not satisfied. I think CBC should ask reviewers to just stop contrasting Strange Empire to Murdoch Mysteries. Why do they feel the burning need to do this in the first place? In the effort to make Strange Empire look edgy, they are always going to end up makeing Murdoch Mysteries look too milque toast.

#appointmenttv
#crumpetgate

Yeah I don't get why they feel the need to do that. They're totally different beasts and should be treated as such. I don't even really get why MM is the lead in to it. They wouldn't attract much of the same fan base.

That being said, I've watched all five episodes of Strange Empire and it does seem to get a little better with time, but it's still basically just a poor man's version of Hell on Wheels or Deadwood, or any of those 1860's western dramas. I'm waiting for something to happen besides someone trying to rape someone, a bunch of people getting massacred, or someone trying to leave Janestown and failing every episode. So yes, it is darker than MM, but what does that matter? They're totally different genres! It's like comparing Scrubs with Dexter. Of course Dexter is grittier! That's the point!

[snacky]

Nov 10, 2014 14:59:49 GMT CosmicCavalcade said:

Yeah I don't get why they feel the need to do that. They're totally different beasts and should be treated as such. I don't even really get why MM is the lead in to it. They wouldn't attract much of the same fan base.

 So yes, it is darker than MM, but what does that matter? They're totally different genres! It's like comparing Scrubs with Dexter. Of course Dexter is grittier! That's the point!

Yes, yes, and yes! So why do they feel the need to compare the apple to the orange: if they are all CBC viewers, they do NOT want the apple-lovers to start feeling ashamed of apples - that's not necessarily going to convert them to oranges. They might throw the whole rotten fruitbasket in the trash and decide to go watch Scandal!

This is why I thought the reporters all might somehow be related to each other. It's like the basic text was written somehow, but they all keep tweaking it to try to make it more palatable.

[snacky]

Because FallenBelle posted this link again I took notice that this artcle defined a "cozy" as a mystery that avoids gore, corruption, and ambivalence. Um.
So while this article threw in a better description of MM, this sentence shows MM isn't a cozy by her own definition. She doesn't watch MM, yet she deighns to compare. Strawman cozy much?

[snacky]

Okay I went ahead and posted a substantial comment, though it's a couple days too late and probably doesn't matter now.

I'm baffled as to why critics keep *insisting* on comparing Strange Empire to Murdoch Mysteries at the expense of Murdoch Mysteries: this is an apples to oranges comparison, and dragging down either great show just hurts the CBC and Canadian television in general.

The really galling thing about all these "comparisons" is that they are written by people who haven't watched Murdoch Mysteries enough to make any sort of intelligent comment about the show. I was going to let this article go because at least this one did enough research to provide some background about Murdoch Mysteries. However the description "classic" cozy kept bothering me.

Then I honed in on this line: "Gore, corruption and ambivalence rarely intrude." If a "cozy" is defined by its exclusion of "gore, corruption, and ambivalence", Murdoch Mysteries strikes out regularly and rather grandly on all three counts. You'd be amazed at the shocking stuff manage to pull off:
murdochmysteriesfans.proboards.com/thread/978/moments-when-murdoch-mysteries-edgy

That forum thread doesn't even go into larger themes Murdoch Mysteries might address including political, military, and police *corruption*. Doh!

I can see how the lazy critic who doesn't have time to watch every TV show could mistake a show named "Murdoch Mysteries" for a cozy. After all, its name is similar to all those PBS cozies, and it does have a period setting. But the similarities stop there. Murdoch Mysteries is a very quirky show, and it is not easy to categorize at all. If you read interviews going back 7 years, the people who create the show often struggle with how to describe it - they fall back on the term "hybrid" or compounds like "Victorian CSI". With Murdoch Mysteries clearly under "comparison attack" by all the Strange Empire reviewers, I felt moved to write a manifesto to declare the Murdoch Mysteries style as Noir Charmant:
www.buzzfeed.com/squeegirl/the-murdoch-mysteries-noir-charmant-style-manifest-twst

You are very much mistaken in identifying Murdoch Mysteries as a "classic cozy". If Murdoch Mysteries is any kind of classic, it's a "cult classic". And for the members of that cult, Murdoch Mysteries is Appointment TV.

[snacky]

FallenBelle also posted this great discussion about Strange Empire:
www.tv-eh.com/2014/11/07/link-can-the-dark-strange-empire-ever-touch-the-cozy-success-of-murdoch-mysteries/

I'm not going to post my comment there because the discussion is focused on SE and the CBC rather than Murdoch Mysteries. Though I do have the burning desire for someone to realize that Murdoch Mysteries is NOT a cozy, and that's exactly why it broke the mold and found a crossover audience.

[snacky]

Nov 12, 2014 19:12:46 GMT snacky said:

FallenBelle also posted this great discussion about Strange Empire:
www.tv-eh.com/2014/11/07/link-can-the-dark-strange-empire-ever-touch-the-cozy-success-of-murdoch-mysteries/

I'm not going to post my comment there because the discussion is focused on SE and the CBC rather than Murdoch Mysteries. Though I do have the burning desire for someone to realize that Murdoch Mysteries is NOT a cozy, and that's exactly why it broke the mold and found a crossover audience.

I realized that the "mold-breaking" is actually a point, so I went ahead and posted my comment at TV-eh, too.

I just wanted to throw in a comment about the obsession TV reviewers have with comparing Strange Empire with Murdoch Mysteries. The first issue any supporter of the CBC and Canadian TV in general should have with this is that such comparisons always make one show look good at the other show’s expense: if we want both shows to do well on CBC, what is constructive about this “comparison” approach?

Second, every single article that has attempted this has gotten Murdoch Mysteries wrong. The Globe and Mail article at least bothered to do some research first, but it still misidentifies Murdoch Mysteries as a “cozy”. It occurs to me that this ham-handed comparison operation also involves a form of radical reductionism in order to create the “strawman” for the perfect comparison. The reason why this is failing in such an epic way with Murdoch Mysteries is this a show that crosses genres so much that you might have to start reciting the decimal digits of pi to keep track. Ever wonder *why* Murdoch Mysteries has a fairly substantial audience? By bringing together a bunch of genres, Murdoch Mysteries came up with something “quirky” and “hybrid” and “cultish”. People use a whole lot of compound terms to describe it. But the point is, there is something in Murdoch Mysteries that “crosses over” for many audience segments, so it’s a ridiculous exercise to try to reduce it to some over-simplified strawman just for the sake of comparing Strange Empire. All of these articles just makes it look like the reviewers don’t know what they are talking about to the over 1 million viewers who actually do watch Murdoch Mysteries every week.