Acorn TV Announces 'Art Detectives,' Stephen Moyer to Star

Acorn TV is, far and away, the most well-known and most watched of all the AMC Network streamers. Originally a standalone niche streamer launched by Acorn Media (the people who brought you the DVD sets of almost every British show that aired on PBS in the 1990s and 2000s), AMC Networks scooped it up in 2018, not long after it purchased BBC America, and Acorn had remained the crown jewel of its little group ever since, currently still growing with 11.5 million subscribers. Much of its success can be credited to the streaming service's mystery lineup, which now adds a brand-new show to the roster: Art Detectives.

Much like Acorn TV's other big successes, including Harry Wild, My Life is Murder, Whitstable Pearl, and The Madame Blanc Mysteries, Art Detectives is a vehicle for an actor whose first success was in the 1990s/2000s and is well-known and well-remembered by women over 40. However, there is one big difference with this series: this time, the lead is a man, True Blood's Stephen Moyer, who most recently returned to television in Paramount+'s Sexy Beast, a departure from Acorn TV's tendency to stick to female-fronted cozy crimes.

That being said, the new series is aimed at the Acorn TV audience that loves shows like Madame Blanc; a wholly original idea (i.e., not based on pre-existing novels or rebooted from an older show); Art Detectives is set in the world of arts and antiquing. It follows the exploits of the Heritage Crime Unit. An entirely fictional show, it should not be confused with The Art Detectives, which is what the BBC Four docuseries Britain's Lost Masterpieces streams under in the U.S. on Tubi, or The Artful Detective, which is what Ovation used to call Murdoch Mysteries in the early years of airing the show. (It has since retired that name.)