'Mrs. Sidhu Investigates' is a Comfortable Cuppa of Familiarity

Do you prefer murder mysteries that don’t make you think too hard?  Where, in the final five minutes of an episode, the criminal conveniently takes the time to confess all that they’ve done, including the how and the why? Why wait for legal representation and a trial? This approach certainly expedites things.

Mrs. Sidhu Investigates is a formula you have seen many (many!) times before, from Murder, She Wrote to the more recent Poker Face. An amateur detective who can solve the crime way before the police can. Like Charlie on Poker Face, Mrs. Sidhu (Meera Syal) has a (bad?) habit of showing up just when a murder has occurred. And an even worse habit of walking right into danger. She’s a caterer by trade and seems to happen upon a dead body at every new job she gets. (You have to wonder what her Yelp rating might be?) By the third episode, Inspector Burton (Craig Parkinson), is referring to her as the “Angel of Death.” And I can’t say I blame him for having her listed in his phone contacts as “do not answer.” At what point does Mrs. Sidhu begin to think it’s me, I’m the problem?

Each of the four episodes in the first season clocks in at around 90 minutes, giving the series an old-fashioned network TV Movie of the Week feel. With the aforementioned penchant for confessions combined with the bad guys behaving in not-so-smart ways (I mean, do they want to get caught? Is this something they should talk through in therapy?), the reason to tune into Mrs. Sidhu Investigates isn’t for the plot (I was able to spot the bad guy exactly four out of four times). The reason to tune in is for the engaging performances, beginning with Syal, who reprises her role from the BBC Radio series of the same name. Mrs. Sidhu is a self-proclaimed “Indian Aunty” with a knack for being nosy, and Syal brings just the right amount of sass and charm to the role. Upon seeing a dead body, she announces that he has been “squeezed like a supermarket lemon.”