'A Remarkable Place To Die' Is a Scenic Hunt for Justice

 If you enjoyed The Brokenwood Mysteries or Top of the Lake, you're in luck, as Acorn TV's latest series, the New Zealand-set thriller A Remarkable Place To Die, is about to debut in the U.S. Created and written by Philly de Lacey (The Gulf) it stars popular New Zealand actor Chelsea Preston Crawford as Detective Anaís Mallory who returns to her home town of Queensland in New Zealand, which she both loves and hates. 

After a two-year secondment in Sidney, Australia, she needs to resolve some family history – her father’s death four years ago, and her sister’s death two years later. Justice has been done in her father’s case, with the guilty party jailed, but some doubts remain. Her sister Lynne’s death two years before has never been resolved. Was it suicide or murder? Needless to say, shortly after Anaís gets into the police station she gets her sticky hands onto the case file, but her first case is uncomfortably similar to her sister’s death.

The episode’s name, "Skippers," refers to the local cliff where a vehicle with a three-day-old corpse inside has tumbled over the edge. The spectacular Skipper Cliff is part of the Remarkable Mountain Range, popular with skiers and winter sports enthusiasts, hence the title wording. Anais’s unhappiness at her return is not helped by meeting up with her ex-fiance, restaurant owner Luke Staunton (Charles Jazz Terrier), now married to her former best friend, Maja (Indiana Evans), who owns a fancy fitness center. It’s awkward, the looming Remarkable range to say the least, but Anaís now sees them for the flakes they are.

Haunted by her sister’s death, Anaís’s mood dominates the series' pacing. She expresses deep feelings and ideas in a soft murmur, turned away from whichever character is with her. It’s not so much breaking the fourth wall as picking at the wallpaper. But as the series progresses and discoveries are made, Anaís recovers her skill and energy. She holds on like glue to her conviction that her sister would never drive dangerously, but wouldn’t that mean her sister was murdered?

Anaís finds some strangers on her return to work: Detective Simon Delaney (Matt Whelan), not pleased to give up half of his office space to a woman who outranks him. Refreshingly, she initiates a conversation with him, resolving the awkwardness; in a typically generous offer, she invites him to work with her. Her friend and former colleague, Sharon Li Feng (Lynette Forday), is now her boss, with a low-key mellow management style. Proudly diverse, the Queensland police force has officers of Māori descent, Sergeant Hoana Rata (Roimata Fox) and young Constable Jarrod Renne (Dahnu Graham).

Queenstown is gorgeous with a huge lake and the looming Remarkable range surrounding it, and artfully designed wood and glass buildings. Its population is more diverse than you’d expect with visitors and new inhabitants, but the wealthy and powerful cling to their privilege. Not so long ago, Chinese and Irish immigrants, and the original Māori inhabitants, were an underclass. Now, it seems to be the young, transient population who work in kitchens and restaurants who are the disadvantaged.

Her relationship with her mother, Veronica (Rebecca Gibney), is troubled. There’s a telling moment where Anaís’s smile as she enters the house fades away at her mother’s less-than-enthusiastic greeting. Veronica, mourning the losses of her husband and youngest daughter, is isolated, secretive, and drinking a lot. She wants to get rid of the piano her daughters played together, even though the suggestion hurts Anaís. She may well know more about her husband’s death than Anais realizes, and she’s still very tight with Luke, who drops by to visit quite frequently. But when Veronica overreacts to her daughter’s irregular hours, Anaís decides to move out of the house to the Lodge, a large cabin on their land.

The victim of the car that bounced down the cliff, according to pathologist Ihaka Cooper (Alex Tarrant), had been dead for three days. He has no billfold or ID, could be of Hispanic descent, and his clothing gives no clues to his origins. He’s wearing an expensive pair of red sneakers. The only signs that may help them identify him are burn marks on his forearms, the sort you’d get if you were working on an oven or grill, and a smear of his blood on the outside of the car. 

Anaís visits the crime scene with Simon, who makes a disparaging comment about suicides from the cliff and, as he remembers her sister’s fate, has to apologize. The road from which the car fell, Skippers Canyon Road, rated one of the most dangerous in the world, is a one-lane dirt road with few turning places. There are no clues as to who drove the dead man there, why he was killed, and where his body was stored for three days. The theft and abandonment of a moped may be connected. The car is almost certainly stolen, and many characters seem to be involved. It makes for dense, detailed viewing where the pacing slows, hesitates, and picks up again.

The investigation turns to a seedy hostel, Beppo’s, frequented by young itinerant travelers. It’s run by sleazy George Sterling (Barnie Duncan), who has installed a hidden camera in the women’s bathroom and will happily trade back rent for sex with his female guests (all consensual, he boasts to Anaís, who is not convinced). A Polaroid photo found at Beppo’s identifies the victim as Rafael de Costa (Keven Souza), a native of Brazil, whose girlfriend Chacha Vallé (Isis De Souza) has now disappeared. The place was also notorious for honeypotting, young women who would seduce wealthy older men and then rob them with a boyfriend’s assistance. As we expect, Chacha is also dead, her head bashed in and her body hidden under vegetation near the lake, another violent death.

The stolen car belongs to one of the town’s power couples, antiques & collectibles importer, Stu Van Heusen (Mike Edward), and his wife, Marijke (Natalie Boltt). It was stolen while they dined at the fancy restaurant Anaís’s ex, Luke Staunton, owns. He and his staff are remarkably contradictory about the time of the theft, while the Van Heusens claim they left together, found the car had gone, and strolled back home along the lake, a distance of about half a mile. They hadn’t informed the police, and Stu had been out of town on business for the next few days. It’s highly suspicious, and it doesn’t take much to crack the case, a story of passion, lust, and greed.

At Chacha’s autopsy, we learn about the deep connection between Anaís and Ihaka in a rare moment when their colleagues are occupied. He bases his work on the Māori concept of manaaki, which translates as "to support, take care of, give hospitality to, protect, look out for––show respect, generosity and care for others." For the first time, we see Anaís give way to her emotions and confide in someone she loves. In a gesture of love and reconciliation, she places flowers at the top of the cliff where Lynne died, although it isn't long before she discovers her sister's unsavory secrets.

The remaining three episodes continue with murder cases that have a bearing on what happened to Lynne and find new evidence regarding their father’s death. The terrible puns continue: Episode 2, "A Hard Act To Swallow," for example, begins with the discovery of the body of a man locked in an old goldmine tunnel, with the key to the outside in his colon. The case is related to a crime in the 1860s and to solve the 21st-century crime, Anais and her team must trust the original victim’s descendants to help her set right the wrongs committed by the 19th-century police team.

Another case features an odd pair of deaths when a local man falls from a great height, causing both his death and that of the man he lands on, who was apparently camping in a remote area. Coincidence? Questions? Many. The one who fell is implicated in crimes committed by Anaís’s father’s killer, who is now in jail. Anais requests Ihatka’s help in interviewing the man who killed her father, but the plot becomes more complex as her ex, Luke Staunton becomes a person of interest.

The season finale finishes with a bang as a fireworks display goes belly-up, killing the pyrotechnics maestro who created it. Although it distracts Anaís from her investigation into her family tragedies, she finds a connection when her father’s murderer is killed in jail. More clues show up, including the tattoos on the disembodied arm of the firework maestro. Putting the evidence together, she solves her family mystery but discovers there’s more going on than she realized, setting up the question of whether there will be a Season 2.

A Remarkable Place To Die debuts in the U.S. on Acorn TV on Monday, February 17, 2025, with three more feature-length episodes streaming every Monday through March 10.