Mixed Bag

This column first appeared in the Age on December 11, 2004

To underline the nature of my critical judgement when it comes to this year's summer viewing, I feel honour bound to point out that my current favourite viewing is repeats of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch (Sunday, 6.30 pm, Channel 10), a series that is jam packed with what would have been called, way back in the pre-post-post modern age (otherwise known as the early Eighties), 'subtexts'. I have also developed quite a fondness for Salem, the black cat who talks, Sabrina's aunts, and for imagining how much fun it would have been if I had magic, rather than angst, to get me through my teenage years. If this doesn't put you off, please read on.

Perhaps because of the erratic tastes, I try to subscribe to the motto that if you haven't anything nice to say, don't say anything at all- especially when the object of my meanness is such a friendly and well meaning not-so-old ducks as Pam Ferris and Felicity Kendall, the stars of Saturday night's Rosemary and Thyme (Channel 7, 7.30 pm). But, if I say to you that, 'Rosemary and Thyme is a contemporary crime series with a unique twist, as two gardening enthusiasts find themselves caught up in a series of murder mysteries', does your not heart sink?

I rallied slightly in the first half of the first episode, when it seemed that the grumpy good cheer of said gardening enthusiasts might make this show work, but the lack of actual mystery brings it undone. A shared irritation with men and love of gardening, not to mention a mutual sticky beakness is what unites Rosemary (Kendall) and Laura (Ferris) but not even the deliberate and sometimes amusing hamming up of what would have once been called a 'lesbian subtext', really saved it for me.

William and Mary (8.40 pm) continues the Marks & Spencer vibe that infuses all Channel 7's summer Saturday night offerings. It's a love story for the once-married, single-parented and middle-aged that combines some terrific acting with cliched plotting. Martin Clunes has left his Men Behaving Badly persona far behind to play William, an undertaker, who uses a dating agency to meets Mary (Julie Graham), a midwife. The middle ground between birth and death is, of course, sex but it also seems to be passionate arguments on subjects such as government educational policy.

While Rosemary and Thyme aims for simplicity of plot bordering on the farcical, Murder City (Saturday, Channel 7, 9.50 pm) has so many twists and turns that there is no point in trying to figure out who dun what. In the first episode, 'The Critical Path', Detective Inspector Susan Alembic (Amanda Donohoe) tried to recover a surly teenage girl, who may or may not be dead, with the help of a psychic while the charismatic but very weird Detective Luke Stone (Kris Marshall) tracked down the cross-bow murderer of an office worker. The two plots came together, but only in the most arbitrary of ways. Tonight's episode, 'Under the Skin' is more tightly drawn with three different crimes explicating the theory that people always kill for 'love', ''money' or 'revenge'. Marshall is terrific as the cop who mixes instinct - he has a great capacity to get into the mindset of a killer - and hard work. Marshall and Donohoe have real chemistry as partners in crime-solving despite of - or because of - the fact that their routine is one of maternal, rather than sexual tension. Sabrina, The Teenage Witch aside, Murder City is the one of the new summer series really worth watching.