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The Brokenwood Mysteries: Series 11
R0 - United Kingdom - Acorn Media Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (20th October 2025). |
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The Show
 Touted as New Zealand's answer to Midsomer Murders, The Brokenwood Mysteries trades village fetes for cheese rolls as four-times divorced, country & western music-loving city officer Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Shepherd (The Irrefutable Truth About Demons's Neill Rea) first turned up in the North Island town of Brokenwood to put the "field in field investigator" and takes over investigation into a death that everyone else would rather believe was a suicide or accidental death, replacing the local senior inspector implicated in the case. Ditching the city for Brokenwood and a vineyard, Shephard finds his outsider status both alienates him from the locals but also allows him to view cases from a perspective lacking in partner Kristin Sims (The Almighty Johnsons' Fern Sutherland) and D.C. Daniel Chalmers (Fantail's Jarod Rawiri), the latter coming in on series seven to replace original junior D.C. Sam Breene. And yet, they are as much sources of background information including ex-con barkeep Trudy Neilson (Tracy Lee Gray) who does not snitch but drops enigmatic clues about her customers, her brother Ray (What We Do in the Shadows' Jason Hoyte) who jumps behind all of the destined-to-fail attempts to attract tourists to Brokenwood after the failure of his scam "Lord of the Rings" location visits operation that made him the prime suspect in the murder of his wife, hapless coffee truck vendor Frankie 'Frodo' Oades (Karl Willetts) who is as prone to freak accidents as he is to falling in love, the village vicar Lucas Greene (The Ugly's Roy Ward) and his psychiatrist partner Roger Plummer (Housebound's Cameron Rhodes), gossipy former suspect Becky Baker (Heart Eyes' Bronwyn Bradley), and odd jobsman Todd Taylor (Kauri Williams) who ends up on top of or under discovered dead bodies as often as Frodo, while the outlandish theories posited by humorless Russian pathologist Gina (Filthy Rich's Cristina Serban Ionda) are sometimes as fruitful as Shephard's habit of interrogating corpses. Series eleven cases start with "The Ghost in You" (92:54) in which Ray and Trudy try to drum up business by hosting forgotten eighties band Stolen Arrow whose number one fan plunges to her death off the bar's bell tower. As the team investigates, they discover that she had an obsessive interest in the lead singer (Shortland Street's Michael Galvin) along with her part in an accident decades before that killed one of the original members. In "Sudden Death Round" (90:06), quiz night at Brokenwood High to raise funds for the library plunges into chaos when someone spikes the punch and a pool shed chemical explosion takes out the celebrity alumnus radio guest host (Home and Away's Matthew Walker). Suspects include the headmaster (Power Rangers voice actor Mark Wright) who seems more concerned with the school's reputation, librarian Tilly Morpeth (Grafted's Alison Quigan) who had a friendship with the victim when he was a bullied teen, his former classmates (Step Dave's Jono Kenyon and Pike River's Jessi Williams) who had complicated pasts with him and just as messy current personal lives, the school groundskeeper who had the only key to the shed, volunteer parent Karl Munroe (Shantaram's Meramanji Odedra) who lied about his whereabouts during the explosion, and chemistry teacher Hannah Winton (Broken Hallelujah's Lauren Porteous) whose questions for the quiz included the recipe for the particular explosive combination of chemicals that blew up the shed. Ten Brokenwood residents celebrate "All Hallows Eve" (90:48) with a séance conducted by Morgana Marincovich (Westside's Sophie Hambleton) whose spirit guide warns that one of them will not survive the night, and the victim just happens to be Morgana's ex-husband Viktor (Someone to Carry Me's Tonci Pivac) stabbed in the neck during a mid-seance power cut in a locked room with no sign of a murder weapon on the other guests or hidden anywhere in the room. Morgana seems the most likely suspect but, while Gina has herself locked in the room to find the elusive weapon, Shepherd, Sim, and Chalmers learn that several of the guests had bad blood with Viktor who regularly misappropriated funds on building projects. Only Morgana and the victim's own sister (Dasha Volga) believe that Viktor brought supernatural retribution upon himself thanks to a family curse from a Croatian witch.  In "How the Other Half Dies" (91:06), Shepherd and Gina investigate the suspicious freak death of troubled businessman Jeremy Sterling (Erwin Neumayr) apparently the victim of a chandelier that just happened to fall the moment he was standing underneath it. Sims and Chalmers are busy with a series of well-off Brokenwood indulging in acts of self-humiliation while all wearing the sign "Greed is bad" but they cannot convince any of them to admit to being coerced or blackmailed; however, when the team discovers that all of them had histories of financial crimes they were not punished for and had all experienced break-ins, Shepherd wonders whether the Sterling crime is connected. In "End of the Line" (89:00), the body Brokenwood High chemistry teacher-turned-acting principal Hannah Winton is discovered trussed up at the end of a zipline at a retreat for the school's future prefects, casting suspicion once again on her married supposed one-time fling Karl Munroe along with his ailing wife Jenny (Sheena Irving) and daughter Georgia (Mala Dayanada-Graham) who may or may not know of his indiscretion, and a group of students who not only indulge in boozing, pot-smoking, and casual bullying but some of whom are not above a little blackmail. Whereas some of the other Acorn cozy mysteries seasons commence with a Christmas episode, series eleven of The Brokenwood Mysteries closes with "An Oades to Christmas" (93:30) in which Frodo's eccentric Uncle Les (Housebound's Millen Baird) is found dead in a Santa suit on the day his ne'er-do-well nephew Johnny (Crushed's Jamie Irvine) is released from prison (and immediately dons a ski mask for some criminal activity). Les' brother Bobby (30 Days of Night's Joel Tobeck) is eager to get him six feet under and hapless nephew Rhys (M3GAN's Arlo Green) somehow managed to get a paramedic job and was first on the scene but not-so-surprisingly did not recognize his uncle and assumed the victim was actually Father Christmas. Les' wealthy employers Bill and Darleen (Matthew Cutts and Jodie Dorday) speak suspiciously well of the dead Oades, but barmaid Lena (Evil Dead Rise's Mirabai Pease) has accused Bill of sexual assault. In between investigation developments, Shepherd, Sims, Chalmers, Gina, and various Brokenwood residents deal with the pressures of the holidays including Sims' reunion with her wild younger sister (Enmity's Rebekah Randell). While series ten extricated itself from yet another of Mike's messy relationship arcs, series eleven seems like a fresh start in that the six feature-length cases that venture into darker territories with twistier, more challenging solutions, and better handling of suspects who do not seem like obvious red herrings from the start while still maintaining the show's quirky humor (along with the unfortunate continuing thread of Gina's unrequited interest in Mike being the butt of jokes). Suspects from earlier cases including those within the same season turn up in subsequent cases as expected, and some of them come off the worse the more the viewer gets to know them. Even Mrs. Morpeth, who seems poised to replace cheese roll-making Mrs. Marlowe from the earlier series with her interest in detective stories and knowledge of the skeletons in the closets of Brokenwood residents, does not seem entirely good-natured. A few of the killers are seemingly nice people who turn out to be downright nasty, a few are principled hypocrites, while the most sympathetic are those who react badly to either having their whole world taken away or the threat of it but who nevertheless either attempt to pin suspicion on others or stand by and let others fall under suspicion. The Christmas season finale is just as twisty and had a bit of nastiness but is overall a lighter, funnier experience after the episodes that came before it. 
Video
Six feature-length episodes are spread over three dual-layer DVDs with the 16:9 anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen video looking generally good and the filmic videography which is a tad softer than one would hope given the scenic locations. The few digital effects always stand out from the surrounding footage, foliage can be mushy in wide shots, and some noise is evident in fine lines and brickwork of the town. 
Audio
Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo with clear dialogue and a music track populated primarily by New Zealand country and western artists – although the season opener has some original faux-eighties pop music by its suspects – and optional English HoH subtitles have some transcription errors presumably due to the accents. 
Extras
There are no extras, not even an image gallery this time around. 
Overall
Series eleven of The Brokenwood Mysteries seems like a fresh start in that the six feature-length cases that venture into darker territories with twistier, more challenging solutions, and better handling of suspects who do not seem like obvious red herrings from the start while still maintaining the show's quirky humor.
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