After a slow stretch, the Acorn streamer is back on track. Coming up are:
— The third season of “Whitstable Pearl” (shown here), There’s a new hour each Monday, from Oct. 21 to Nov. 25.
— The first season of “Inspector Ellis.” It has movie-length (close to two hour) tales on Nov. 4, 11 and 18,
At first glance, those might seem identical – a pair of six-hour seasons, with women solving murders in small-town England.
But they’re also opposites, reflecting Acorn’s range. One has gentle tales, pausing briefly for humor or warmth. The other is intense.
Acorn is a specialty streamer, focusing on shows from England and its former colonies. It’s lower in price ($8 a month, $80 a year) and smaller in choices.
Like any streamer, you get it mainly for the library. That’s packed with series, light (“Doc Martin,” “Agatha Raisin,” etc.) and not, including “Dagliesh,” “Line of Duty” and “Midsomer Murders.”
But you also expect some new shows. That’s where these two come in:
“WHITSTABLE PEARL”
The real Whitstable is a coastal town of 31,000, once known for its oysters.
There, we meet the fictional Pearl Nolan. She owns a restaurant, but also doubles as a private detective.
The stories are inconsistent, at best. This season’s opener is a bit iffy, but the next two are terrific. The show falls apart in the fourth and fifth episodes, then has an excellent finale.
Along the way, we also get likable side characters, revolving around Pearl. There’s her grown son Charlie, her semi-daft mother (who considers herself ideal for Maria in the local “Sound of Music”) and her boyfriend. There’s also young Ruby (a waitress-turned-cook) and Mike (shown here with Pearl), the stoic cop.
Mike is deeply depressed, leading to the excellent finale. Charlie misses the first half of the season – Rohan Nedd, who plays him, also co-stars with Jane Seymour in Acorn’s “Harry Wild” – and the attempt to explain it leads to the badly botched fourth episode.
Overall, however, Whitstable is a pleasant place to visit, murders and all.
“Inspector Ellis”
In England, Sharon D. Clarke is already a big deal. She’s done movies, TV shows and theater, winning three Oliviers, the British equivalent of Tonys.
In the U.S., she remains obscure at 58. She did take one of those shows (the musical “Caroline, or Change”) to Broadway, getting a Tony nomination. She also did five “Doctor Who” episodes as Grace O’Brien, whose body was inhabited by the Soltact villain.
Now we get to see her in full intensity. She plays someone assigned by her supervisor to take control of difficult cases, overriding the local police chiefs.
That happens each week, but there’s no sameness here. The cases –complex and compelling – vary widely; so do the police chiefs.
The first one is a tiresome cliche, disparaging of any outsider. The second offers a diplomatic facade of cooperation. The third is grateful for any help.
By that third one, we’ve reached an evolution in TV cops: A female supervisor sends a female detective to help a female police chief. The world has come a long way since three decades ago, when a female boss drew open hostility in “Prime Suspect.”