Review of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Apparently each episode of this TV murder mystery series set in 1920s Melbourne, Australia cost $1 million dollars to produce. It's certainly ravishing to look at but the production values are not supported by the scripts or direction. The two leads, playing Miss Fisher and Detective Robinson, are able enough and engaging and manage to create some believable repartee between their characters, but they are not supported well by the direction of the supporting cast, which allows for too many amateur performances which distract the discerning viewer (memo the director: people don't close their eyes when they die and Latvians don't have Russian accents!). In one episode we saw a train parked on the main line between Melbourne and Ballarat for the best part of two days, which defies credulity - this is one of the busiest rail lines in Australia and was in the 1920s too. Too many glitches like this spoil the series. Good drama, even light drama like this, begins with getting the audience to suspend its disbelief; unfortunately, the director of this series fails at the first bar.