Music: {allcanada} 'Murdoch' character gets zanier

Monday, May 30, 2011

{allcanada} 'Murdoch' character gets zanier

If hero worship exists among fictional characters, then Detective Murdoch truly can do no wrong in the eyes of Constable Crabtree.

Deep down, George Crabtree wants to be William Murdoch. In fact, if it were up to Crabtree, Murdoch Mysteries would be renamed Crabtree Mysteries.

"Yeah, exactly," said Jonny Harris, who plays Constable Crabtree. "And that's what Jonny Harris wants it to be as well."

Alas, as the fourth season of Murdoch Mysteries begins Tuesday, June 7 on Citytv, Crabtree still is a mere constable.

"(Crabtree) remains the tried-and-true workhorse, the right-hand-man of Murdoch," said Harris, a native of St. John's, Nfld. "Murdoch is sort of infallible to Crabtree, right? Any notion, any school of thought that Murdoch investigates, Crabtree will buy into whole-heartedly.

"So while there are bigger changes for some of the other characters throughout the season, Crabtree remains the loyal lackey. And he's even wilder with some of the ideas, the explanations for the crimes, that he comes up with.

"Crabtree, if anything, has become a little zanier."

Speaking of zany, Murdoch Mysteries could be renamed Programming Mysteries in the eyes of devoted but frustrated fans. The fourth season has been in the wings for a while, waiting for a firm debut date on the Citytv schedule.

But luckily for the series, there remains a solid core of Murdoch Mysteries loyalists who are as devoted to the show as Crabtree is to Murdoch himself.

Set in 1890s Toronto, Murdoch Mysteries follows Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson), a new kind of policeman intrigued by radical forensic techniques. Murdoch's small circle of confidantes includes his reluctantly supportive boss Inspector Brackenreid (Thomas Craig) as well as Constable Crabtree.

As the fourth season begins, Murdoch's trusted ally and love-interest Dr. Julia Ogden (Hélène Joy) has moved to Buffalo, leaving Murdoch to endure her less progressive and unjustifiably pompous replacement Dr. Llewellyn Francis (Paul Rhys). Can Murdoch find a way to lure Dr. Ogden back to Toronto for both professional and personal reasons?

Murdoch Mysteries also is broadcast on the drama channel Alibi in Great Britain and has been licensed worldwide. Harris admitted, though, that initially he wasn't sure if the concept would fly.

"I thought maybe this show was jumping on the forensic bandwagon, but being a Canadian show, they were making it 'period' (set in the past)," Harris recalled. "I thought perhaps that wasn't a great idea, because you had a show about forensics before forensics had become very advanced.

"But in a way it's more interesting because the methods are organic. Rather than running something through a computer or a data base or turning on your blood light, it's more of a hands-on approach."

As for hands-on approaches, Constable Crabtree gets to shine in the Internet series Murdoch Mysteries: The Curse of the Lost Pharaohs, which will be available at Citytv.com as an extension of the fourth season. The web series brings to life what supposedly is Crabtree's first novel.

It's one step closer to the coveted Murdoch Mysteries spinoff, Crabtree Mysteries. Dare to dream, Jonny Harris, dare to dream.