Who all is watching season 2 of My Life Is Murder on Acorn TV? My son and I bonded over the first season, it being a good enough show that it got a 17 year old gamer to come out of his room and watch TV with his annoying mom. And we watched season 1 at least three times waiting for a new season to finally arrive! And then with my total addiction to The Brokenwood Mysteries in the meantime, I couldn’t have been more thrilled when My Life Is Murder was moved from Australia to New Zealand for this season, so I could see guest stars and stars from that show on this one! Including Brokenwood Detective Kristen Sims’s erstwhile love interest and Renaissance man Kahu, now starring as Harry the handsome detective who brings Lucy Lawless’s super sleuth Alexa Crowe her crazy cold cases to solve.

I have been meaning to post about My Life Is Murder but I guess what finally made me do it is the weird little cameo from William Shatner on the latest episode. Apart from that and all the other guest stars popping up I have been enjoying Martin Henderson as Alexa’s brother, not only because he was in The Ring, but because he starred in the most underrated so awful it’s awesome 2005 action howler Torque. I guess I should stop fanpersoning and post a synopsis.

Alexa Crowe, first an Australia-based retired detective, helps her quite lovely detective friend Kieran (one of my favorite boy names) solve cases that the police can’t quite prove are murder. She’d rather be insanely baking bread or correcting people’s grammar, however, and she can’t sleep since her husband was killed in some way the show hasn’t quite revealed. Alexa is a prickly, private, professionally sneaky person, in the best way, and she and her amazing assistant the young police superhacker (do people still say hacker) Madison with the enviably colorful wardrobe often go undercover. My Life Is Murder is a dark comedy, with 45 minute episodes that are mostly self-contained with small bits of info about Alexa’s life coming out from week to week but not overly dramatic. This is the best kind of murder mystery: a lighthearted, short, not really episodic one.

And now Alexa is in New Zealand, Kieran has been replaced by Harry with the intense eyes, and Madison has also moved to New Zealand, only now the bubbly Madison and the snarky Alexa are roommates, which took some doing because Alexa tends to be irritated with people. Also they have a new cat in New Zealand who is orange (my favorite cat color) while the Australian cat was a brown tabby. Notice I just expect you to take for granted that they have a cat, but having a cat also took some doing for Alexa. Auckland, a major character itself, is featured as a jewel of a city I hope to someday see in person. The title card of the show changes from week to week, as it is the title projected over different parts of the background, such as the side of a building in this case. And I do love a good title card, so every time I get a little excited to see how they are going to do it in this episode.

Anyway, this week, Alexa and Madison have to book into a spa where the chef/owner died of hypothermia after being shut into a walk-in. It looks like an accident because the mechanism that allowed the door to be opened from the inside was known to be broken, but Harry knows it’s probably murder because the deceased was on a lot of sleeping pills which is a weird thing to take before you’re about to start cooking in the middle of the night. Or maybe not, seeing as how many people report taking Ambien and then doing weird things. Like buy six pairs of pajamas from Old Navy and then signing up for yet another new streaming service.

Sleeping pills and their tendency to make some people cook elaborate meals aside, in this case he’s cooking for a good reason, yes it is worthy of investigating the case as a murder, and Alexa and Madison have to go do yoga and get massages respectively while some of the people at the resort seem to know they’re undercover and some just think they’re really nosy and rude. And the title of the episode is a clue, but not in the way you would think. It’s not the best story they’ve ever told on this show (just like this isn’t the best post I’ve ever made on this blog) because it’s not as weird as some, but it does have the aforementioned cameo by Shatner. Here he’s not doing his trademark halting style of speech for some reason, but he does flirt with with Lawless’s Alexa of course. Which is something that anyone would do given the chance even though she’s a kind of insufferable (but badass) character because she looks like and has all the charm of Lucy Lawless.

I don’t want to say too much because this is an ongoing show, but I did learn that there’s a bird in New Zealand whose call sounds like it’s saying “more pork,” and when someone with a certain type of Australian accent says “ghost” it can sound every bit as cute as when they say “no,” with all the vowels at once. Also, one of the suspects here had a pretty funny at times, but in an appropriate way for a show about murder, recurring part as Glen on the most recent season of Brokenwood!

What is the best “Shatner for no reason other than that he felt like it” TV appearance you have seen? It’s not this, although I did mark out when he came on screen.