Women's Murder Club

I’ve never read any of the James Patterson novels that this ABC show is based on so I came into it with no expectations (well, the title sort of made it sound a bit like Sex and the City only with Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte solving crimes rather than dishing on their lovers :-).

Happily, I found Women’s Murder Club to be smart and witty with the crime drama leavened with enough emotional stuff to keep things interesting while not bogging down the proceedings.

The concept of four friends…a workaholic police detective with no time for romance, a hard working medical examiner whose husband is a wheelchair-bound ex-cop, a smart but emotionally insecure assistant DA, and an ambitious, slightly ditzy newspaper reporter…who pool their wits and talents to solve crimes is elegantly simple and, at the same time, ripe with myriad story possibilities.

Angie Harmon is Lindsay Boxer, the cop whose life is complicated by the fact that her ex-husband has just been made her boss. She is has a nice, banter-filled relationship with her partner, Warren, a “grizzled” (Lindsay’s word) veteran played with acerbic charm by Tyrees Allen. Her friends, Claire Washburn (the medical examiner) and Jill Bernhardt (the assistant DA), are ably brought to life by Paula Newsome and Laura Harris. The three women move between ably doing their jobs and tweaking each other about their love lives…the chemistry between them is very real. Aubrey Dollar plays Cindy Thomas, the reporter, who is not part of the club (her word) yet but you can tell she will be.

The first show deftly sketched out the characters (though, of course, there is much more for us to learn as the series goes on) while solving a murder and then introducing the return of a killer that Boxer failed to put away before. It is not remarkably original but it is very entertaining and that’s more than fine with me.