Magpie Murders: This Meta Whodunit Is a Commentary on the Murder-Mystery Genre

Writing a spoiler-free review of a whodunit is hard; it's harder if it's a whodunit within a whodunit. But that's half the appeal of Magpie Murders (streaming on SonyLiv), adapted from Anthony Horowitz's book of the same name – the first of his Susan Ryeland novel series.

The characteristics of any whodunit are, by and large, textbook. There's a know-it-all and/or emotionally unstable detective, and there's a sidekick whose lack of observation skills only adds value to the former. Someone approaches them with a murder mystery. The detective and the sidekick go to the (small) town where the murder had occurred.

On the face of it, everyone linked to the person murdered appears suspicious. Slowly, one episode after the other, the cloud of suspicion shifts from one character to the next. But by the penultimate episode, the detective will have figured it all out. Ah, then there's the soliloquy, the final reveal – the detective spells out the whos, whys, and whats, occasionally (who am I kidding) flaunting their unmatched intelligence.

And who's the killer? It's almost always someone who's least likely to be one. The end.

Now, some of these traits of a classic whodunit exist in Magpie Murders as well. But the other half of the TV show's appeal stems from the fact that it's self-aware. It knows it's a whodunit, it knows what whodunits are generally like.

When Two Plots Intertwine

Alan Conway (Conleth Hill) is a famous author of detective novels – he is an Agatha Christie, but wants to be a Conan Doyle (not my words). His creation, Atticus Pünd, a German detective from the 1950s, shot him to fame in a matter of eight years or so. He's writing the final book of the series, and it’s called – drumroll – 'Magpie Murders'.

But Conway is miserable, fame has made him resentful, and he's – to put it gently – not well-liked by the people in his life. He, in fact, never wanted to be a murder-mystery novelist; he hates the genre because he thinks there's no meaning to it. It's just mindless entertainment for him.

Plotting the end of the Atticus Pünd series, the ill-tempered author finishes up Magpie Murders and gives copies of the manuscript to his friend and owner of a publishing house, Charles Clover (Michael Maloney), during an eventful dinner. A weekend later, Conway ends up dead; it's a suicide, apparently.

Enter Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville), our 21st-century detective from London, aka, Conway's editor, whom he oh-so hated.

Ryeland, who had been reading the manuscript over the weekend, realises that the final chapter (the most important one in any whodunit) is missing. She heads to Suffolk – where Conway (and her own family) lived – in search of the missing chapter, because without it, the future of the publishing house is in jeopardy. Ryelend's search leads her to certain clues that convince her that Conway's death was no suicide or accident, but cold-blooded murder.

At the same time, in 1955, detective Atticus Pünd (Tim McMullan) is investigating two deaths – of Mary Blakiston and Sir Magnus Pye – in the fictional town of Saxby-on-Avon. He and his sidekick James Fraser (Mathew Beard) were first approached by Joy Sanderling (Nia Deacon) to prove the innocence of her fiancé Robert Blakiston (Harry Lawtey), who is accused of pushing his mother off the stairs of Pye Hall, where she worked as a housekeeper.

Though he had refused to take the case at the time, stating the accusations were mere rumours, innuendos, Pünd is deeply enthralled by the subsequent decapitation of Sir Magnus Pye. "Does this change anything," Fraser asks. "Yes, this is murder. And murder can be solved," says Pünd.

Pünd's (imaginary) world twists and turns as the stellar detective examines each suspect in Saxby-on-Avon over the course of the six-episode thriller. Meanwhile, real-life Ryeland, who is determined to find the missing pages, and in turn, Conway's killer, struggles to come to terms with her own troubled past. The lines between reality and fiction blur when people and events of the past and the present – real, unreal, and adapted – converge, culminating in Ryeland developing a mellifluous relationship with her fictional counterpart, and of course, in them finding the killers.

A Self-Aware Whodunit

Here's an unpopular opinion: whodunits often rely a bit too much on the suspense element of the plot. I'm with Mr Conway on that one. Don't get me wrong, I love murder mysteries. More often than not, there's a nice build-up. But sometimes, a whodunit is just all about that 'suspenseful climax', unmasking the least-likely killer, even if it means plot holes and poor writing.

Magpie Murders falls prey to this foible in the final episode – with three major plot holes (that I know of). But what sets it apart is that it knows of the inevitability of such an ending. When Ryeland asks her assistant Alice who the killer in Conway's novel might be, she says, "...right now, X is my number 1 suspect. They're the least likely. Isn't that how it always works?"

Pünd, too, knows his detective brilliance is a characteristic trope he cannot escape. "The detective will always solve the crime, as sure as the day will follow the night. In the world in which I exist, this is an immutable fact," he tells Ryeland in the final episode, before unmasking the fictional killer.

The murder-mystery genre has seen several exceptions to this trope in the form of Memories of Murder, Zodiac, Seven, among others, wherein storytelling assumes more significance than the final reveal. There's a certainty in knowing who the killer is, something these movies cross the threshold of, leaving the audience wanting for more, waiting for more.

Though in Magpie Murders director Peter Cattaneo swimmingly explores the realm of parallel storylines, immersing viewers in multiple plots one after the other, and often, at the same time, the TV show’s narrative technique subscribes to some conventional features of a whodunit. But it still invites possibilities of a different approach to the genre, in which form – the way the story unravels – is as crucial as whodidit.