Series / The Brokenwood Mysteries

Kristin, Mike, Sam, and Mike's Holden Kingswood

New Zealand Detective Drama (2014-) set in the fictional town of Brokenwood. Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Shepherd is sent to investigate a mysterious death and decides to take a demotion to settle down in the quiet, rural backwater. Working alongside him on cases are Det. Kristin Sims and D.C. Sam Breen, who help piece together the surprisingly frequent (and oftentimes grisly) murders in town. 36 episodes have aired as of 2022.

The show is also shown in the UK on the Drama channel, where, due to the sheer number of murders in a small rural area, it is often compared to Midsomer Murders, as seen by the quote on the page image.

Contains examples of

• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Kindhearted Simpleton Frodo to Kimberly: "I'm not his girlfriend!" She isn't the only one he's had thoroughly unreciprocated feelings for, and every object of his affections pities his plight.
  • In one episode, an idiotic embalmer pursues Gina. She rebuffs him until he breaks into her workplace and summons her there under false pretenses by pretending to be a corpse. She panickedly beats him with her clipboard. The next day, Kristin tells him never to contact Gina again.
• The Alleged Car: Mike's beloved Holden Kingswood is an original, which is a distinctly different category from mint condition.
• Amoral Attorney: There is no-one Dennis Buchanan will not try to smarm out of the police station.
• Animal Theme Naming: The bars in Brokenwood have paired-animal theme names - The Frog and Cheetah, the Toad and Lion, and the Snake and Tiger.
• Asshole Victim: Usually the case. Assholery ranges from being a bully to defrauding the elderly.
• Back for the Dead: Tania, the wit-pro woman from the first series, appears again at the end of the seventh because she wants to secure protection for her children after she dies of cancer.
• Be as Unhelpful as Possible: Suspects, or even just interviewees who aren't suspects, have a problem with telling the detectives the full story/truth when asked to. Pretty much every interviewee will have to give multiple statements because the original ones weren't accurate.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: One adrenaline-addicted murderer, upon being confronted by Mike mid-flight, jumps to certain death from the plane instead of being taken into custody.
• British Brevity: Series 1-6 have four episodes apiece, while 7-8 expand to a whopping six episodes.
• Call-Back: Many characters who are involved with one case will appear awhile later tied to a completely different one, and the relevant details of their previous appearance(s) will be referenced.
• Caught Up in a Robbery: One episode begins with Stupid Crooks robbing a bank while Recurring Brawn Hilda, Trudy Neilson, is waiting in line to deposit her bar's earnings. One of the robbers steals her money bag, only for her to chase him down, break his arm, and get her money back.
• Christmas Episode: A very Christmas-spirited murder of the mayor, discovered after the annual Christmas parade, occurs in one episode.
• City with No Name: The city that characters go to on occasion is never given a name. It's only ever "the city."
• Cozy Mystery: Often subverted - despite taking place in a small community, murderers and victims and suspects often have very ... interesting ... secrets.
• Cramming the Coffin: Rather than two corpses in one coffin, one episode's victim is found in someone else's coffin, with the original body nowhere to be found.
• Eagle-Eye Detection: Both Mike and Kristin are constantly spotting small, seemingly irrelevant details - he normally spots things, while she is better at spotting people's actions and reactions.
• Eat the Evidence: In one episode, recipients of a letter are told to do this. They readily comply, much to the chagrin of the detectives.
• Eccentric Millionaire: One man who gained his wealth through his family's dog food empire would hire a prostitute to stick her foot in a pile of sand and let him pretend to excavate it like an archaeologist. He also got Cushla to write a whole novel about his nonexistent archaeological expeditions, and during lecture breaks at the Brokenwood Museum would sneak into the ocean-themed room to listen to music while donning their displayed diving suit. Though his eccentricities made him seem suspect, he turns out to be harmless.
• Election Day Episode: When the long-time mayor is found dead in the lead up to a mayoral election, all the candidates become suspects.
• Electrified Bathtub: The body of Mike's favorite singer, Holly Collins, is found in her hotel bathtub with her plugged-in electric guitar.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Almost every episode, generally by Mike.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: Usually many of the episode's cast have means, motive, and opportunity.
• Fair-Play Whodunnit: All the information is presented (the later series being better at this), but sometimes it's concealed within other clues.
• Fauxreigner: Happens twice.
  • The first passed himself off as an Irish poet, only to be revealed as a Kiwi who changed his identity to cover up a statuatory rape charge.
  • The second passed himself off as an Eccentric Artist from Spain that turned out to be a Kiwi panelbeater (much to his friend's shock). He'd been doing his Spanish shtick for long enough that phrases slip into his reverted Kiwi self.
• Found Family via Work: Perhaps it's on account of the detectives not having families of their own, but Mike, Kristin, and Sam hang out together off-duty. This includes Kristin being Mike's platonic plus-one to a wedding and the three of them sharing Christmas dinner together at the station.
• Fright Deathtrap: Seems the case when a man dies upon exiting a scary ride at the A&P Show. He was injected with poison during the ride.
• The Ghost: Breen's girlfriend Roxy always has something else on.
• Guilty Until Someone Else Is Guilty: Every episode has an 'obvious' but incorrect suspect, and usually a few less obvious, but equally incorrect, ones.
• Hunting "Accident":
  • The episode that introduces Frodo involves a stag do gone wrong, as the groom-to-be is shot to death.
  • An animal rights activist is shot during the first day of duck hunting season, right in the middle of where everyone is taking their first shot. Unfortunately for Frodo, this is the first time he's picked up a gun since his friend's stag do shooting. He doesn't cope well.
• I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: Is the case sometimes, including the one where recurring character Trudy is the culprit.
• Immoral Journalist: As long as it drives sales of the newspaper, Cushla will print anything. This includes a close-up of a murder victim as the front page photo.
• Injured Limb Episode: One episode sidelines Mike after he breaks his leg. He does his best to participate anyway.
• It Runs in the Family: It turns out that stupidity runs in the Oades family. Compared to his brother and cousin, Frodo is a genius.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: It's a small town, but the only people who ever do anything on a case are the four main cast members.
• Motive Rant: Happens at least once, where the murderer explains his crimes just as he's about to kill who he thinks is the final witness. (It's actually Kristin in disguise.)
• Murder by Inaction: One victim died in an out-of-control live fire drill. The person who was supposed to save him ultimately decided not to, despite having firefighting gear prepared.
• Murder by Mistake: One episode's murderer intended to Murder the Hypotenuse, only for his mentor to become the victim by inadvertently entering the prepared death trap instead.
• Mystery Magnet: Well, more Murder Magnet. In a town with such a tiny population, there are a LOT of murders - and each conveniently confined to a previously unmentioned niche in Brokenwood's cultural hodgepodge.
• Mystery of the Week: Hardly surprising, given the episodic format. There are almost no meta-episode arcs beyond recurring cast members.
• Never One Murder: About one third of the episodes feature multiple deaths - sometimes historic ones.
• Never Suicide: Not yet, anyway.
• Never the Obvious Suspect: Well, except once, and even then the murderer had a cast-iron alibi, appearing on CCTV in a garage miles away.
• Once per Episode: Mrs. Marlowe shows up to chat with the detectives, and in doing so offers a useful detail about the people involved in the case.
• Preserve Your Gays: Rev. Greene gets knocked out by a door and worryingly lands in the hospital. In the following series, his husband Roger avoids a murder attempt that even the doctors are surprised he survived, as the attempted murderer tried to kill him with carbon monoxide.
• Prison Episode: A prisoner's murder sees a couple of culprits from previous episodes make a return as having lived in the same wing as the victim.
• Private Profit Prison: Brokenwood Women's is shown to be this. Corners are cut regarding security measures so that shareholders save money.
• Profound by Pop Song: Mrs. Marlowe offers words of encouragement to Trudy after her release from prison. While it makes sense for Trudy to expect a little old lady to be quoting The Bible, Mrs. Marlowe is a Cool Old Lady with a love of classic rock.
  Trudy Neilson: But wild horses couldn't drag me back to that place.
  Mrs. Marlowe: That's the attitude. And to paraphrase a favorite verse of mine, "Walking side by side with temptation, the Devil mocks their every step."
  Trudy Neilson: Is that the Old Testament?
  Mrs. Marlowe: No. Led Zeppelin. True poets of the golden age of hard rock.
• Psycho Lesbian: Revealed to be the murderer in two different episodes, the second of which features the first psycho lesbian as a returning character.
• Put on a Prison Bus: With very few exceptions. Notable for combining this with The Bus Came Back for a case that takes place in the local women's prison.
• Puzzle Thriller: Most episodes require the actual sequence of events to be carefully unpicked by the detectives.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Area Commander Hughes is always ready to assist or let Mike have his head during investigations.
• Red Herring: More than you'd find in a communist fishmonger's.
• Retirony: One episode's victim is a bank manager who is killed not just on the day of his retirement, but in the room where his staff had been preparing a party for him.
• Running Gag: Kristin's inability to make a decent cup of coffee. Breen's parting words to his replacement were not to let her ever make the coffee.
• Secretly Dying: The detective whose position Mike takes over had not revealed his terminal diagnosis to his colleagues.
• Serial Spouse: Mike, and his (at least) three ex-wives. Recurring character Jools Fahey is always married to or seeing someone new each time she appears.
• Sickbed Slaying: Attempted on Jared after the initial murder attempt failed. Happens again with Roger Plummer in the eighth season, which is luckily interrupted by a nurse. Both attempts involve a Vorpal Pillow.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: One victim is discovered to have been in a decades-long relationship with the son of her family's hated enemy, though they kept up appearances outwardly.
• Stupid Crooks: The bank robbery episode features a group of bumbling robbers who manage to be recognized and tracked down quite quickly.
• The Summation: Frequently takes place in the police station interview room as a pile of damning evidence is dumped in front of the murderer.
• Summation Gathering: At least once per series.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: When young, good-looking, Māori Jared is not around in Series 4, he is replaced by young, good-looking Māori Kahu, who just so happens to be Jared's cousin.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Happens in a couple episodes, such as one where the murderer killed her sexual predator husband to protect her female employees.
• Taken Off the Case: Breen is sidelined for a case where the victim is his own rugby coach. When Mike and Kristin pay him a visit at his house, they discover that his time away has been taken up by gaming and Roxy's insistence that he repaint their house. Mike calls in Hughes to interview Breen and confirm that there is no conflict of interest before he's allowed back on the case (finally letting him escape doing more home improvement).
• Taking the Heat: Suspects covering for each other (like a daughter for her mother, or three sisters all confessing to a one-person crime) happens with some degree of regularity.
• Talking to the Dead: Mike will almost always ask questions of the corpse when he first encounters it. This habit seems odd to Sims the first time she sees it, but she gets used to it.
• Tontine: The plot of one episode, as members of the tontine start dying under suspicious circumstances.
• Transatlantic Equivalent: To Midsomer Murders.
• Troll: A Māori man is part of an otherwise all-white golf advisory board. He joined for the sole purpose causing grief when they vote on things and has no actual interest in golf.
• We Do Not Know Each Other: Mike and Tania pretend to be strangers so as not to blow her witness-protection cover. Others realize that something's up but never figure out what.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Gloria Ginsberg was introduced in S 2 E 1 and developed further in S 2 E 3 and S 2 E 4 as a potential love interest for Mike, sharing his interest in theatre and love of country and western music, but vanished part way through her last episode and was never seen again. Unless Gina Kandinsky knows otherwise ...
• Witness Protection: Tania and her children are in wit-pro, and Mike is the only one who knows that.