History Series / ShakespeareAndHathawayPrivateInvestigators

* SoProudOfYou: Lu's mother Genevieve, after spending most of the first two seasons disapproving of her daughter's new career as a P.I. (not least because she thinks Lu is just a filing clerk that Frank is humoring), Genevieve finally says this in "The Envious Court" after Lu saves her life, catches the culprit, and recovers Genevieve's life savings.

* SpitTake: In "Some Cupid Kills", Frank is on the phone to Sebastian and tells him that Dalton Morley was poisoned by ethylene glycol in a red wine called Bard's Brew. Sebastian realises that he is drinking that exact red wine and spits out the mouthful he currently has.

** In "O Brave New World", Luella Shakespeare is framed for the murder of her new husband. She teams up with private investigator Frank Hathaway to clear her name, and ends up becoming his new partner.

* ConMan: The VictimOfTheWeek in "O Brave New World" is a con man with an M.O. of romancing single women, marrying them, embezzling all of their money, then faking his own death and disappearing.

** Frank himself used to be a well-regarded Detective Inspector with the Arden CID, until he was forced to take early retirement; his agency is struggling when Lu approaches him in "O Brave New World", which is why he's willing to reverse his usual policy against "extra-marital" cases.

* MagicPlasticSurgery: The killer in [[spoiler: "O Brave New World."]]

* MyBelovedSmother: We see Lu's mother Genevieve in "O Brave New World", and she is constantly critical and sour, insulting her daughter's appearance at her own wedding. In "The Envious Court", she disapproves of Lu's career as a PI.

* NotableNonSequitur: In "O Brave New World", when the hotel staff are being interviewed after the murder, one of the waitresses complains that a pair of shoes have been stolen from her locker. These later become the vital clue Frank uses to crack the case.

** "O Brave New World" has Luella Shakespeare's new husband being murdered at their wedding. When the husband is exposed as a ConMan, Lu becomes the chief suspect. She teams with private investigator Frank Hathaway to prove her innocence.

* TamperingWithFoodAndDrink: In "The Rascal Cook", a restaurant is sabotaged when the soup is spiked with syrup of ipecac. Later, the chef is murdered by being served a poisoned cup of coffee.

* NeedleInAStackOfNeedles: In "Too Cold For Hell", Billy the Brick admits to Frank that he left the MacGuffin on a grave in the local cemetery, and remembers the name on the tombstone. Frank sarcastically asks how useful that is, when the cemetery has upwards of 9,000 "residents." Lu looks online and says the cemetery has a handy app for finding a particular grave.

* FramingTheGuiltyParty: Part of [[spoiler:Christina and Frank's]] DarkAndTroubledPast, as revealed in the Season 2 finale. [[spoiler:Christina framed a pedophile who murdered a young boy after believing he would go free, except it turned out to be unnecessary and Frank got her out of it.]]

* AccidentalMurder: In "Hunger for Bread", [[spoiler: the murder occurs because the VictimOfTheWeek makes the mistake of antagonizing his cleaning woman, whom he has been [[IntoxicationEnsues feeding a designer drug similar to speed without her knowledge]]. (ItMakesSenseInContext.) The interaction of the designer drug with her regular medication causes her to snap into a violent and beat his brains out with a dumbbell. she then blacks out and doesn't remember any of her actions.]]

* AllAbusersAreMale: The show has a few episodes dealing with DomesticAbuse. Played straight by [[spoiler:"This Promised End", where a wife leads her husband to believe he will be killed because of his abuse.]] Subverted in [[spoiler:"The Fairest Show Means Most Deceit", where the husband is being physically abused by his wife and burned with cigarettes because he's a Crossdresser.]]
* AnArmAndALeg: The victim in "This Cursed Hand" gets their hand cut off by the murderers after death.

** In "Ill Met By Moonlight", [[spoiler:an aristocratic lady had an affair with her groundskeeper and kept his identity a secret from their daughter. The father was on the verge of walking out of her life forever, but changes his mind when he realized that the "priceless" necklace that she had put on display and was planning to wear at her annual ball was the cheap costume jewelry piece he gave her eighteen years ago, which she never threw away. He decides to stay in England and have a go at being a family with their daughter.]]

** In "Too Cold For Hell", Frank, Billy the Brick, and DS Keeler are all trapped in a refrigerated shipping container, slowly freezing to death. Keeler starts to berate Billy for being a worthless criminal, causing Frank to hotly speak up and say that Billy may be no angel, but he's done better than could have been expected considering that the deck was stacked against him from the day he was born (to a heroin addict mother who overdosed shortly after giving birth to him). Billy warmly says he's always thought of Frank as a surrogate dad. Frank gloomily says he could have died happy without knowing that.

* ClearMyName:

** A common mystery for Shakespeare and Hathaway, also found in "Toil and Trouble". They also have a tendency to ''make'' this the case even if they aren't hired to do it, such as in "No More Cakes and Ale", where they're hired to track down a missing criminal and instead try to clear his name.

* DoWrongRight: In the Season Two finale, "Too Cold For Hell", DI Marlowe confesses to Luella that Frank was dismissed from the police force after TakingTheHeat for her mistake: [[spoiler:planting evidence to secure a conviction against the murderer of a six-year-old boy, after a legal challenge to the outsourced police lab made the DNA evidence unusable. Frank knew what Marlowe was going to do, and he told her: ''"Don't do it... but if you do, don't get caught."'' Unfortunately, she did, and she was.]]

* BitchInSheepsClothing: [[spoiler:Bianca Minola in "Best Beware My Sting." She comes off as a sweet, innocent DaddysGirl, especially compared to her fiery sister Kate. She turns out to have masterminded a plot to discredit the environmentalist group harassing her father's company, [[BlackWidow murder her newlywed husband for his fortune]], and scam her father out of a 2 million pound ransom payment. When confronted, she even laughs as she recalls ''stabbing her husband in the heart'' (literally): ''"I really shouldn't be laughing, but if you had seen the look on his face..."'']]

* WidowedAtTheWedding: "O Brave New World" has Luella Shakespeare's new husband being murdered at their wedding. When the husband is exposed as a ConMan, Lu becomes the chief suspect. She teams with private investigator Frank Hathaway to prove her innocence.

* HeelRealization: In 'In My Memory Lock'd', a multi-millionaire hotelier has amnesia and Lu and Frank have to help him find the truth about himself. [[spoiler:He went undercover in his own hotel, learning that his manager was embezzling. What seems like a noble endeavor turns sour when he then learns that he tried to blackmail the manager's young daughter into sleeping with him. After recovering his memory, he confesses to the hotel staff that he really doesn't like the man he used to be, and thanks the detectives for helping him to realize that he still has some better instincts in him.]]

* ItWasWithYouAllAlong: In "Too Cold For Hell", a mobster is enraged when the urn containing his mother's ashes is stolen from his niece by a gang of fraudulent movers, and then even more enraged when the urn is recovered - [[spoiler:minus his stash of uncut diamonds that he was keeping safe in case he needed to flee the country. When questioned, the niece and her husband says they noticed how heavy the urn was and found a false bottom weighted with what they thought were pebbles, so they used them to spruce up the bottom of their goldfish "Julius's" bowl. Since they removed the "pebbles" well before moving, and the fish bowl was the only thing the phony movers didn't take away, the mobster could have saved himself a ''whole'' lot of trouble.]]

* LikeAnOldMarriedCouple: Frank and Lu are this in spades, they act more like a couple than business partners. When even acting as a divorcing couple in one episode their bickering is so believable that it's clear they are very close to make it natural as an act. Doesn't hurt that their namesakes William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway were husband and wife

* RobbingTheMobBank: In "Too Cold For Hell", Florian Feste ran a fraudulent moving service that allowed him to steal other people's valuables. This backfired when his latest client turns out to (unknowingly) be the niece of a violent international mobster, who entrusted the niece with the urn containing his mother's ashes.