Mystery to Me

So you're telling me ... radio killed the British war effort star?

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror is a 1942 wartime mystery from director John Rawlins. The story is based somewhat on "His Last Bow" by Arthur Conan Doyle, a 1917 Sherlock Holmes story hyping World War I.

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce star as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. They're tasked with tracking down an evil podcaster Nazi saboteur announcing his nefarious deeds on the radio. It's basically Lord Haw-Haw, but boring.

Tune in to listen to Áine and Kevin voice their opinions on propaganda, podcasting, World War II history, and Dear Evan Hansen.

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Mystery to Me is a production of Mystery Sheet LLC.

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You have the right to rock out in the middle of your police procedural. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a television critic's review. You have a right to composer Randy Newman. If you cannot afford memorable songs, just stuff your episodes with boring tunes.

Cop Rock is the unholy union of a police procedural and a musical, from the twisted mind of Steven Bocho, the creator behind Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Doogie Howser, M.D., and NYPD Blue.

Basically, it's a cop show where the boys and girls in blue belt out tunes in the middle of investigations.

The ensemble series stars Anne Bobby, Barbara Bosson, Ronny Cox, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Peter Onorati, Ron McLarty, James McDaniel, Paul McCrane, Larry Joshua David Gianopoulos, and Mick Murry. The pilot episode aired on September 26, 1990, and features the squad squaring up against a bloodthirsty group of local criminals.

This inaugural storyline deals with police brutality, drug abuse, and cold-blooded homicide. Oh, and characters bursting into song. Listen to Áine and Kevin investigate why we own this on DVD, genre-bending choices, and why a lot of this has aged poorly.

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Caution! This review has a license to spoil. If you haven’t seen the latest James Bond film yet, hold off on listening, as we’ll be talking about major plot points and the ending in-depth.

No Time to Die is the twenty-fifth film in the James Bond series. Directed by Cary Fukunaga, it stars Daniel Craig as the famed spy, along with Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Lashana Lynch, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Rory Kinnear, Ralph Fiennes, Billy Magnussen, Ana de Armas, and David Dencik.

In Craig's final outing as Bond, the spy dumps his lady love after a dumb misunderstanding and retires in Jamaica. But the past is never truly past, especially not with nefarious masked men running around with scary nanobots.

We saw it at our local AMC theater on October 7, 2021. Then we stayed up late to ramble about it for you. So listen to Áine and Kevin waste time on rom-com-level misunderstandings, death scenes, and a discussion about what makes a Bond film.

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Adam-12 is a police procedural from the mind of Dragnet creator Jack Webb. The series stars Martin Milner as seasoned LAPD officer Pete Malloy and Kent McCord as the promising rookie Jim Reed.

This particular episode — "Log 174: Loan Sharks" — takes a bite out of the issue of organized crime employing violent debt collection methods. It's the first episode of the show's third season, and aired on September 19, 1970. Arthur Hunnicutt, Tim Rooney, William Boyett, and Kenneth Tobey also appear in this episode.

Basically, Malloy and Reed respond to a number of attacks at a Los Angeles factory, where a vicious pack of loan sharks are engaging in a feeding frenzy. The only person willing to speak out about the violence is car-obsessed, hippie-slang-slinging Jim Russell, the son of one of the workers. This episode also has an inexplicable and memorable sequence involving a drunk robber!

Listen to Áine and Kevin dive into the subjects of average working class Joes, cool cats, and cowboys.

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Mystery to Me is a production of Mystery Sheet LLC.

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SVU is back!

Airing on September 23, 2021, "And the Empire Strikes Back" and "Never Turn Your Back on Them" make up the two-part premiere for the twenty-third season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Mariska Hargitay stars as the just, empathetic Captain Olivia Benson, with Ice-T, Kelli Giddish, Peter Scanavino, Jamie Gray Hyder, and Demore Barnes rounding out the cast.

This confusingly-plotted two-parter follows the SVU team as they pursue a sleazy, entitled Congressman who splits his time between preying on young girls and declaring his presidential ambitions. Oh, and thanks to near-death-experiences and no-holds-barred office politics, two ensemble members ride off into the sunset. And, of course, the episodes also give us a helpful recap of what happened at the end of SVU's sister show Law & Order: Organized Crime.

Yeah, it's a lot.

Listen to Áine and Kevin weave together an incoherent narrative around sound effect failures, Q, dumb storytelling choices, and the sexual chemistry between Benson and her old partner Elliot Stabler.

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Mystery to Me is a production of Mystery Sheet LLC.

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It was the best of Grimes, it was the worst of Grimes. 

Perry Mason was a popular legal drama-mystery series centered around the exploits of its titular character, an ingenious criminal defense lawyer played by Raymond Burr. Author Erle Stanley Gardner initially dreamed up the character, who has inspired movies, radio serials, a CBS show, and a recent HBO series.

"The Case of the Dead Ringer" was the twenty-sixth episode of the long-running series' ninth season. The genesis of this storyline is that Burr apparently wanted to challenge himself by playing two roles. And us viewers get quite a ... memorable episode in return. 

In this segment, a group of nefarious businessmen produce a doppelganger, a Cockney-slang-spewing slob of a sailor, in order to discredit Mason during a trial. Can Perry clear his name before his evil twin Grimes permanently smears his legal reputation? 

Oh, and someone gets murdered at some point, obviously. 

Listen to Kevin, Áine, and special guest host “Áine Grimes” grouse over assorted topics, including overacting, Idi Amin, and the duality of man.

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Mystery to Me is a production of Mystery Sheet LLC.

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Barney Miller rang in its seventh season with a few assorted homicides.

The long-running police sitcom starred Hal Linden as the titular captain, along with Max Gail, Ron Glass, James Gregory, and Steve Landesburg. In "Homicide: Part One" and "Homicide: Part Two" — episodes that ran on October 30 and November 6 of 1980 — the entire station gets overhauled into the NYPD's new homicide bureau. And these detectives are not happy about the switch from mediating lighthearted community spats to hunting down hit men, murderous wives, and serial killers.

Áine and Kevin report for duty to chat about “young, hot Stalin,” the Six Day War, Community and Parks and Recreation, and the nature of policing. In this episode, Áine must also deduce which Barney Miller character Kevin was often compared to as a lad.

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Mystery to Me is a production of Mystery Sheet LLC.

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Arg, matey, contrary to what the title suggests, this ain't a pirate flick!

Tell No Tales is a 1939 mystery film from director Leslie Fenton, starring Melvyn Douglas, Louise Platt, Gene Lockhart, and Douglass Dumbrille.

Douglas plays Michael Cassidy, the civic-minded editor of The Evening Guardian newspaper. When a competitor threatens to shut down his beloved paper forever, Cassidy sets out to solve the mystery of a recent, high-profile kidnap-murder. He ends up chasing his tail for a while, endangering a witness, and generally ruining lives. But that's the Fourth Estate for you!

Listen to Áine and Kevin tell tales about journalism, genre, chickens, and the logistics of villainous grocery deliveries. 

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Gather round, ace Boomtown-booms!

Boomtown was a police drama set in Los Angeles that premiered on September 29, 2002. Created by Band of Brothers alumnus Graham Yost, the show employs an innovative non-linear approach to storytelling. Episodes are divided between the perspective of Donnie Wahlberg's LAPD Detective Joel Stevens, Mykelti Williamson's LAPD Detective Bobby "Fearless" Smith, Neal McDonough's Assistant District Attorney David McNorris, Gary Basaraba's LAPD Officer Ray Hechler, Jason Gedrick's LAPD Officer Tom Turcotte, Nina Garbiras' reporter Andrea Little, and Lana Parilla's EMT Teresa Ortiz.

Sounds like a lot? Well, yeah. It's a lot.

Despite early critical acclaim, Boomtown met its doom-town after just one and a third seasons. Season one came to a close on April 20, 2003. Listen as Áine and Kevin lower the boom on every single episode in this wacky season!

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Mystery to Me is a production of Mystery Sheet LLC.

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The great detective takes on the Great White North!

The Scarlet Claw is a 1944 Sherlock Holmes picture in the series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Once again, Roy William Neill is back to direct.

Holmes and Watson find themselves in Canada for a paranormal convention. But things take a darker turn when one of the occult expert's wife is found murdered, her throat slashed by a claw. When Holmes receives a letter from the dead one, he decides to travel to the small Northern town to deduce whether malevolent spirits or more earthly dangers are afoot.

Listen to Áine and Kevin scratch away at topics like ghosts, cross-Atlantic voyages during the Second World War, the hearty boomer goose, and Canada. We'll also discuss why this is our favorite Universal Holmes picture so far, and why we think it'll have you rooting for La Mort Rouge.

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Mystery to Me is a production of Mystery Sheet LLC.

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