Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Whitstable Pearl’ Season 3 On Acorn TV, Where A Restaurant Owner Solves Crimes In A Tiny Seaside Town

We’ve mentioned this many times, but the key to a classic mystery series, especially a classic British mystery, is that the crime solver and the group around that person have a lot of chemistry, and what goes on that’s away from the mystery is the key. An Acorn TV series that takes place in a small seaside town has those ingredients.

WHITSTABLE PEARL SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Bucolic scenes of the seaside town of Whitstable. We see people walking along the beach.

The Gist: Izzy (Penny Downie), a photographer, is taking pictures along the beach when she spies a woman with long red hear flowing from her baseball cap. She takes pictures of the woman, then a few minutes later, someone comes out of nowhere and tries to grab the camera. In the process, the strap breaks, and Izzy falls down and hits her head.

Izzy stumbles into the restaurant Whitstable Pearl, as she’s friends with the owners, Pearl Nolan (Kerry Godliman) and her mother Dolly (Frances Barber). Right before tht, Pearl and Dolly were trying out a dish cooked up by their young employee Ruby Williams (Isobelle Molloy). Also, DCI Mike McGuire (Howard Charles) has come back from a three-month sabbatical, seemingly calmer and more relaxed. The only thing he says about his time away is that he “went for a walk.”

What Izzy tells Pearl, Dolly, Mike and DS Nikki Martel (Sophia Del Pizzo) is that the pictures she took are of a woman who left her husband and went missing seven years prior. Because she knows the police won’t take her seriously, she enlists Pearl to find out if the person whom she took pictures of was indeed that woman. One of the first places Pearl goes to is the woman’s mother (Sally Ann Triplett), who insisted that her former husband (Rob Compton) was controlling and abusive, though to most people in town he looked like a doting husband and father.

Pearl sees evidence that the woman may indeed be back in town, but can’t find any CCTV footage that shows her face. They need to get Izzy’s camera and film back, and Mike and Nikki follow a lead as to where those items may be.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? While Whitstable Pearl has a similar format to a lot of British mystery series, especially fellow Acorn TV shows, the “murders in a small town” vibe comes very close to Murder, She Wrote and, well, Murder In A Small Town.

Our Take: Created by Øystein Karlsen and Julie Wassmer based on Wassmer’s book series; when we reviewed the first season, we liked the chemistry between the stars, especially Godliman and Charles. That chemistry continues, and is even stronger because, like most shows of this ilk, the writers have built a genial community around Pearl, Dolly and Mike. But, unlike the first season, the cases Pearl tries to solve are a lot more intriguing.

The case in the first episode didn’t involve a murder right away, just a mugging and a missing woman. But it ended up involving some deception and some good detective work by Pearl — with her mom giving her an assist. It ended with a confrontation that made us roll our eyes, but having the fifty-something woman who isn’t trained in self defense confronting a weapon-wielding killer isn’t exactly a new thing in shows like this. The resolution to the case was a bit cloudy, but it sure played out in a lot more satisfying manner than what we saw in the first season.

But the world in and around Whitstable Pearl is really what the attraction is here. Pearl now has Tom (Robert Webb), her boyfriend, to lean on; he also provides a bit of lightheartedness to the show, as we see when he discusses casting a community theater production of The Sound Of Music. There’s also Ruby, who brings a younger perspective to things.

The series, though, is built around the friendship between Pearl and Mike. Mike is trying to get past his anger and deal with the grief of losing his wife, and Peal wants to help him in any way she can. Having that relationship be well-established helps when the mysteries are less-than-compelling, and the writers of Whitstable Pearl have done a good job of establishing and fostering those relationships.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Peal hangs a picture Izzy took of the missing woman’s mother and kids at the beach, a rainbow in the background.

Sleeper Star: Frances Butler is a hoot as Dolly, especially when she and Izzy are trying to figure out at what point in the ’80s they became friends.

Most Pilot-y Line: It’s amazing how these untrained, middle-aged crime solvers decide to chase down the people they suspect, confident that the person won’t try anything on them. For some reason they don’t realize that if the person has killed once, they might kill again.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The mysteries on Whitstable Pearl have gotten better, but the relationships between the regulars at Pearl and Molly’s restaurant are really what make the show go.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.