‘Recipes for Love and Homicide’ Treats Homicide as a Piece of Cake

The supply of this week’s different televised literary adaptation can’t declare the identical international attain as “The Lord of the Rings,” however Sally Andrew’s Tannie Maria novels have confirmed dependable bestsellers within the creator’s native South Africa since their 2015 debut. They now present the premise of “Recipes for Love and Murder,” a South African-Scottish co-production that represents the daffiest addition but to Acorn TV’s burgeoning portfolio of genial timepassers.

To some extent, that is components fare with a capital F: delicate comedian, romantic and prison misadventures in a picturesque setting. Watch sufficient of it, and also you notice even particular person scenes have their very own components. Discover a cosy location, add gentle seasonings of plot and piano, and – lest anyone nonetheless really feel too challenged – serve with a cutesy punchline, sometimes somebody providing to place a kettle on someplace. From its foundations up, it’s tea-break tv.

But creators Karen Jeynes and Annie Griffin spin two variations for themselves. The primary is geographic. The backdrop is Andrew’s personal yard, the Klein Karoo, a 350-kilometre valley that encompasses each mountainous rural outskirts and vibrant, multi-ethnic city centres that – as glimpsed in passing right here – remind you what a journey the actual South Africa has been on these previous a long time.

The second is a one-of-a-kind heroine: matronly Maria Purvis (Maria Doyle Kennedy), a dedicated foodie turning her hand to agony aunting – “Tannie” which means Auntie in Afrikaans – and novice sleuthing between drizzling raspberries with honey and finishing the lattice high for an ostrich mince pie. (No man might multitask so.) Progressively, we glean that Maria might even be hiding an additional, secret identification, which presumably accounts for Doyle Kennedy’s shifting accent. There are multifaceted feminine characters, and there’s ordering each dish on the menu and hoping they’ll sit properly on the abdomen.

It’s clear the place “Recipes” desires to place itself. Like these afternoon telemovies about bakers turned crimefighters, the present bridges the brightly lit cookery reveals of daytime and the post-watershed procedural drama. Nothing within the early episodes instructions the identical rapt consideration as a sequence through which Maria readies tv’s most fascinating gateau, an indulgence that gives succour for an area girl accused of homicide earlier than itself taking a bullet, cueing the priceless command, “Take that cake into custody.”

Christiaan Olwagen, who directs six out of the ten episodes (Jeynes handles the opposite 4), has described “Recipes” because the midpoint between “Chocolat” and “The Killing,” an outline that isn’t wholly inaccurate, even because it hints on the present’s generally awkward tonal shifts. Within the season premiere, Maria’s destiny turns into entwined with that of abused housewife Martine (Tinarie van Wyk Loots); montages of home violence are overlaid with Maria’s recipe for the right mutton curry (“Boil the potatoes and add the garam masala, and there you may have it.”).

Whereas establishing some empathetic hyperlink between the townswomen, it additionally betrays “Recipes’” scattered-seeming narrative methods. Concurrently soapy and surreal, the present typically seems far much less enthusiastic about any ingredient of crime – the sleuthing is thinly unfold early on – than it’s in returning to the chopping board. (The opening credit discover Maria busy slicing, dicing and sautéing: you’d name them “Dexter”-esque, have been the scarlet droplets in shot not so clearly a pleasant loganberry jus.)

Thought has nonetheless been utilized to bringing a staid leisure format into the twenty first century. A Caucasian of a sure age, Maria involves determine a possible teammate in Jessie (Kylie Fisher), a youthful Black colleague whose rival recommendation column apparently sparks a web-based circulation conflict. Although the characters are outlined in amusingly easy phrases by their by-lines – “Tannie Maria’s Recommendation for Life” versus “Jess Saying” – the pair’s rising bond is among the many most interesting elements right here, boosted by debutante Fisher’s pure display screen presence.

Traces of conservatism stay, most visibly within the (oddly underpopulated) newsroom’s Barbie-pink partitions. And whereas episode two poignantly sketches a closeted farmer pushed to put in writing his personal Expensive Tannie letter, it additionally options the city’s swishing butcher Doep (Terence Bridgett) providing frowning detective Meyer (Tony Kgoroge) a “good thick juicy rump.” It’s progressive, up to some extent. Nonetheless, its eccentricities – that are recognizably these of a fledgling TV business figuring out the way to make streamable content material for worldwide markets – grew on this viewer.

Steadily employed since her debut in 1991’s “The Commitments,” Doyle Kennedy is doing her stage finest to make cohesive a personality who’s directly Julia Youngster, Miss Marple and a thriller past anyone’s speedy comprehension. There’s one thing innocently pleasurable in Jessie’s flirting with bashful police hunk Regardt (Arno Greeff), a subplot one suspects must be dealt with otherwise in any comparable U.S. drama. I even discovered myself vaguely invested within the destiny of Maria’s hen confidante Morag, noticed roaming her keeper’s surfaces in a flagrant breach of typical health-code laws.

There’s the slim likelihood “Recipes” will deepen and darken because the sequence settles down and performs out. Every week’s letter to Tannie folds in additional life expertise, whereas increasing our understanding of the Karoo neighborhood; there’s even a flicker of real grief in episode three, as city elder Grace (Lee Duru) mourns her murdered son. However its personal recipe seems inked in for now, established when Maria tells that wronged prisoner “No cops, don’t fear, simply cake.” For those who took a knife to it, “Recipes” would possibly solely be that – fluffy sponge held collectively by a lightweight cream filling. However on sure afternoons, that may be appetizing, too.

“Recipes for Love and Homicide” streams on Acorn TV from Sept. 5, releasing two episodes every week with 10 episodes in whole (first three screened for evaluation).