Murdoch Mysteries aka The Artful Detective Coming to USA

This morning my Twitter Feed was buzzing with this tweet

Great news, U.S. viewers! Season 8 of #MurdochMysteries aka #TheArtfulDetective debuts on @ovationtv on Sat Feb 21 at 7pm!

I live in Canada and I've been watching Murdoch Mysteries since Day 1. If you've never heard of it or never been able to watch it, you are missing out. Murdoch Mysteries is a Canadian television drama series and is called The Artful Detective in the United States, featuring Yannick Bisson as William Murdoch, a police detective working in Toronto Ontario around the turn of the twentieth century. The television series is based on characters from the novel series by Maureen Jennings.

It's funny, it's serious, it's historical and it has really interesting story lines. The writers often choose a historical event or person and craft an episode around that.  For example I first heard of the Jubilee Singers from a Murdoch episode! Murdoch is somewhat of an inventor with wonderful ideas on using fingerprinting, using black light to see invisible organic matter and other modern techniques which were not in use during his time. 

The historical aspect of the show is fascinating as is Murdoch's creative mind and the interaction of the main characters. For those of us in Canada it's also lots of fun to see the individuals who are coaxed into appearing on the show, including our own Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who had a brief scene as a desk clerk at the Police Station in one episode.

One of the episodes (Murdoch Ahoy) was filmed not far from where I live. You can read about the ship they used at The S.S. Keewatin is Back Home!


Murdoch Mysteries is worldwide now:
 
CBC in Canada
Ovation in the United States
UKTV’s Alibi and Drama Channel (Freeview 20) in the UK
Distributed in 110 countries worldwide by ITV Studios Global Entertainment
And on France 3 in France