Murder in Suburbia

This popular BBC series takes elements of the best American police procedurals and puts them in a sparkling British blender; the result is a sexy, intoxicating brew to be appreciated by all crime-show fans. Our two young heroines, Ash (Caroline Catz) and Scribbs (Lisa Faulkner), are terminally single, hip, hard-working, wry, and fearless. Think of Prime Suspect-meets-Law & Order, starring, say, Veronica Mars and L&O: SVU's Olivia Benson. The show is set in posh Middleford, England, a leafy town where the murders are every bit as gritty as in the big city. Ash's take on the appeal of the suburbs: "The effortless way it all works--deceit, murder, wife-swapping. And still the hedges get trimmed." There's as much sister-power camaraderie and wise-cracking as crime-solving, as our detectives fret about not dating (though they agree that "Tuesdays are brilliant, really, for being single"), secretly pine after their boss, and poke their noses quite forcefully into the business of the rich, who'd just as soon kill as cooperate. This boxed set contains six great episodes, with plotlines involving admissions to posh schools, the underworld of singles dating clubs, and lots and lots of money spent in quite the wrong ways. Crisp, well written, and jolly good.

The brash British crime-fighing duo of Ash and Scribbs--Kate Ashurst and Emma Scribbins--are back in fine cheeky form in the second series of Murder in Suburbia. The BBC series is unlike any American crime procedural, partly because of the comely and very real young women detectives who play the leads--they're slightly neurotic, their love lives are messy, and they actually admit to getting rattled when solving creepy cases. But their focus and offbeat crime-solving methods nearly always save the day. The series is as enjoyable for the banter between the two as for the actual crime plots involved. The episode "Witch," for instance, centers on a murder of a student at an exclusive country school, and draws Ash and Scribbs into not only an unsettling clique of witchcraft practitioners, but forces them to relive some of their own not so ideal high school days. Dry humor as much as their ingenuity saves the day. Scribbs: "Do you think there's some kind of IQ test you have to fail to be come an estate agent?" Ash: "Yeah. It's the same test all my ex-boyfriends failed."