After the ninety minute pilot, this is the first episode of the series proper and it, like the rest of the episodes, goes to a more standard fifty minute running time. There’s actually a really significant change in the tone of this episode as compared to the Pilot. It’ll be interesting to see if the show experiments with a lot of different tones or if the series keeps with the tone introduced here which is a lot more tongue-in-cheek and, at times, almost farcical. The introduction of William Simons as the chubby, bearded Constable Thackery as a sidekick seems to indicate that the show will be keeping this new tone. Luckily Dobie is just as good at wry humor as he is the more serious stuff he did in the pilot so the episode has a few real laughs, including one gut-bustingly hilarious line. The farce got a bit thick for me toward the very end with the revelation of the villain via a silly scene clearing one character and an even sillier scene revealing the true culprit; neither of those really worked for me. But I’m still interested in the show. We’ll see where it goes. 3 stars.
tl;dr – surprising tonal change to light comedy is unexpected, but mostly satisfying, though it gets a bit too silly at times; Alan Dobie still holds the show together with his wonderful performance. 3 stars.