Mysteries make sense of a senseless world. That’s why we love them. They tell us there are puzzles out there that can be solved. I find that my anxiety levels and my mystery-show consumption are a 1:1 correlation. The more stressful the real world, the more I revert to some British sleuth’s domain. And I’m not the only one. There’s a whole subgenre of movies and TV that is designed to be as chill as humanly possible: the cozy mystery.
The rules of the cozy mystery are simple. The victim is an asshole who the audience usually does not see die. The detective is either an amateur or a professional with a coterie of fellow crime-solvers so deeply enmeshed they resemble a sitcom more than Law & Order. No drugs, little sex, and no bummers. Nothing that reminds you of real-life problems. It’s a murder with a Sudoku’s level of emotional engagement.
Hallmark Mystery & Movies channel has made a cottage industry of cranking out cozy mysteries, as has iTV in England. The chirpy USA dramas Psych and Monk pulled them off almost every week. Meanwhile, the grande dame of the cozy mystery, Agatha Christie, actually touched on real-world problems all the time in her prose. Over time, the adaptations of her work have worn down its sharper edges, resulting in a product as refined and undefined as string cheese. And for that, we celebrate them. Here are the coziest murder mysteries around (and where to stream them).
Evil Under the Sun
The first half of this list is going to be all Agatha Christie adaptations. The prolific queen of crime fiction is still the name most closely associated with a cozy mystery. There are hundreds of Christie adaptations, many more of which we could have included in this list if we were going Agatha all along. The Doctor Who episode, the anime where Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot meet, the most recent miniseries adaptation of Tommy and Tuppence, the CBS TV movie with Alfred Molina as Poirot — all of these have a cozy charm and are worth your time. Not Kenny Branagh’s stuff, though.
David Suchet’s Poirot is now considered the definitive portrayal of the iconic detective, but we need to pay some respect to Peter Ustinov’s version of the character, too. Ustinov often seems to be amiably chuckling his way through all these murders. Where Suchet is fussy and Branagh is overwrought, Ustinov is almost trolling. His take on Evil Under the Sun is a sunlit romp through the Mediterranean, perfect for melting the winter freeze from your soul. As Ustinov bathes and gossips and solves multiple murders, we get a little holiday alongside our favorite Belgian detective.
Murder at the Gallop
This one’s just silly. The ’60s Miss Marple movies are the goofiest Christie adaptations, perhaps because they’re contemporary. Newer Christie joints are usually period dramas with a nostalgic sheen, whereas this one has Marple bumping up against what was new and exciting at the time: rock, and furthermore, roll. All you really need to know is that this is the one in which Miss Marple attends a local dance and does the twist. If you can’t decide between a cozy mystery and A Hard Day’s Night, watch Murder at the Gallop.
Agatha Christie’s Poirot, “Lord Edgware Diesâ€
The tone of David Suchet’s Poirot series varies wildly. The first season or so is basically a sitcom. Later entries are deep melodrama and really lay the pathos on thick. In the middle are some of the best Christie adaptations ever done. The seventh-season episode “Lord Edgware Dies†has comic asides but still stays a little grim. The plot is implausible but not impossible. What’s more, this episode has gowns, honey. And plot-relevant hats, to boot.
Agatha Christie’s Marple, “At Bertram’s Hotelâ€
Alongside the Christie picks, many of the coziest mysteries take place at Christmas. There’s the original Thin Man movie (see below); the Suchet-starring “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas†and “The Theft of the Royal Rubyâ€; the Jeremy Brett-as-Sherlock Holmes tale “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncleâ€; the many Xmas eps of Bones, Monk, Murder She Wrote, Castle, Veronica Mars, NCIS, The X-Files; and, of course, Who Killed Santa? A Murderville Murder Mystery. There’s also the made-for-TV movie The Christmas Train, which is basically Murder on the Orient Express. Only instead of a trainful of suspects conspiring to execute a child killer, they bring cheer to someone who has lost the Christmas spirit.
The “At Bertram’s Hotel†episode of Agatha Christie’s Marple has the best balance between “Christmas†and “mystery†of all these offerings. Miss Marple visits a hotel she once spent Christmas at as a girl, and wouldn’t you know it? There’s a murder. Like most of this iteration of Marple, the episode features British stars of the 2000s, a romance, and queerness that’s not in the source material. Nothing puts me in the Christmas spirit like That Guy From Episodes and That Girl From Love Actually falling in love and solving a crime together.
Song of the Thin Man
The last in MGM’s series of William Powell–Myrna Loy double-handers, Song of the Thin Man is deeply silly. Amateur sleuths Nick and Nora Charles are still solving murders, but they have a cute son now. The son bonds deeply with the previous comic-relief character, Asta the dog. This mystery starts on a casino boat, which is great. And on top of that, it’s about jazz musicians? Sign me up. The faux-hepcat speech in the movie is phenomenal, and the murder victim is such an asshole you never come close to having even one feeling about him. It’s all wit and alcoholism jokes.
Psych, “Dual Spiresâ€
Before Twin Peaks: The Return, this ep was one of the few places you could see what Bobby Briggs looked like all grown up. This fifth-season Psych episode is a loving parody of Twin Peaks, featuring all the folksy quirk of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s prime-time soap with none of the surreal tragedy. You can tell that everyone who worked on this thing loves the source material, even as they gently rib it and deliver an effective stand-alone mystery. Add to that the chemistry between leads Dulé Hill and James Roday Rodriguez, and you have a damn fine cup of coffee apple cider.
Bones, “The End in the Beginningâ€
Bones is the grossest show for moms ever made. Most episodes of the procedural feature bodies too decayed or dismembered for normal identification techniques, necessitating the involvement of Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and her team of Squints from the Jeffersonian Institution. Not this episode, however. The season-four finale is an episodelong dream sequence, in which Temperance and Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) are married and run a nightclub together. But when a mob middleman gets murdered at the club, they have to solve the crime before the cops pin it on them. This episode is especially cozy because all of the tragedy that surrounds Brennan and Booth just … doesn’t exist in the dream world. It’s just all our friends playing dress-up. All her Squinterns work at the club, including the one who became the assistant to a cannibal in the previous season. John Francis Daley’s real-life band does a song. And it’s not even the biggest musical sequence. When Mötley Crüe is the guest star, you know it’s a deeply unserious time.
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, “Murder à la Modeâ€
Like “Lord Edgware Dies,†this episode is full of incredible gowns. Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries usually features gorgeous 1920s dresses as well as the titular Miss Fisher (Essie Davis) slipping out of those dresses to bone down a witness or two. It is a frivolous show, with a supporting cast full of rom-com tension. Miss Fisher and Detective Jack Robinson (Nathan Page) solve murders together while their assistants Dot (Ashleigh Cummings) and Hugh (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) fall in love. This episode’s B-plot, in which Dot worries she’s not glamorous enough to keep Hugh’s attention, is them at their cutest.
Columbo, “Any Old Port in a Stormâ€
This is basically an episode of Frasier if Frasier committed a murder. Donald Pleasance plays a wine snob who murders his brother in order to protect his winery. As per usual in Columbo, he runs afoul of the slovenly detective. But Columbo (Peter Falk) seems to take a shine to this perp, learning all about wine as Pleasance bumbles his way through the cover-up. Fans love the chemistry between the two stars. When Pleasance is finally caught, Columbo offers him a dessert wine that pairs well with handcuffs.
8 Women
Another Christmas banger. The French musical 8 Women centers on the death of Marcel, the patriarch of a high-class family in 1950s France. Each of the eight women are hiding the usual murder-mystery secrets — hidden fortunes, pregnancies, lesbianism, etc. — which are revealed in song. The end is darker than most cozy mysteries, but that’s more than made up for by the supersaturated color palette and splashy musical numbers.
Clue
More manic than a British mystery, Clue is a send-up of all the interwar whodunits of the past. Like Murder by Death but actually fun. The cult film stars Tim Curry, Martin Mull, Madeline Kahn, the lead singer of punk band Fear, and more as the characters from the classic board game. The movie’s multiple-choice ending only underscores just how little the mystery matters in this madcap comedy. We are here to laugh and to gasp at twists, not think or care.
Nero Wolfe, “Die Like a Dogâ€
Before the prestige cable drama, there was Nero Wolfe. Dramatized for A&E from the novels by Rex Stout, the show starred Timothy Hutton as the assistant to cranky, agoraphobic detective Nero Wolfe. Each episode was rounded out by a repertory cast that takes on new supporting roles each time. It gives the whole thing a lovely sense of continuity and presentationalism. In this episode, a dog witnesses a murder, then is adopted by Wolfe and his assistant. When a pet is pivotal to a mystery, you know you’re in for a goofy time. See also: Murder She Wrote’s “It’s a Dog’s Life,†The Cat Who … mystery series, and that time Wishbone adapted Sherlock Holmes.
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