Why I love Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
It seems like Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries has become my piece of comfort media for this lockdown. I've been thinking about why this show is so comforting to me, and I've decided that it has to do with the way it deals with another catastrophic event, the first world war.
Even though the series happens about 10 years after the end of the war, the war has a kind of presence in it. It often comes up in cases. It's one of the forces that drove a lot of the characters to where they are in the series.
There are a lot of war veterans in cases. In some of them, you can see the full, horrible effect the war continues to have. Archie Woods, Freddy Ashmead and Eugene Fisher are all disfigured, ill or shell shocked. We see the impact the war had on Vic Freeman, who pretended to have died so he didn't have to return to his home, and the effect that had on his mother and brother. The war itself is in the past, but it's effects aren't.
But then you get Phryne. Phryne who was a nurse and who watched helplessly as countless men died of horrible injuries. Who lives her life to the absolute fullest and who is extremely good at what she does. Phryne who helps nearly everyone who crosses her path, who makes other people part of her little found family. Phryne who still has trauma, but who is able to do her job as detective so much better because of the hardships she's been through.
And you get Jack, who uses the hardness he gained in the war to stick to his principles, instead of being emotionaly hardened. Who does the right thing rather than what the law requires (see: S1 ep3). Who gained empathy for others rather than lost it.
And there are so many other characters who were in the war and who are now living their best lives? Mr Butler was in the AIF, now he's using his skills to protect Phryne and her little found family (he's a butler but he acts like a bodyguard to them sometimes). And Bert, who seems brash and angry, but who is actually kind and who gets absolutely outraged at injustice (like the terrible abortion laws).
And I just think that's so comforting? Especially in this time (March 2020). To watch a show that takes place a while after an event that seemed utterly catastrophic at the time, and to see that, despite the damage it did, it just made some people all the more good and kind? It's truly wonderful, and I love it.
