The Cases of Mystery Lane: Death Is Listening

The Cases of Mystery Lane have been fantastic. This series has been a refreshing change from the usual and both of the movies have been really entertaining and top notch. The cast is fantastic and they all have great energy and chemistry with each other. The storylines have been engaging and the pace of the movies in the series has been perfect and flow very well. Paul Campbell is especially good and his comedic timing and charm are fantastic! These are a win for Hallmark Channel. Love this series and hope that Hallmark makes many more of them. Watch them and enjoy The Cases of Mystery Lane series!

I enjoyed watching the second entry of the Mystery Lane Mysteries. The quirky detective couple are a fresh spin to the Hallmark mysteries and I love "Officer Air Quotes." The story was engaging starting with a cold case murder. There are a lot of familiar faces as usual which I always love. I like that they have a serious murder mystery but manage to inject humor into it. The main characters are flawed and relatable. There's no super slow burn love story because it's about a couple navigating the challenges of being a couple. That's a definite breath of fresh air. I'm looking forward to the next one.

First things first, a little diatribe: Paul Campbell used to regularly be in films where his comedic chops were allowed to flourish. Look at his earlier Hallmark films circa 2013. These days, he's in seemingly a half dozen movies a year and is only funny in maybe one of them. Let Paul Campbell be funny again! Like this film!

He and his co-lead have great chemistry, just like the first film. Not to say that it's perfect - some gags and dialogue fall flat, in my opinion. But overall they are great together and you can tell they think so too. They also present sort of a unique romantic dynamic I haven't seen elsewhere. The story never puts them at odds relationship wise, and while this might be unrealistic, for these films it is endearing.

They support and love each other. The drama in this film focuses almost wholly on the mystery at hand. Which is frankly a bit refreshing.

The mystery itself - which I won't get into here - wasn't as intriguing as the first film's mystery was. That being said, there was quite a bit of charming quirkiness and twists. Which is to say that it still was pretty good.

I liked the first one and was glad to see another. However, I am not sure why the writers decided to make the husband sillier and made the wife silly. I think the writers wanted to make them a cute couple but did not pull it off for me. And if I were taking a swig every time I heard babe I would have been falling over drunk by the end of the movie. I am guessing there will be another and I am hoping they haven't started on the script yet. Lose the Babe calling and lose the silliness and the over acting. Give the detective a more realistic role and don't make him silly. Better script writing and directing is much needed.

Listen I am not expecting Masterpiece Mystery quality from Hallmark, but I have rewound this movie more times than I can count since attempting to follow the plot. In addition to the putative murder mystery, there are about 5 subplots going on: each spouse is hiding a significant secret, there is some crazy tempestuous mother- daughter dynamics, and then some sort of frenemies situation. Hands down however the MOST annoying part of this movie is the MAN CHILD male lead, followed quickly behind by the incessant beating of the HEY WE ARE NERDS drum by both leads. I really wish Hallmark mysteries would return to adapting successful mysteries series rather than attempting to produce original scripts.