Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop

It's a slow mystery set in leafy rural England, similar to a lot of UK TV shows.

Quite predictable, but full of lots of good British comedy actors like Caroline Quentin. Kelsey Grammer is as watchable as ever.

This won't set your world on fire but it passed a pleasant 95 minutes for me.

Right, well initially I was lured in by this 2021 crime mystery's title. I mean, with it being titled "Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop", I figured that I would be in for something with some kind of haunting.

But imagine my surprise when I found out that what I was in for was something rather different. Yeah, "Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop" from writers Josh Ridgway and Kate Wood felt like a movie based on a cheap mystery novel. You know, the ones that come a dime a dozen and aimed at a slightly older audience. That is how this movie came off to me. So I was somewhat disappointed with it not having ghosts.

And I also have to say that the fact that Kelsey Grammer was on the cast list helped to win me over to sit down and watch the movie.

Director Brad Watson didn't really deliver a movie that fell all that much into my liking. Sure, a mystery movie is fine, but not if it feels like one of those cheap crime mysteries that you have tossed at you with the purchase of a weekly magazine. The storyline simply was too stereotypical, generic and predictable. And there weren't much of any suspense or thrills throughout the course of the movie.

Sure, it was fun to watch Nathalie Cox and Kelsey Grammer playing together in a movie again and at the same mansion nonetheless. They worked togethat at the very same location back in 2020 for the Christmas movie titled "Father Christmas". So that was a fun thing to witness, not that it had any influence on the storyline or anything.

The acting performances in the movie were good. But the storyline was just a tad too generic and mundane for my liking.

My rating of "Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop" lands on a four out of ten stars.

Miss Willoughby and the Haunted Bookshop is a simple old fashioned British whodunit mystery.

Miss Willoughby is not Miss Marple and this story is definitely not a Agatha Christie story. Also the movie has a TV look and may be a bit slow for some, but it is a good story with very likable actors.

We open in 1996 and young Elizabeth Willoughby is attending her parents funeral. Elizabeth inherits the family's elaborate huge English Estate complete with full-time servants. A family friend, Robert (Kelsey Grammer) becomes Elizabeth's Guardian and caretaker of the Family Estate.

Robert raises Elizabeth and trains and teaches her fitness, martial arts, chess. And ancient war strategies.

Then we cut 25 years later, and now an adult, a book author, and Professor of Ancient Civilizations, Elizabeth (Nathalie Cox) is asked to investigate a series of hauntings at her friend's Bookshop.

As Elizabeth starts to investigate, she begins to question the possibility that this may be a real ghost.

The movie is more of a fun British TV show and doesn't really take itself too seriously but I did enjoy it. The ending suggest that this may be the first of many more Miss Willoughby mystery films.

This is a sweet little English mystery. It has some potential, but no surprises. I quite liked the actors.

Overall, the movie feels like it would be part of a series, yet not the FIRST one. I was puzzled by the many references to backstory not explained: antagonistic history with the psychiatrist, mentions of Miss Willoughby being a bit a sleuth, lack of details about the books she authored, the detective's reference to trouble often finding her. Initially, I thought there must have been a previous movie, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The lack of basic logic is hard to swallow. With a woman having hallucination and paranoia, who is also on medication, it seems like the first step would be to verify that the medication is what it should be. I'm also curious how such a well put together woman manages without a purse. She's wearing skin tight riding breaches. I suppose there are pockets in her jacket, although it's fairly tailored. Are the pockets large enough to hold keys, cell phone, hairbrush, extra makeup....the things we women usually carry around?

I'm not quite sure why this movie got so many negative reviews and comments. It could just be that they do not understand British humor and television. In my opinion this has been a completely brilliant British whodunit. Kelsey Grammer is excellent and his role. The lead actress is likable and interesting. It has your typical British humor and mystery.

Don't give it a negative review simply because you don't understand or like British humor because as a mystery it's pretty good.

Personally I hope they make more movies together as they had excellent on screen chemistry. It reminds me of a type of Agatha Christie and Murder She Wrote.