Ships in the Night: A Martha's Vineyard Mystery

I don't know why, but this Hallmark mystery series has never drawn me in like some of the others and is so far from my three favorites (Hannah Swensen's Murder She Baked, Aurora Teagarden and Mystery 101), that it is almost not worth reviewing.

There is so much going on in this episode that it feels scattered instead of like a comprehensive and completely story. The returning characters seem to be a barista who is our main character's friend...but they have no chemistry and barely exchange a few lines an episode...let alone nothing in common, a doctor potential love interest who moonlights as the M. E. And her father the chief of police who is always trying to talk out main character into going back to work for the local police.

Our main character is a male and a former Boston police detective who was forced into early retirement do to a shooting which killed his partner and left him with a bullet in his back. This gets brought up every episode...I wish they would just solve that mystery and move on! Also, all through the episode we get to see him working out...running, boxing, etc.

In this episode someone is killed at a local art gallery...then the former doctor ends up dead in his home...while he was trying to build a medical device that could have helped many.

Meanwhile our two love interests keep having to cancel their dinner plans.

Best part of this episode was the romantic exchange in the last 5-10 seconds of the whole show.

This is starting to be a hard pass for me and I can't really recommend it.

There's a murder. Jeff and Zee are back to solving the case. Jeff is rethinking the incident which put the bullet in his back. It's the third movie in this Hallmark mystery series.

Sarah Lind loosens up a little. That's a good thing but the relationship still needs work. They didn't start the series with a meet-cute and their banter is not that good. I guess they're not going to accept my suggestion to insert a love triangle. I'm still hoping for flashbacks to their childhood. In fact, they should do a mystery which centers around their younger selves. The mysteries are not doing it for me. Jeff's bullet in his back is the more interesting case. I'm losing interest in this franchise.

Decent story is ruined by 1. Terrible screenplay dialog, 2. Lousy acting, and 3. Fake locations pretending to be Martha's Vineyard.

Filmed in the Vancouver area and featuring mostly Canadian actors, this series of films totally fails to capture the Vineyard vibe or the local color and accents. The leading lady (Sarah Lind) is especially annoying since she's supposed to be a hospital doctor but all she does is traipse about with Jack (Jesse Metcalfe) the ex-Boston cop.

They live on an island but they don't seem to know anybody and never heard of them. Art galley? Rich people with ocean-front homes? Nope. Never heard of them. Lind's daddy is the local police chief (Eric Keenleyside), but he's also totally unaware of local residents and companies.

Also annoying is that they seem to be on an island off the coast of Boston. There's never a mention of Cape Cod even though the major ferry services come out of Falmouth, Hyannis, Woods Hole, etc. ... not Boston.

While there are fly-over shots of Boston and the Vineyard (the same one in each movie). there is no local film shooting.

Metcalfe is not bad, but Lind is terrible. Keenleyside and the other regulars are amateurish and serve little purpose. There's a coffee guy , a reporter, and a woman who either owns or manages an inn. They are just background.

The women swan about in high-fashion clothing and high heels, and all the clothing looks like it's freshly new, giving the whole series that soap opera look.

The lack of depth is hilarious. My favorite scene has Metcalfe and Lind discovering the dead gallery owner lying in a bucket's worth of blood around her smashed-in head. Lind the doctor kneels down and feels for a pulse. "She's dead!" she says, staring up at him. DUH.

The realism extends to the constant mentioning of lobsters and clams and sometimes crabs, since of course that's all island people eat. DUH.

Totally agree with other reviewers ridiculous blue Box. But The dialogue is so lame ! The stories themselves not bad ,but nobody really talks like that

Jeff and Zee confront the deaths of two community members on the eve of a fundraising regatta. Eli (Fred Keating), a doctor and Zee's mentor, gets chucked out the window by someone who appears to want a portable dialysis machine that he's been tinkering with. Across town, Bernie (Kehli O'Byrne), manager of the Winchester Art Gallery, is clubbed with a sailboat sculpture. It's unclear if and how the incidents are connected. In any case, two deaths might be one too many because no one picks up on poor Eli's demise until deep into the second act.

There's something relaxing about this mystery, perhaps it's the beach and the chilled atmosphere, but it's quite nice. The acting is adequate, Sarah Lind is very pretty, the investigation is standard but diverting. It's an adequately made TV mystery.