To Catch a Spy

Unfortunately not very good acting.

I only liked the traveling part.

Was easy to know the killer.

As an ad for the Maltese tourist industry this works well. As an entertaining mystery drama, not so much. The story revolves around an American travel writer, visiting Malta to review a recently opened luxury Hotel. She already knows the owner and soon sees him falling to his death past her hotel balcony. What follows is a preposterous story involving espionage and murder. Naturally our heroine, Nathalie Kelley, sets out to find out who was responsible for her friends death, and why. In so doing she is able to uncover the truth, outwitting the local police and the FBI who are staying at the hotel seeking a super spy who has evaded capture for decades. So, watchable, but mainly for the great locations.

I like Nathalie Kelley. She'll never be the best actress, but she's charming and the camera loves her. Mr. Chicago Med wasn't bad either. The setting, as others have noted, was beautiful.

The plot, however, was implausible and corny. Actually, maybe it's just the Nancy Drew genre that feels so banal. In any event, I knew what I was getting into when I started watching, so I can't complain about the plot holes. What I didn't expect was the villain in the climactic scene to be such a joke. If you can get through the final few scenes without rolling your eyes and laughing then you were probably asleep.

Mystery was a bit curious. Is it a comedy or drama? The leads and suspects were okay. A typical Hallmark story where the female lead, in this case a travel writer, finds a body and then gets in over her head trying to solve it. There's a lot of scenery to take in, but the script and casting are lacking in depth. Would not mind seeing more of the leads, but the supporting cast has little to do, which is fortunate because they can't act. Needs the charm of a series like Murder She Baked.

6/10 - while the mystery is unlikely to change the game, I loved getting to see Nathalie Kelley and beautiful Malta in this Hallmark original movie.