Overview
No greater honour will ever be bestowed upon an officer, than when they are entrusted with an investigation into the death of a human being. Seven's new series follows young Homicide Detectives Simon (Daniel MacPherson, Neighbours, Tripping Over), Duncan (Aaron Pedersen, Water Rats), Jennifer (Nadine Garner, Water Rats, Stingers) and Matt (Damien Richardson) as they try to deal with the reality of their jobs in their personal and professional lives. With the help of their Superintendent (Noni Hazlehurst, Better Homes and Gardens) and Senior Sergeant (Shane Bourne, Thank God You're Here, MDA) they go about trying to solve some of Melbourne's most brutal homicides. City Homicide: Their day begins when your day ends. This is City Homicide.
Better than most American and some British ones))
A completely standard and even hackneyed plot. But the cases are quite intriguing, intricate, but not terribly artificial. Small-minded criminals and thoughtful hired killers, prudent politicians, successful businessmen or respectable heads of prosperous families, with virtually no maniacs and almost no pedophiles. A good balance of drama and tragedy with comedy and detective, and the right mix of violent crimes, interagency conflicts, teamwork, and personal relationships. Diverse, strong and not boring series.
It's well-choreographed, lively and non-static editing, and a good pace of events. Meaningful scenes are often broken up by short shots of recognizable Melbourne "chips": trams, Flinders Street Station and panoramas of the CBD business districts. The dialogues are at a very decent level, and some of Terry Jarvis' lines are just great. I was pleased with the regular and fairly strong main cast, as well as the fact that they did not overdo it.
It turned out to be a solid, rather dynamic, classic police-crime series with an Australian flavor. Positive, with cute characters and quite interesting stories. I don't regret at all that I had to tinker to watch all the episodes.
Language. They speak well, naturally, in principle, intelligibly and usually not insanely fast, the vocabulary is not too complicated, but it can be difficult without subtitles. There are characters with rather heavy accents, there is slang, sometimes they talk a lot, they don't talk a lot into the camera.