you know, I don't even like detective fiction

edited to add: I'm delighted people are liking and linking to this post! If you haven't seen the show and you want to read this with the spoiler tags in place, can I recommend clicking here for the day view.

I love this show so much I am supposed to be writing a reasonable and measured - er - review of it for The F-Word, but pending that, here is a list of things in no particular order that I love about Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries:

-The clothes, oh my god, the dresses, the shoes, I would go forth on a battlefield in those Mary Janes, also HATS;

(Also the way Jack's hat seems to have become a weird harbinger for Bad Things, e.g. it gets ( spoilered )

in one episode and used as a ( spoiler )

in another. Men on the whole look good in hats. They should bring those back.)

-Relatedly, the female gaze! I noticed this from the very first episode and then couldn't stop noticing it: men, in this universe, are mostly around for eye-candy. The beautiful ballet dancer, the students, the boxer - the camera lingers on them in this fabulously blatant way that is good for my soul even though I'm not super-into men. It's the way it's a conscious choice to make women happy. (Yeah, that's remarkable. Urgh.) Also I love how we always see the debris of Phryne's sex life obliquely. Sparkly shoe hung off the chandelier. Yep.

-Relatedly to that, the period detail! Shim noticed one I'd missed: the champagne glasses are both flat Marie Antoinette glasses, and flutes, because this is the period of transition, and I'm sure there are a dozen other things like that that I wouldn't know to look for.

-Dr Mac, the best, butchest, most beautiful lesbian on television. (She's so hot, oh my god.) My major criticism of the series thus far is the criminal underuse of Mac, plus she needs an actual live girlfriend to have adventures with. Oh, but Mac is so lovely! And I love that that Mac's defining feature isn't her lesbianism - it's that she's on the edge of the law for her work providing contraception and abortion and other help to women. Also she and Jack agreeing that if they ever had to repopulate the species he'd be her first pick, but until then ladies. I love them.

-The Honourable Phryne Fisher and Inspector Jack Robinson, the only crimefighting duo in the history of the world to fight crime while cosplaying as Antony and Cleopatra. (Sometimes only in their heads.) Actually, yes, that: I love Phryne and Jack as avenging angels. I love that they both can - and do - solve mysteries alone, because neither of them is the sidekick, but together they shine so, so brightly, and, here is the next point which is so important it's going on the next line:

-Jack never rescues Phryne from anything. Never once, in the whole series. He breaks down doors to find Phryne has got a bad guy pinned down ready for him to arrest. That's how it goes.

-Because Jack is the outlier in a female-driven universe. Even the episode that in other shows would be all about him, where ( spoiler )

is instead Phryne's arc-plot episode, with him in the background. And I think that works so well, with such sweetness: he's there by the graveside, holding her hand, but the camera's on her; it's her story.

-Oh, ladies and their stories! Dot's story, and Jane's story too: I love how Phryne adopts them and loves them and supports their choices and loves them some more. And no woman is demonised in this narrative, no matter what. Even Aunt Prudence, who is set up right from the beginning to be Aunt Agatha and turns out to be Aunt Dahlia instead; and even Rosie Sanderson, who I was not expecting to break my heart, oh my god. ( spoilers )

-And, of course, in the end they're such a ridiculously delightful found family. They have firearms in the kitchen and enough whisky to drown in and Mac's "medicinal powders" and the family communists endure Jack Robinson, Enemy of the Revolutionary Proletariat, and they all love each other and it's all Phryne's doing: she returns to Australia by herself, and her glorious household is what she's built.

In conclusion: I love this show a lot you should all watch it. Er.

An addendum

Further to the previous: on Tumblr, philomytha and soupytwist were talking about Rivers of London crossovers, and how the timing works, at least, for Nightingale to have made a sea voyage to Australia - and I wrote a story:

that shall be bright (1108 words) by Raven
"...and then Phryne Fisher steps into the room with the full radiance of the southern sun lighting up her hair, and he feels a long, long way from home."

Nightingale, aged twenty-eight and a diplomat par excellence, makes a visit.

I've cleaned it up a bit, and no content notes apply.