Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Eric McCormack, David Ajala, Lydia Wilson, Jan Le, Adam Long, Siobhan McSweeney, Peter Gadiot, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Carolina Guerra, Deborah Ayorinde, Hari Dhillon, Isaiah St. Jean, Ángel López-Silva, Sebastián Capitán Viveros, Harlys Becerra, Joana Borja, Christian Contreras, Sebastián Orozco, Daniel Topic, Misa D’Angelo, Oscar Foronda, Gloria Garcia.
Sometimes a truly enjoyable series is reduced in stature through the simple understanding that it owes its life, its existence to the huge presence of another art, and whilst Nine Bodies In A Mexican Morgue is visually entrancing, crafted together with intriguing characters who handle the speculation and the cause with decent appreciation, and the setting of the inhospitable wrangles with the impossible notion of rescue; into this the murderer at the centre of the storyline shows their colours as being inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.
Anthony Horowitz’s eye for the crime thriller is one of the finest around, and even in the bow to the queen of the genre he has created a series of resolution, of impending conflict within the tight narrative, and with the force of acting talent which graces the project, the writer assures, almost mindfully comforts the audience that whilst the story maybe known, the way it is presented will leave them hanging on the edge of their seats.
It is to the unsanitary, to the dangers of the jungle, that the idea of the unknown killer is transposed, and it works well, no longer a murder mystery house with the soft furnishings and elegance, the trappings of high sophistication, instead this is down in the dirt, this is where murder becomes not one drama but of survival.
It is to the presence of Eric McCormack, once of Will & Grace fame, and the excellent David Ajala as an undercover insurance investigator that the series holds itself to account, and the tension that exists, the sense of moral outrage that both exhibit within every scene as insults and suspicions is palpable, it is intense, and full of profound meaning, and this comes to a head when the two men are joined by Lydia Wilson’s Sonja Blair in the accusations, in the sense of encroaching paranoia that envelopes them and the other survivors of the air crash.
Nine Bodies In A Mexican Morgue is an entertaining murder mystery, one that deals with the notion of under pressure conflict and mistrust bound together with the terror of the inevitable solution that is revealed; and whilst the acknowledgment of one of the most endearing crime novels ever written is on every scene, it has enough of its own personality to carry it across as it embraces murder as mayhem and angered revenge.
Ian D. Hall