User Reviews

Mike Shepherd (Neill Rea) finds himself immersed in the over-the-top passions and palace intrigues of a collection of strong-willed amateur actors. Shepherd was in the audience when the young man playing Laertes falls dead during the curtain call, and that's no pretense of acting performance. Looking into it, Shepheard discovers decades of former and current romantic alliances and past break-ups between the members of the company. Who hated young Ben so much, or was so jealous of his role, that killing him made sense? A side note - the hair and apparel supervisor made a misstep, as far as I am concerned, in giving the actress Holly Hudson such a low hairline that she loses much of her attractiveness. On her IMDb dot com profile picture, she has a forehead of normal height, neither too high nor too low. But in this show, her hairline in front is so low that she appears sullen and dull-witted. The character in the show is overly obsessed with acting and being temperamental, but certainly isn't written as being slow in thought.

Binge watching this show only now and this episode is bloody awful, couldn't get past the first 5-10mins of this episode.

When a young cast member of The Brokenwood Theatre Society collapses and dies at the end of a performance of Hamlet, the initial belief is that it was from natural causes. However, Mike detects there is 'something rotten in the state of Brokenwood' when he gets a whiff of a lethal poison. In doing so he uncovers a complex web of ego driven dissention amongst the troupe. Was Ben Faulkner expended to create opportunity for another young rising star? Or can his death be linked to the words of the Bard himself? And how did Jared end up playing the lead role? As Mike and his team investigate the hidden secrets of this curious group of thespians 'To be or not to be' takes on a whole new meaning.-South Pacific Pictures.

I'm a huge fan of UK murder/crime mysteries, e.g. Midsomer Murders, Touch of Frost, Rosemary and Thyme, Inspector Lynley Mysteries, New Tricks, Death in Paradise, Lewis and so on. So I was looking forward to this episode of Brokenwood Mysteries, the first episode of this New Zealand series to watch.

I really was disappointed. I really wanted this episode to draw me in. But really not to be. Why oh why? It was just plain routine. I would have thought the New Zealand production would have an inherited talent from their UK brethren, but really I couldn't wait for this episode to end.

Anyway, Fern Sutherland has a striking resemblance to Rebecca De Mornay for sure.