Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Murdoch Mysteries: A Merry Murdoch Christmas Blu-ray Movie Review

Let It Snow!

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 4, 2016

It only took nine seasons for Murdoch Mysteries to hop on the Christmas special bandwagon. A Merry Murdoch Christmas aired on Canada's CBC network on December 20, 2015, during Season Nine's mid-season hiatus. Running twice the length of a standard Murdoch episode, MMC was conceived as a standalone entry, which explains why Acorn Media is releasing it separately from the eighteen-episode collection of Season Nine.

As the members of Station House No. 4 prepare for Christmas, Det. William Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) and his colleagues are presented with the murder of a local philanthropist, Alister McGowan, and the theft of all the presents that McGowan planned to donate to the less fortunate kids of Toronto. According to the dead man's wife (Kelly Rowan) and accountant (Brendan Coyle), the likely suspect is McGowan's former business partner and now bitter rival, Cyrus Lynch, who is nowhere to be found. One of McGowan's employees, Robert Cratchit (Randal Edwards), is also a suspect.

Yes, that's right: MMC has a character named after Ebenezer Scrooge's long-suffering clerk, and that's only one of many allusions tucked throughout the episode. The Krampus legend plays a major role, after strange tracks and a beast with red eyes are sighted in the nearby wood, and it turns out that Inspector Brackenreid (Thomas Craig) has a personal history with the creature. An elderly man with a flowing white beard (Ed Asner) keeps appearing in Toronto's streets, handing out presents to children and insisting that he's the real Kris Kringle. The case presents a unique challenge for the psychiatric skills of Dr. Julia Ogden (Hélène Joy), and there's probably nothing in her textbooks about a miracle on 34th Street.

Holiday crises abound. Constable George Crabtree (Jonny Harris) faces a lonely Christmas, after his beloved Newfoundland aunts write to say that they've decided to take a trip instead of having him visit. Constable Henry Higgins (Lachlan Murdoch) chafes at being kept on duty, because he's been invited to spend the holiday with the family of a beautiful girl. Constable Jackson (Kristian Bruun) is crestfallen when Inspector Brackenreid nixes a Christmas tree in the station house. And Murdoch and Julia want nothing more than to spend their holiday together, alone and undisturbed, which they can't seem to manage.

Classic Murdoch elements are repurposed for the seasonal theme, including the appearance of a real historical figure—a child star (Peyton Kennedy) performing in a Christmas pageant—and a cameo by a famous contemporary figure, CBC news anchorman Peter Mansbridge. Murdoch invents some new gadgets, but none of them have to do with solving crime.

Murdoch Mysteries: A Merry Murdoch Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Merry Murdoch Christmas was captured on Alexa by series regular Jim Jeffrey and is presented by Acorn on a 1080p, AVC-encoded BD-25 that ranks with the best of Murdoch Mysteries's Blu-ray presentations. The detailed and richly colored image is particularly well suited to the extensive snowfall and holiday decorations that mark this episode of Murdoch as a Christmas special. The average bitrate of 23.55 Mbps is at the high end for Murdoch.

Murdoch Mysteries: A Merry Murdoch Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Even with Krampus in the picture, Merry Murdoch Christmas' DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack doesn't depart from the series' typically modest mix. Robert Carli's scoring invokes traditional holiday melodies, but otherwise this episode of Murdoch sounds very much like all the others.

Murdoch Mysteries: A Merry Murdoch Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making Murdoch (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:54): This installment of Murdoch's behind-the-scenes series contains interviews with most of the cast, including the guest stars. (It's also full of spoilers.)



• Introductory Trailers: Acorn TV, The Brokenwood Mysteries and 19-2.

Murdoch Mysteries: A Merry Murdoch Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Given Murdoch's popularity, it's surprising that the show's creative team waited this long to design their own Christmas special. Fans of the show will want to add it to their collection, although you might want to postpone watching it until December to replicate the experience of the initial broadcast.