Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
Hailey Dean knows District Attorney Paulina D'Orazio is innocent of the murder of a man she once put behind bars and must do all she can to prove it in the face of mounting evidence.
Recently I'd seen several listings for 'Hailey Dean Mysteries' on British television; what looked like multiple telemovies. I was curious, having never heard of the character before, so when one popped up this weekend, I decided to spend some 'lockdown' time checking it out. I learned later this instalment concluded a multiple telemovie arc last year where Hailey Dean, a former prosecutor who is now a therapist, and her friends and former colleagues deal with the pending parole of a wife killer.
I went into this completely clean, having no idea about the characters or storyline other than the tagline above. So, what did I think? Overall it's a so-so telemovie, nowhere near the quality of other crime dramas like the Jesse Stone series. It didn't help that the first few minutes were full of one of my personal pet peeves: unnatural info-dumps and clanging dialogue where characters recount in details things they'd know about others in order to deliver that information to the audience.
Honestly, it reminded me of the 'what not to do' sort of examples in screenwriting manuals. I was tempted to switch the telemovie off, however I persisted - curious to see if things settled down or the characters grew on me. The underlying story is a fairly interesting one. A man who killed his wife is paroled (he served 10 years for manslaughter) and is now back in town, in his old house and doing a book launch about his case. As you can imagine, that bothers many people, from Hailey (Kellie Martin and her former boss, District Attorney Paulina D'Orazio (Lauren Holly) to the sister of the killer's wife, neighbours, and townsfolk. When the man turns up dead, stabbed in his home, there are plenty of suspects, but the police eventually close in on Paulina, and Hailey has to clear her name.
While I wouldn't recommend fans of crime drama race out to immediately watch the Hailey Dean Mysteries (there are so many other great options with better acting and writing, whether you want cosy or edgy), it was a relatively pleasant 90 minutes. An okay storyline and some decent characters.
Note: I learned after I began watching that this popular Hallmark series is based on the books of Nancy Grace, a former Atlanta prosecutor who became a well-known TV pundit and host in the United States. I don't know how closely the telemovies match the books, but Nancy Grace makes a brief cameo in this tale, as apparently she does in all of the other Hallmark movies in the series.
Middling but not awful, not bad for whiling away the time.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned features writer from New Zealand, now living in London. In recent years he’s interviewed hundreds of crime writers and talked about the genre on national radio, top podcasts, and onstage at books festivals on three continents. He has been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and the McIlvanney Prize, and is founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards and co-founder of Rotorua Noir. You can heckle him on Twitter.
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