D Gary Grady

Beginning in 2005 Tom Selleck (the star of Magnum PI in the 1980s and more recently a regular on Blue Bloods) has been lead actor, executive producer, and occasionally co-writer of eight made-for-television movies based on a series of mystery novels by Robert B Parker, who’s better known as the creator of the Boston private eye Spenser. Stone is a former Los Angeles cop whose drinking cost him his job and his wife, leading him to take a position as chief of police in a small town called Paradise on the Massachusetts coast, almost as far from Los Angeles as he could get. He’s still struggling with his drinking, but he’s good at what he does, and in his new job he earns the friendship of a lot of people while pissing off some of the local leaders for not doing what he’s told.

There’s enough of a continuing story here that the films are best watched in logical sequence, which means switching the first two films from their broadcast order.

Jesse Stone: Night Passage (2006)

Saul Rubinek plays the town leader who persuades his colleagues to hire Selleck. His wife, played by Stephanie March (the stunning tall blond assistant district attorney on Law & Order: SVU) has her own designs on him and is very forthright about it. Selleck says, “Wow,” but he never takes her up on the offer, possibly because she’s married, possibly because he’s still pining for his ex (the two of them talk by phone almost every night) and possibly because he’s afraid of being hurt, and I don’t mean emotionally. She’s scary hot. He does over the course of the series get romantic with younger women, but mainly ones who seem more likely to show mercy to an older guy like us. Selleck is even older than I am, but that barely seems to slow him down.

(Yes, he’s also taller, slimmer, better looking, has not gone bald, his facial hair isn’t gray, and in general he looks more like a somewhat older Magnum PI than like the less-successful brother of Santa Claus.)

The police department includes an annoying middle-aged male cop, a woman he quickly learns to respect, and a naive young guy Selleck takes to calling “Suitcase” after the famous shortstop he slightly resembles. (Suitcase is played by Kohl Sudduth, a name that sounds like he should be an associate of Cthulhu.) Another recurring character is Stephen McHattie, the state’s head homicide investigator, who’s based in Boston.

In the course of the film Selleck takes a street-cop approach to a domestic dispute and helps McHattie solve the murder of Selleck’s predecessor. Unfortunately the climax is ridiculous, with Selleck putting himself pointlessly in danger, but the characters, setting, and overall story make up for that.

Jesse Stone: Stone Cold (2005) 

This is more suspense than mystery, since we learn very early on who the bad guys are. Somehow Selleck intuits it as well, though he has no evidence to support his suspicions. Again he also has to deal with more mundane problems in town.

If you watched Frasier, you probably remember that in the final season of that series Niles (himself engaged to someone else) professed his love for Daphne just before her wedding. Daphne’s fiancé was played by Saul Rubinek, the sleazy politician who hired Selleck in Night Passage, so it’s interesting that Niles’s fiancée, Jane Adams, has a major role in this film. (Incidentally, while Adams often plays a rather mousy character, here she comes off as seriously sexy.)

Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise (2006)

Selleck co-wrote this episode, and perhaps as a result it’s a bit better plotted than the previous two. Investigating the death of a teenage girl leads Selleck to a Boston mobster and a young nun, both of whom show up in later episodes as well. Meanwhile, his ex-wife, or at least her voice on the telephone, convinces Selleck to start seeing an ex-cop turned psychiatrist for help with his drinking.

Jesse Stone: Sea Change (2007)

Stone’s alcoholism is worsened by the news that his ex is sleeping with her boss, so he tries to get himself back on track by investigating a cold case, a bank robbery that ended in kidnapping and death. He soon turns up puzzling new evidence that suggests the crime wasn’t what it seemed to be. Meanwhile the city council wants him to stop risking bad publicity by investigating a rich yacht owner accused of molesting a young female guest.

Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (2009)

Selleck is hanging out with his friend Stephen McHattie on a stakeout in Boston when a gunman nearly succeeds in killing them both, and he breaks the law to solve the case and bring the bad guy to justice. Meanwhile, Camryn Mannheim has ridden by bus all the way from Albuquerque to look for her missing daughter, snatched from the hospital not long after birth because she got an anonymous letter saying. “Your child is loved,” with a Paradise postmark.

Jesse Stone: No Remorse (2010)

The city council has suspended Selleck without pay, not for his lawbreaking in the previous film (they’re not even aware of it) but mainly, one suspects, for cutting down the tree hiding the speed limit sign at the town’s lucrative speed trap.

Saul Rubinek’s wife, the one who propositioned Selleck when he first got into town, is now divorced and is a new woman, or a new actress anyway, but she’s still hot in every sense of the word and still wants to pork Selleck’s brains out, and he still says, “Wow.” He still declines, possibly because he’s dealing with the greatest mystery of his career: figuring out his new cell phone.

In addition, he’s been hired by his friend McHattie as a consultant on a case in Boston involving an apparent serial killer. Back in Paradise the severely understaffed police department is investigating an unusually violent series of convenience store robberies.

Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost (2011)

Selleck is no longer suspended because he’s been forced to take early (actually, not that early) retirement. But when the obnoxious young new chief won’t look into the drug-related death of a young woman Selleck knew, he bends the rules and eventually breaks the law again investigating on his own. He also drinks more while his dog looks on with obvious disapproval.

This is one of the weaker films of the series and even seems to be missing at least one scene, given that Selleck suddenly knows something without any explanation how he found it out. The ending and some things leading up to it struck me as dumb. The characters remain appealing, though.

Jesse Stone: Benefit of the Doubt (2012)

When local leaders want a double murder solved they bring Selleck back out of retirement, which is a practical necessity because nobody is left in the police department. All is of course not as it seems. Well-written dialog helps make up for the plot holes. A hot woman for once turns Selleck down, bluntly telling him she’s too young for him. Then she goes out with him anyway. It’s good to be the co-writer.

The trailer for the first broadcast:

This is basically a sports film set in the late Middle Ages and definitely not meant to be taken too seriously. The film gets this across early on by having the spectators at a joust sing “We Will, We Will Rock You” and do the wave, and if you looks carefully, you can see a wooden version of the London Eye Ferris wheel in the distance at one point in a later scene.

Heath Ledger plays the squire of a knight who dies partway through a joust when he was close to winning, so Ledger puts on the armor and competes in his stead. He doesn’t do that well, but combined with the real knight’s points it’s enough for him to win the tournament and, more to the point, a prize that will feed him and the other two starving members of the dead knight’s supporting staff, who are played by Mark Addy (star of the sitcom Still Standing) and Alan Tudyk (the spaceship pilot on Firefly and coincidentally a supporting actor in a lot of films I’ve seen recently). In a stroke of luck they meet someone, namely the young poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who can produce fake patents of nobility that will allow Ledger to keep competing.

The weakest element in the film is Ledger’s love for a young noblewoman played by Shannyn Sossamon. Her character is beautiful but rather a jerk and less appealing than either her maid, played by Bérénice Bejo (the female lead in The Artist and in OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies) or the female blacksmith who joins the crew. At least Sossaman eventually starts acting like a human being, or a mammal anyway.

The whole thing is quite silly, corny, and formulaic. The villainous villain gets his comeuppance, deuses leap out of the machinas just in the nick of time, and there’s even one obvious sports movie cliché you’d think even the makers of this film wouldn’t stoop to, but they do.

Despite all that, I rather enjoyed the show, possibly because it’s so cheerfully blatant in its embrace of well-used story conventions, and maybe I was just in a good mood when I watched it. But a lot of other people liked it as well, so at least I’m not alone. I still would have preferred a heroine a bit less in love with herself, though.

Link: http://youtu.be/zH6U5y086hw