Murder Mystery Needs Time to Grow

Grosse Pointe Garden Society premires Sunday, February 23 at 10 p.m. ET.

From Desperate Housewives to How to Get Away with Murder and Good Girls, we’ve seen plenty of soapy dramas where a group of people suddenly commit a crime then go to great lengths to pretend everything is still normal while their seemingly perfect lives fall apart around them. It’s a simple hook, but one that can be mined for great escapism. If done correctly, it can offer a mix of character drama, suspense, and sarcastic humor. But it’s not a foolproof formula, as the first four episods of Grosse Pointe Garden Society prove. While the dynamic between the characters is compelling, and some of the individual storylines are quite fun to follow, the different elements don’t quite mix together into an absorbing mystery.

From Good Girls creator Jenna Bans (who also wrote for Desperate Housewives) and Bill Krebs (co-showrunner on Good Girls), Grosse Pointe Garden Society opens with its four leads burying a body in a lavish garden in the affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe. This is the kind of place where everything and everyone looks as if it were approved by a committee, where nothing happens without the entire community hearing about it, where the biggest show of creativity is the annual garden competition. The questions of who the dead body is, how they were killed, and why they were killed echo throughout the show, which slowly (very slowly) moves toward providing answers. Unfortunately, the opening episodes take such a slow approach to revealing new hints and pieces of the puzzle that by the time we actually start learning what happened, it feels uninspired and redundant.

Thankfully, there’s more to Grosse Pointe Garden Society than its dull central mystery. The story is told across two timelines, each offering some campy fun. In the present, we see the events leading up to the murder, as we learn about the lives of the titular society and the many potential victims that the characters would want to rid from their lives. Though many of the side stories feel like they’re being rushed through, they are some that are so bonkers that it’s impossible to look away. (To name one, and to offer a warning to pet owners: A lost dog turns out to be murdered!) Meanwhile, we get a glimpse of six months into the future, when the group scrambles to cover up their crime. It’s here that the group dynamic shines brightest.

The characters are what make Grosse Pointe Garden Society enjoyable. The principals – AnnaSophia Robb, Aja Naomi King, Ben Rappaport, Melissa Fumero – have great chemistry. Sadly, they’re attending to their individual arcs for most of the first four episodes, only really converging in the future timeline. There’s Alice (Robb), a high-school English teacher fighting against her husband’s wishes to abandon her artistry to become an ordinary and respectable member of Grosse Pointe society. She’s the one with the dog that gets murdered, which does result in some delicious drama when she starts doubting the people closest to her – but once that subplot is abandoned, her character has little to do. Next up is Catherine (King), an unhappily married mother of two who uses her realtor job to cheat on her husband, and ends up too entangled with her lover, who wants to destroy her life. Though King is no stranger to this kind of show – having delivered a great performance in How to Get Away with Murder – she, like Robb, gets little to play with in Grosse Pointe Garden Society, trapped in a flat subplot with a character who’s mostly reacting to people around her.

Grosse Pointe Garden Society Gallery