Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Harry Wild’ On Acorn TV, Where Jane Seymour Plays A Retired Literature Professor Who Solves Murders

Lately, Jane Seymour has been more of a character actor than a lead, playing memorable roles in shows like The Kominsky Method. But fans of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman know that she can quite capably lead a series, mainly through her considerable personal charms. In a new Acorn TV series, she plays a retired college professor who fights boredom by solving murders.

HARRY WILD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In a well-appointed room. we see a closeup of a man cutting some fabric. We pan out to see that the room is a diorama of a man’s body, surrounded by candles. In the real room, the same thing is happening in real life.

The Gist: Harriet “Harry” Wild (Jane Seymour) is retiring as a professor in Literature at a university in Ireland. She makes a speech that jokingly calls the students who didn’t pay attention “shits” and praised those who did. At her retirement party, she’s asked what she’s going to do; among other things, she says she’ll “write that great novel.” But she also has some time to have some nookie in the pub’s storeroom with a younger, handsome professor.

In the meantime, Inspector Charlie Wild (Kevin Ryan) is called to a murder scene where a bludgeoned man is lying on a rug, surrounded by candles. The identity of the man isn’t known, but he does know that someone wanted him to be found this way. We cut to a high school, where a teen named Fergus Reid (Rohan Nedd) decides that he’ll just go to the headmaster’s office on his own because he knows he’s going to insult his teacher and disrupt the class, which he does anyway when the teacher asks why he’s leaving.

As Harry sits at home, trying to start her novel, she texts someone (the young professor, maybe?) out of boredom and horniness. They decide to meet; as she walks to meet him, Fergus comes out of nowhere, knocks her down and takes her wallet.

While Charlie puts together the murder investigation, he’s told resources are being taken from his team to the investigation of a missing woman that’s been in the media for some time. But then he gets a call about Harry being mugged, and he invites her to stay with his wife Orla (Amy Huberman) and daughter Lola (Rose O’Neill) to recover, a prospect neither of them are looking forward to. Let’s just say Charlie and Harry are a bit of an explosive pair.

Wandering around Charlie’s house one night because she can’t sleep, Harry spies the case file for the murder, and immediately recognizes the crime scene as a scene out of a play called Calabras. She tells Charlie about her theories and not only is he dismissive, but he also is ticked that she read his files. But Harry continues to press, even getting a stun gun to protect her. Eventually, she feels that the murder and the abduction are connected, but since Charlie won’t listen to her, she decides to find the killer herself. She also finds Fergus, whom she follows around after seeing him do some very un-thug-like things, and recruits him to help her.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Harry Wild is certainly in the light mystery vein of fellow Acorn series Agatha Raisin, and of course both likely owe a debt of gratitude to Murder, She Wrote.

Our Take: There was something about Harry Wild, created by David Logan, that felt very jumbled to us. For such an old-fashioned show, the first episode has a lot of moving parts. We have to establish what Harry did for a living, that she’s not your typical retiree, the reason why she’s staying with her police inspector son, how she and Fergus first crossed paths and how she brought Fergus into her orbit to help her. That’s a lot to introduce in a 49-minute episode. And because of that, the actual mystery Harry tries to solve suffers as a result.

It’s hard to explain how Harry comes to the conclusions she does, mainly because the play she references is fairly obscure, and she’s interrupted by her dismissive son so much that her rationale is hurried. We get it; why would a cop listen to his mother, who has no investigative experience? But the scenes where Harry tries to convince him about the case still feel like contrived roadblocks.

We’re also not sure exactly where Logan is going with Harry’s character. At times, Seymour plays Harry as the sexy, vivacious person she is in real life, communicating that, while she’s a retiree, she’s not going to sit around and knit her golden years away. Other times, she refers to herself as an “old woman.” Seymour, of course, is anything but a doddering old lady, so why even have her reference herself as such? It’s more interesting to see Harry as a daring person who solves murders and sleeps with younger guys than to portray her as some sort of dowdy Jessica Fletcher-style buttinsky.

Now that all the setup is over, perhaps the mysteries will be given more room to breathe and the people surrounding Harry (namely, her grumpy son, who calls her “Harry” until she’s in danger) get a little more space to grow as characters.

Sex and Skin: All implied, but it’s at least fun to see a TV sleuth with a sex life.

Parting Shot: As she walks away from a crime scene, Harry offers Fergus a chance to help her and learn from her, because she knows he’s a pretty smart guy. “It must be tough to know you’re never wrong,” he tells her. “Oh, it’s a pissing burden,” she replies.

Sleeper Star: Rohan Nedd’s Fergus is the most intriguing character, since we’ve seen him mug Harry and be disruptive in school, but also take care of his little sister and tend to the grave of his grandmother. The man contains multitudes.

Most Pilot-y Line: There isn’t much of an explanation of how the very British Harry landed in Ireland. At least there’s an acknowledgement that she speaks with an English accent, but her presence there seems very matter of fact.

Our Call: STREAM IT, only because Harry Wild stars a very game Jane Seymour in the most dynamic role she’s had in some time. But the mysteries and backstories need to be tightened up for the show to succeed.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.