It may not be fair to judge a television series by the first episode, but the first of the Doctor Blake Mysteries, Still Waters shows little promise. The series is supposedly set in the 1950's, but other than some old cars and blaring rock 'n' roll music, little is done to create the effect of the period. The exterior of the doctor's house looks like a 1980's style, and his own style is as politically correct as your most woodenly doctrinaire feminist school teacher. None of the actors, the director, or the script writers have any feel for the period.
Leading man Craig McLachlan in particular is not up to the role of Doctor Blake. He is supposed to be a WWII veteran, who was interned in a Japanese prison camp and has also suffered the loss of his wife and child in the war. But pretty boy, male model type McLachlan is simply too much the soft and comfortable looking Gen-X yuppie for us to believe he has ever had it rough. He doesn't really have much help the way his character is written. Doctor Blake is an insufferable prig, way ahead of his time and, oh, so superior to the other men of his association in his modernist views.. In fact the entire show is eaten up with socialist politically correct viewpoint. Director and writer should have heeded Louis B. Mayer's warning, "If you have a message, call Western Union."
The mystery itself is so elementary that even the greenest tyro at watching mysteries will easily deduce who done it. Especially since the culprit is broadly tar-brushed with the most one-dimensional unsympathetic treatment. Doctor Blake has only to be a little smarter than the dumbest of the cops to solve this one.
The Doctor Blake Mysteries: Still Waters is draggy, uninspired, sappy, heavy-handed, and unfaithful to its period setting, Only for the most desperate of insomniacs, zonked-out Gen-Xers, and brain-dead Millennials. Others should avoid it as if it were a kid with chicken pox.