The Doctor Blake Mysteries

               I was so excited this past spring when I saw The Doctor Blake Mysteries was going to have the second season air on PBS.  Ever since the first season ended last summer, I have been checking the PBS schedule every few weeks to see when the other seasons were going to be on.  I expected to only get one season at a time with many months in between, but instead I received a great surprise.  PBS aired season three immediately after they aired season two.  This let me have many months of Dr. Blake, and now I am only one season behind.  Since I like this show so much, for me this is very exciting.              

                At the start of season two it is revealed that Danny (Rick Donald) has been transferred to another police station.  In his place is Constable Charlie Davis (Charlie Cousins).  He is a police officer who works pretty much by the book and struggles to adjust to Dr. Blake’s (Craig McLachlan) more freeform ways.  To make the situation even worse for Charlie is the fact that everyone thinks he is acting as a spy.  They suspect Charlie is reporting back to the home office about the sometimes unorthodox ways their cases are conducted.  This belief makes it take quite awhile for anyone to fully trust Charlie.  Even his superior, Chief Superintendent Matthew Lawson (Joel Tobeck) has a hard time at first, but he, and everyone else, eventually come around.  In fact, Charlie’s relationships with others improve so much that Dr. Blake even invites Charlie to board at his house.  While it appears Dr. Blake does this to be nice, and because he now trusts Charlie (to the extent that Dr. Blake trusts anyone), I do have to wonder if a small piece of Dr. Blake made this offer so he could keep an eye on anything Charlie may be up to.  Whatever Dr. Blake’s true motivation for the invitation, the living arrangement helps Dr. Blake and Charlie become a lot closer.  Spending so much more time with him, Charlie starts to understand Dr. Blake and why he does the things he does.  That does not fully alleviate Charlie from all his problems though.  In fact, in many ways, understanding Dr. Blake puts him in an even bigger predicament as he is constantly caught between Dr. Blake and the rules.  He can see both Dr. Blake’s ways and the rules as valid ways to do things, leaving him eternally stuck in the middle.  This situation becomes even worse when Lawson is sent away.  His first replacement comes to understand and appreciate the way Dr. Blake works.  The second, Chief Superintendent William Munro (Craig Hall), refuses.  Everything is his way and his way only, putting Charlie in the very bad position of having both Dr. Blake and Munro vie for his loyalty.

                Another person who gets caught between the two men is Dr. Blake’s partner in the medical examiner’s office, Dr. Alice Harvey (Belinda McClory).  She does not get caught as badly or as regularly as Charlie, but when Munro decides to really go after Dr. Blake, she gets hit too.  When Dr. Blake asks her to do something, even if it’s out of the ordinary, she does it.  She will reexamine bodies and run tests, all to prove Dr. Blake’s theories right or wrong.  I don’t know how much Munro knows about this cooperation, but he knows enough about their friendship that if he hurts Dr. Harvey he will be hurting Dr. Blake as well.             

                Then there is Jean (Nadine Garner).  Working as Dr. Blake’s receptionist and housekeeper, she rarely gets caught up in the tug of war that happens at the police station, but she does help with the cases.  Dr. Blake is always asking her thoughts on something, and she inevitably has an answer that helps lead him down the right track.  This type of thing has happened since the beginning of the series, but now there’s a different element to it.  As the series has gone on, the romantic feelings between Dr. Blake and Jean have grown.  Instead of only seeing Jean as his employee, Dr. Blake now seems to increasingly think of Jean as his partner.  He supports her through everything.  Whether it’s difficulty with her sons, or grief over what happened to her husband in the war, Dr. Blake is right there when she needs him.  She of course is there for him too, and always has been.  They make a great partnership, in life and with the cases.  In fact, I think sometimes Dr. Blake doesn’t actually need Jean’s thoughts on a case, but he asks anyways because he truly wants to hear what she has to say.  As much as I love this show as a whole, this relationship is one of the biggest reasons I keep coming back.  I always want to see what is going to happen between them next.

                Mattie (Cate Wolfe) is also a character I am curious about.  Dr. Blake’s boarder, she has had increasingly less appearances as the series has gone on.  She does not completely disappear like Lawson unfortunately does.  Instead she simply isn’t used as much.  In the first season, when she was studying to be a nurse, Mattie was around a lot.  Once she switched over to sociology, her appearances became less and less.  Mattie will have a big episode here and there, but not like she used to.  I’m not quite sure why that is.  It makes me wonder what the plans are for this character.

                That’s pretty much what has been happening in a nutshell.  When you watch the show, however, you will see there is so much more going on.  A lot of it is under the surface with only a hint of things here and there.  Dr. Blake, as usual, is fantastic to watch while he investigates, although I do wonder how he still has a medical practice since he continuously angers potential patients during his investigations.  Maybe he is able to keep his practice because in the end people know Dr. Blake is truly a good man.  He may be gruff and rough around the edges, but so much of his goodness always comes out as well.  This is especially the case when he is with Jean.  When Dr. Blake is with her, he really shows how good of a man he is.

                The same could be said for Charlie and Lawson.  Lawson is definitely rougher than Charlie, but they are both good men in their own way.  Charlie, though, I suspect may still be holding something back.  I get the feeling that he knows more about how and why Dr. Blake got in Munro’s sights than he is letting on.  Maybe I’m wrong about this.  In many ways I hope I am, because I really like Charlie.  I have since he was first introduced.  In fact, one of my favorite scenes in the entire series so far is when Charlie is in the kitchen, wearing an apron (I believe it was a frilly one too), helping Jean cook.  This was such a great scene, because it showed Charlie as the good-hearted, sweet man he really is.  The man he sometimes has a hard time showing, and others have a difficult time seeing.  I would hate to have that image ruined because he played a bigger part in Dr. Blake’s trouble than we know. 

               All these thoughts and questions I have will have to hold until I’m able to see the fourth season. Even then some may not be answered. Of all the questions I have, my biggest ones are about Dr. Blake and Jean. Will things finally work out for the two of them? I certainly hope so. It’s clear they love each other. Now they have to come together and do something about it.