The Hairdresser Mysteries review – Sally Phillips brings us the biggest daytime TV show ever | TV and radio

gPick up your rosebuds and pinch your cheeks, because there will be gurgles in the Crimean countryside. A hairdresser arrives in the fictional village of Blossom Vale armed with a blow-dry backstory (he’s worked with posh types in London but now seems to want peace and quiet and “a place of my own”) and the keys to a rundown salon on the high street. Lily Petal (Sally Phillips) is obsessed with buying it. “It’s like a time capsule!” exclaims capable new assistant Clary (Charlotte Jordan), mystified by the abundance of browns and oranges in the salon. “It hasn’t been touched on since the 1970s,” smiles Lily, who, with her luminous shorts, sheer headpieces, and penchant for Hot Chocolate’s collage works, considers herself a time capsule.

But listen! A local busybody was found, crushed, next to her stairwell. incident? Or the most wrongful killing? Lily stabs for a magnifying glass.

“Have you ever solved crimes before?” Clary asks as her boss cheerfully examines the evidence and questions the villagers about their whereabouts one morning. Lily’s eyes narrowed. pause. “Let’s just say,” she says with a twinkle, “I used to help sort things out sometimes…”

So. The Hairdresser Mysteries is a cozy crime series about a mysterious hairdresser who solves mysteries. The first episode is called A Storm in a Teacup and is about a missing teacup. A later episode is called Gym and revolves around the gym. Characters include a flamboyant famous meteorologist named Jonty Starr, a flamboyant celebrity named Parky, and Mrs. Crude. If wrecking ball craftsmanship, nostalgia, and uncomfortable character actors getting bludgeoned to death with household items are your bag, you’ve come to the right salon. Four sugars, my dear? amazing. Now put on that robe and prepare to have your senses stimulated by what is, without a doubt, the strangest daytime television drama in living memory.

“strange?” You pick from under the covered hair dryer. “Of course it’s weird. Daytime TV drama is inherently weird, unaffected by ‘normal TV’ notions of believability.” Fair point, I reply. But the strangeness described here is not the everyday strangeness of, say, Father Brown or The Doctors (RIP). Hairdressing secrets Banana.

Where to start? How about a few minutes into the opening episode, when we visit Valhalla With Chips!, a Viking-themed takeout where wardrobe-sized men in horned helmets, armor, and hammocks serve up shredded hot dogs in tiny cardboard longships? Or maybe the part where Lily and Clary discuss the finer points of a brutal beating while dancing to Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep?

The mood is one of shockingly unrelenting cheerfulness. Even by cozy crime standards, The Hairdresser Mysteries is an unending slab of warmth. It’s like being body-hit by Womble.

Each episode ends with a window-shattering solo take on a 70s pop staple like Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” or T-Rex’s “I Love to Boogie.” Everyone continues to laugh and even the killers are basically good white people, each expressing remorse over a cup of tea before promising Lily they’ll never do it again, ma’am, honest.

After you fell into this daydream, you realized that you were starting to enjoy yourself. Why not, eh? There are iced cakes, cheap wigs and influencers in sunglasses thrown in from minstrel galleries. There are representatives everywhere. There is a phrase: “Sorry I’m late, I was annoying my whips.” The discovery of a body in the bell tower was greeted by police with the words: “Bloomin’eck!” Guy Henry appears as an eccentric antiques dealer, and he’s adorable, his eyebrows waving in the breeze created by his huge false mustache.

In short: Hairstyling secrets are both wonderful and terrible. She’s brave. God only knows what you think he’s playing at. But then, we have no reason to. Our goal is to marvel at the audacity of a series that effectively places a whoopee pillow under the buttocks of sane people and then runs away laughing.

What is this, Lily? A body was discovered in the hermit’s refrigerator? Bloomin’ eek!