I love a good cozy mystery. There is something lovely about coming home after a hard day and putting on something you don’t have to think too hard about. The Brits are fantastic at making shows set in a small, picturesque village where nobody notices that there is at least one murder a week, probably because it gets quickly solved by a sensible but quirky police officer, private detective, reporter, priest, or a dotty old lady.
Buy Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators: Season Five from MovieZyngThese shows aren’t dark or gritty; they aren’t plumbing the depths of society for meaningful themes. You don’t have to take notes while watching them or watch recap videos on YouTube if you haven’t seen them in a few weeks. Most of the time you can miss an entire season and come right back to them without missing a beat. A murder is committed, our heroes banter and bicker, they ask questions and move from one beautiful spot to another, and after about 45 minutes, the mystery is solved and things are back to normal.
Shakespeare & Hathaway fits perfectly into this genre. I’d seen a few episodes of the first season a while back. I enjoyed it, but then I got distracted, and I never got back to it. When this Season Five set landed on my desk, I was a little worried I would be lost. But I was immediately able to slide right back into it like an old slipper I found under the bed after thinking I’d lost it for months.
The series ran on BBC One for four seasons from 2018 to 2022, then it took a three-year break, returning for a fifth season on U&Alibi in 2025. A sixth season has been ordered.
Set in Stratford-Upon-Avon (because where else would a series called Shakespeare and Hathaway be set?), the series stars Mark Benton as Frank Hathaway, a former police detective inspector turned private investigator, and Jo Joyner as Luella Shakespeare, his partner. In the very first episode of the first season, Shakespeare was a customer, hiring Hathaway to investigate her fiancé, whom she met online and has started acting a little shady. One thing leads to another, and he finds himself dead, and Shakespeare finds herself working with Hathaway.
Fast forward through four seasons, and the fifth one starts with Shakespeare and Hathaway on the outs. Shakespeare has started her own investigation business, leaving Hathaway once again on his own. I had initially assumed that this breakup was part of a cliffhanger from the previous season, but as far as I can tell, it was a new invention for this season. Presumably, the writers wanted to come up with something exciting for them to come back to after a three-year break. Stuck in the middle of all this is Sebastian Brudenell (Patrick Walshe McBride), the faithful assistant who couldn’t decide which partner to work for, so he’s secretly helping them both.
In Episode 1, “Such a Mad Marriage Never Was Before” (and yes, all the titles are quotes from the real Shakespeare’s plays), Hathaway is hired by a husband, and Shakespeare is hired by that man’s wife, but for different reasons. At first, they work separately, but then there is a murder, and they work together. The murder is solved, and the gang is back together again. For the rest of the season, it is a case of the week, filled with lots of bickering, a surprising amount of silly costumes, cases solved, and starting all over again.
Sebastian is the best part of every episode and the cause for my biggest complaint. He is an aspiring actor, and McBride delightfully hams it up every chance he gets. While the other two spend most of their time bickering and trying to solve the case, he gets in some great one-liners and cast some hysterical glances their way.
But he’s also the guy who seems to always suggest they go undercover to solve the case, and while that is sort of fun the first time or two, it gets real old real fast. In one episode, they pretend to be hippies, and in another Hathaway is a football coach and Shakespeare is an inept photographer. Sometimes it more or less makes sense that they’d go undercover, but usually it is just an excuse for them to put on costumes and talk in funny accents.
Sometimes that works well. In Episode 3, “Destruction, Blood and Massacre,” they attend a murder-mystery party and dress up as players—Hathaway as an old-timey constable and Shakespeare as the maid—who try to solve a pretend murder until a real dead body shows up. That one is filled with references to the board game Clue, and that’s a lot of fun. Sebastian regularly references and quotes Shakespeare’s plays, and that makes for some fun trying to guess which one he’s referencing.
But other times our heroes dress up for no apparent reason. In the Season Finale, “The Quality of Mercy,” they are hired by a busy businessman because he thinks his pregnant wife is cheating on him. He doesn’t have time to go to the Lamaze-style classes, so she keeps taking one of her male friends. The husband thinks that guy is the cheater. But instead of following the two before or after classes, where they might presumably catch them in the act, Shakespeare and Hathaway pretend to be a happy, pregnant couple and join in on the classes as if the others are going to start having sex in between breathing lessons. It is fun watching Shakespeare put on a balloon belly to look pregnant and Hathaway accidentally deflate it.
And that’s the show, really. The writers don’t try to hard to make any sense out of the mysteries, but they love putting the characters into silly situations and seeing how they react. I would have preferred a little more of the former and a little less of the latter. But in the end I enjoyed it enough that I will be returning to the first season and watching it all. But probably not in a binge. Shows like this deserve some time in between each episode. Sometimes you need a full meal between your snacks.
Buy Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators: Season Five from AmazonWarner Brothers presents Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators: Season Five in a bare-bones DVD. It comes with two discs and there is nothing on them but the ten episodes. But if you live outside of England and Britbox isn’t available in your area, this is a nice way of still being able to watch the series.
