"Billy, a man I liked and trusted, had an affair with my wife and killed her. I'm devastated. How is...how's things going with the garden?" - Nigel Hastings as a supposedly grieving widow in "Agua Cadaver"
Rosemary & Thyme: Series Three DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
Fired professor of horticulture Rosemary Boxer (Felicity Kendal) and former police officer Laura Thyme (Pam Ferris) return as a pair of garden consultants who seem to find a dead body under every leaf they turn over in Rosemary & Thyme: Series Three. In the series' third (and presumed final) season, the pals investigate six mysteries:
In a Monastery Garden: The murder of a teen shatters the idyllic calm of a tiny village as Rosemary and Laura race the clock to renew a monastery's herb garden in time for a royal visit.
Seeds of Time: Hired to organize a deceased botanist's seed collection, the duo stumble across a murder.
Agua Cadaver: Rosemary's ex flame invites the gardeners to Spain to restore a Moorish garden. Rosemary still has feelings for him, but not only is he married, he may be a murderer.
Three Legs Good: Working in Regent's Park, Rosemary and Laura investigate who is stealing the expensive plants that they are reintroducing to the historic park. The investigation takes a turn when a three-legged dog leads them to a dead body.
The Gooseberry Bush: The pair work on a memorial garden that sprouts flowers and an abandoned baby.
Racquet Espanol: Creating a trophy garden for a tennis club in Spain, Rosemary and Laura become suspicious when a member of the club turns up dead.
Enter Two Gardeners: Laura takes center stage when the duo are hired to landscape the garden surrounding an outdoor theater.
The Cup of Silence: Crickle Valley Vineyard is being choked with weeds, but that's the least of their troubles when a visiting critic dies under mysterious circumstances.
The two leads have an easy rapport, but the series once again refuses to really commit to its comedic side. Just as the pair are commenting about the quiet, simple nature of village life free from modern problems, they discover a murder victim in a churchyard. Laura wears her muddy gardening boots while trying on fancy dresses for an audience with the Queen. These bits of humor are welcome, but the series mostly takes itself too seriously. They are like glints of gold in an otherwise empty miner's pan. This is especially true because the mysteries aren't...well...very mysterious.
"The Cup of Silence" most effectively combines humor with mystery. While evaluating a vineyard's weed problems, Laura and Rosemary are housed in the adjacent hotel. The hotel was used as the filming location for a variety of films, so the management has named each room after film characters in an attempt to appeal to tourists. As the hired help, the duo are put into the Ebenezer Scrooge room, a tiny space on the top floor with undersized bunk beds and a door that won't open all the way because it bumps into a dresser. Rosemary visits a charity shop dedicated to the welfare of donkeys to buy a gift for donkey fanatic (?!) Laura, only to discover that their inventory includes Donkey Kong and Don Quioxte. Rosemary helps to devise a mechanized solution to the vineyard's weed problem, leading to the amusing sight of Kendal driving a weird contraption through the rows of grape vines while wearing aviator goggles, looking like a distaff version of Green Acres's Oliver Douglas. The mystery doesn't exactly zip along, but in "The Cup of Silence," the series almost gels.
The series is often lazily directed and edited. "Racquet Espanol" culminates with an extremely inept chase scene in which Laura pursues the bad guy on foot while Rosemary takes a Vespa scooter. Laura still somehow manages to beat Rosemary to the scene (those clunky garden boots and shapeless cotton smocks must have magical powers). The climax of the scene - catching the criminal - actually takes place off screen. Surely there is a more exciting way of staging this denouement.
The eight episodes that make up the third series are divided onto three discs. The discs are housed in three slim keepcases which slide into a cardboard slipcover. The back of each keepcase includes brief synopses of the episodes found on the DVDs.
The menus are simple and functional. Viewers can choose to watch an entire episode or can jump directly to a scene using the "Scene Selection" menu.
