If Acorn TV promoted itself as feminist, the network would deserve a faux-feminism labeling.
Acorn TV debuted in 2011 as the first streaming service for the U.S. Anglophile market. This Commonwealth sensibility brand is a polite euphemism for white, male, British and Antipodean (Australian & New Zealand) storytelling. Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1989-2013), Foyle’s War (2002-15), Doc Martin (2004-2022) and Midsomer Murders (1997-) typify the streamer’s early catalog. Today, shows like Lucy Lawless’ My Life is Murder (2019), Kerry Godliman’ Whitstable Pearl (2021) and Jane Seymour’ Harry Wild (2022) define the brand. This should be applauded, right? Well, not quite.
They [our audience] tend to be over 45, avid readers, well-educated and more affluent than the average consumer. They don’t need to see a lot of stunts or special effects, which helps Acorn keep the costs of its original programs in the range of $1 million an hour. We know what our customers love, and there is no better way to give them what they love [than] to make it ourselves. – Matt Graham, General Manager Acorn/ Sundance Now, 2021
Since its inception, Acorn TV has defined itself as niche for adult, well-educated, affluent audiences. Its long-time marketing tagline, Captivating Characters From Britain and Beyond, also uses this gender neutral messaging. In 2021, a decade after launching, the streamer’s target demographic and marketing has not changed according to General Manager Matt Graham. But while their acquired and licensed shows are still largely white-male-British, the original shows they make themselves are white-female-global (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, Spain, Italy…). Branded as Acorn TV Originals, these shows are cost effective schedule fillers. Without stunts or special effects, they cost a million dollars or less to produce; nearly 75% are women led or co-lead, but only 19% of the original show posters center women; on most the women are paired with men or work teams.
Acorn TV has never embraced nor promoted a feminist strategy. The changing television landscape, merging with AMC in 2016, and a growing female demographic forced Acorn TV to revamp its programming.
This programming shift began with Partners In Crime (2015), an exclusive from BBC One and Agatha Raisin (2016), which premiered as a two hour movie in 2014 before launching as the first Acorn TV Original in 2016.
Acorn TV describes Partners In Crime as a, “delightful adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence mysteries.” Meant to be an endearing 1950’s wife and husband detective series, it infuriates more than it entertains. The wife’s repeated dismissal and disregard by friends, family and foes is grating. This throwback misfires on nearly every level. Neither the sleuthing, sexual chemistry, nor storytelling is appealing. The allusion to I Love Lucy is evident, though underwhelming. Centering an adventurous intellectually curious wife and a lackluster man-child husband in 1950’s Britain without strong writing or a feminist lens is a recipe for disaster. More screwball comedy than murder mystery, it falls rather flat. Voluntarily watching women dim their intellect or professional desires for their mates’ egos or lack of ambition is not apropos in the 21st century.
After only one season, six episodes, Partners in Crime was cancelled. But the network’s now most popular original show, Agatha Raisin, is entering its fifth season. Based on M.C. Beaton’s novels, it is not set in the Cold War; there is no spy connection and the lead is not a married housewife. The notorious heroine Agatha (Ashley Jensen) retires from public relations in London to a quaint English village and soon jumps into sleuthing. Unlike Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher, Agatha is neither dowdy nor asexual. Though she regularly trumps the police, she often suffers from heartbreak. A bit of a socialite, she yearns for a king. Until then she and her motley crew, aim to reduce the unsolved murder rate in Cotswalds.
Near equal parts Sherlock Holmes and Lucille Ball, Agatha Raisin is generally endearing though rather trope laden. This Cozy Mystery is undoubtedly the network’s prototype. Tied to propriety, this sub-genre of crime fiction keeps sex, violence and cursing to a minimum. Set in a small community, this comedic TV-14 storytelling is best described as quaint, whimsical. Agatha Raisin ushered in a slate of woman led Acorn TV Originals: Keeping Faith (2017), Lies and Records (2017), Queens of Mystery (2019) Straight Forward (2019), Ms. Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries (2019), My Life is Murder (2019), South Westerlies (2020), Whitstable Pearl (2021), Harry Wild (2022), Recipes for Love and Murder (2022), Signora Volpe (2022) and Darby and Joan (2022).
With a 64% stake in the Agatha Christie Library, it is not surprising that the face of Acorn TV Original is an older white woman (45+) at a crossroad in life, who happens to be skilled at investigation. Retired (cop, nurse or professor…), single (Divorced or widowed) and seeking purpose, she is a little older than the women on Lifetime and Hallmark, and less brazen and sexual than those on Showtime, HBO and Starz. There are no queens (House of Dragon), teen drug addicts (Euphoria) or socialites (The White Lotus) here. Acorn TV women will not land a Bafta, Golden Globe, Emmy or Oscar!
- My Life Is Murder (2019)-Retired cop Alexa Crow consults on cold cases with young police data-analyst while grieving the death of her husband.
- Whitstable Pearl (2021)- Restaurant owner Pearl Nolan sets up a local detective agency after undergoing police training.
- Signora Volpe (2022)- Sylvia, a disillusioned British spy turned detective, starts a new life in the heart of Italy.
- Recipes for Love and Murder (2022)- With help from a rookie journalist, advice columnist and food obsessed Tannie Maria investigates mysteries in South Africa.
- Darby and Joan (2022)- A retired detective and widowed English nurse meet in the outback and form an unlikely investigative team.
- Harry Wild (2022)- A retired English professor discovers a real knack for investigation and cannot help but interfere with the cases assigned to her detective son.
- Madame Blanc Mystery (2021)-Antiques expert moves to France suspicious of how her husband died and uses her skills to become a PI aiding the local police.
Acorn TV’s women are colorful, intelligent, fun and far from poor. On the surface they have discernable vulnerabilities; interests and skills. But they are quickly drawn sketches of womanhood, not deliberately weighty sculptures. Clone-like, their resemblance is uncanny. The slew of them may not reside in the same locale nor have the same life journey, but their existence is eerily similar. The problem isn’t these women’s ages, professions, marital nor class status. It is the network’s plug and play brand of storytelling which requires the audience to dispense reality to embrace unlikely show premises and situations.
Rarely are these women shown in any depth before they are engulfed in an investigation. Often, their characterization is little more than a long-winded exposition. And with very short seasons, five to six episodes, it is counterproductive to thread the main character’s backstory. Many aren’t even introduced in the series’ opening scene. On Harry Wild, the series opens with a cryptic scene of a man building a dollhouse; Darby and Joan opens with a man in the Outbank on the phone with no visible mode of transportation; Whitstable Pearl features two shots of the locale before the main character is seen in a boat searching for someone. More care is given to showcasing the picturesque towns, real or imagined, than the leads.
These shows are far more tourism ads than feminism posters. This is emblematic of the network’s resistance to the female premium brand! It prefers to erroneously promote itself as high quality British and international television for North America, UK and Eire and ANZ (Deadline). Acorn TV Originals are neither fresh, different nor delightful! It isn’t even great escapism.
Acorn TV’s propriety, racial parochialism and odd homophobia, is antithetical with 21st century feminism ideals.
The entire slate of Original shows depict an unappealing womanhood in the 21st century. None of these woman embrace feminism much less womanism ideals. They promote a strong sense of humanity, but their worlds’ are sanitized; they have very little connection to people and ideas outside of their Eurocentric worlds. Sure Harry (Harry Wild) has a business partnership with a Black young man, Tannie Maria (Recipes for Love and Murder) works with a Black rookie journalist and Pearl (Whitstable Pearl) has a Black son and a developing love for a Black man, but these shows offer a rather stereotypical picture of queerness and Blackness. Minorities are still othered and white women centered. This programming change was cosmetic!
Acorn TV embraces a family-friendly woman archetype not a premium woman brand. A Premium woman brand does not have to deny any woman: asexual or sexually liberated, professional or homemaker, young or old, well-to-do or financially struggling, white or non-white, queer or straight… The Acorn TV woman lead cannot be psychotic, narcissistic, over-sexed or a deadbeat parent. This network’s feminism is dated and the women’s empowerment is limited. Burdened and inauthentic, these characters’ actions are always in response to their relationships. If only a few of these original shows were led by this type of woman, this faux feminism indictment would be premature, if not nonfactual.
Acorn TV is evolving into an endless parade of winged or bored white woman. Her story is quaint, whimsical, even charming. But not too daring nor liberated. She is the type of complicated that is formulaic, in an almost caricature manner. These women are safe, controversy resistant; they scream focus group and network note compliant. These women are not ratings magnets. Jane Seymour’s show, Harry Wild, is the network’s raciest and most daring original show. As a retired literature professor with a detective son Harry becomes a crime investigator with an unlikely partner, her mugger; to the chagrin of her son, she is also very sexually active. While fantastical, the premise is more contemporary and grounded than the slate of originals. But Acorn TV’s best shows remain those acquired or licensed; the dark, complex, uniquely troubled women leads of Vera (2011), Janet King (2012) Candice Renoir (2013) and Happy Valley (2014) are the antithesis of the female original brand at Acorn TV. Ironically, Acorn TV’s best original show, Keeping Faith, is a rip-off of Candice Renoir, a long running French show.
The network’s original shows continue to flounder. Only Agatha Raisin has seen more than three seasons. The network is savvy with their cancelations. Most are not announced; the shows remain in limbo until they fall off the radar. In fact of the 36 original shows, few were actually cancelled. They simply did not return like Blood, Straight Forward, Bloodlands, Striking Out, Hidden, South Westerlies, Under the Vines… Even as part of AMC, this practice has continued. Keep the Faith (2017-20) was an exception. The show’s popularity and the lead’s (Eve Myles) resume (Torchwood, Broadchurch, We Hunt Together) required an announcement. The twenty episode, three year show is an anomaly to the Acorn TV Original brand. Neither whimsical nor fantastical, it is far from a Cozy Mystery.
Ratings and subscriptions provide a case for Acorn TV originals to be more than budget conscious schedule fillers, somewhere between Agatha Christie and Lifetime/Hallmark fare. The darker, less prescriptive and more inventive the show, the more successful. Yet, the Acorn TV brand of storytelling continues to trap women in an inauthentic spaces between drama and comedy. The mysteries are neither dark nor thrilling and the comedies are not hilarious nor innovative. Acorn TV has clearly gone from a white-male-British avatar to a white-female-global avatar, but little else has changed. At the core, the network’s Commonwealth sensibility or propriety remains. The slate of original shows is largely a time capsule of conventionally accepted standards of behavior and morals. The network’s tagline, Captivating Characters from Britain and beyond, maybe catchy marketing, but it’s lackluster branding. Good storytelling is not the just captivating characters, male or female.
Whether the storytelling restraints are driven by analytics, source material or budgets, the result is the same. Tropes, clichés and formulas galore. Encumbered by the TV-14 rating and a refusal to move beyond Commonwealth propriety, Acorn TV is mired in whimsical international family fare. How many colorful or caustic retired amateur detectives in a picturesque locales with stereotypical supporting characters shows do we need? These cotton candy- too sweet and no substance – female stories are meant for immature palates not the demographic -avid readers, well-educated and more affluent– Acorn TV reports.
Even if Acorn TV had the budget for fabulously popular British or Antipodean shows like Killing Eve, CB Striker, Total Control or The Tourist, they’d likely scoff. Quality Television (QTV) is not its goal, female led or not. This is not a boundary pushing nor avant-garde network. Safe, comfortable, milquetoast is a more apropos tagline. Until Acorn TV decides to dig beyond its feminist propriety, American audiences will continue to seek period dramas on PBS, murder mysteries on BritBox and unbridled women stories from the ever-growing list of streamers (Showtime. HBO, Starz, Netflix…). Acorn TV offers a tourist trap, not a feminist excursion!
Curated Ramblings 