Tales from the Murder Room was an interesting project that really had some good moments, but also I think missed some opportunities to really make it something fun.
I think the project was originally created as a web series, however what I watched was maybe season 1 all in a row? Then again, that could have been reversed where the original feature was broken up into a web-series as it currently reads on IMDb.
Either way, the project was a couple of crime stories, supposedly from the “#1 Best Selling Novel by Victo Hayes, Tales from the Murder Room”. I wasn’t sure if the novel actually existed in real life or not until I did a Google search, so I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, but maybe it does; more on this later in the review.
I thought a couple of the stories were good, and actually really liked a couple of them, but unfortunately not all of the stories were winners. Not sure if the project would have been better if they would have went with less stories, and devoted more time to the better ones, or not, but I’m sure producers King Jeff and Gorio had their reasons. If “Tales from the Murder Room” was originally constructed as a series of episodes than all the episodes not being winners is to be expected, as every series out there during a typical run has their better episodes than others.
Also in those regards, a couple of the actors and characters stood out from others. I really thought the main characters, and especially Homicide Lt. George Rook, played by Gorio, did a great job, and so did King Jeff with his role of Homicide Detective Jerry July. I thought the Cold Case 1 Incident episode or story about the serial killer was probably the best story overall.
So yeah, I started to touch on this earlier, but I really didn’t understand the whole best selling novel “Tales from the Murder Room” thing. Each of the stories were set up by separate connecting scenes of goofy, suspicious, criminal or mundane activity that eventually concluded with the character of the connecting scene diving into reading of the book and that begin the telling of the main story. I understood that the main stories were what the connecting scene characters were reading, but instead of making the connecting scenes weave together to either tell one story in itself, like I thought it was going to do, or maybe even better, weave together to connect all of the main stories together, none of that happened, and next thing you know the movie, or season 1, was over.
So now I’m wondering, did I like the project or not? Again, I think there were some good performances, and I do like detective and crime stories, so I guess I recommend checking out “Tales from the Murder Room”, if you’re into the crime genre. Perhaps I just wish it would have tightened some things up. And upon not knowing if the project was a web-series first or feature first, which still is confusing, but really the thing that I think I wish they would have done was weave those connecting scenes together to enhance the project.
Like the review part, there were some good things and not some good things. It’s not really a cinematography picture, but more of they got the job done type of deal. They tried some cool shots here and there, but really this project was just more of a story driven project.
Also, a lot of the project revolved around the “murder room”, so there’s only so much you can do when so much of one project revolves around a police station interrogation room. Perhaps that’s why they tried to break up the main stories with the separate connector scenes which were filmed at various locations, but if this was the case, that’s a good idea, but again, just wish they would have tied everything together, which I’m pretty sure if you’ve read this far, you already know that.