Cryptic crime
A world away from Downton Abbey, actor Phyllis Logan stars as a puzzle expert in murder-mystery series The Puzzle Lady (Murder Most Puzzling). She tells DQ about portraying this “ridiculous, eccentric” character, playing the lead and why the show “ticks every box.”
With the third and final Downton Abbey film arriving in cinemas this September, fans of the long-running saga are finally set to say goodbye to the Crawley family and their dedicated band of servants a decade after the ITV series originally ended.
But for Phyllis Logan, who has played housekeeper Mrs Hughes since the period drama’s debut in 2010, life certainly isn’t slowing down.
The Scottish actor has already been on screen this year in two BBC series, the Jane Austen-inspired historical drama Miss Austen and The Bombing of Pan Am 103, which dramatises the cross-Atlantic investigation into the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Now she’s playing the lead in The Puzzle Lady, a series of three feature-length stories based on the novels by the late American author Parnell Hall. In the UK, the series is currently airing on 5 under the title Murder Most Puzzling.
“I must say, it is [a good time],” Logan tells DQ from the Italian Global Series Festival, where she presented The Puzzle Lady to local audiences and was named best actress in the International Drama Competition. “I feel very blessed and very fortunate at my not quite twilight years, but at the latter end of my career. I’ve got more career behind me than I have ahead of me but I seem to be busier than ever. It’s just unbelievable.”
In The Puzzle Lady, Logan is Cora Felton, a famous puzzle setter who has just moved to the sleepy market town of Bakerbury with her long-suffering niece Sherry Carter (Charlotte Hope). In the first episode, when a young woman is found murdered in the local cemetery, police are left clueless by the discovery of a crossword riddle placed by the body. DCI Hooper (Adam Best) quickly pays a visit to Cora for her help in solving the murder. But as she throws herself into the investigation, she finds friends and enemies in equal measure – as it emerges that Cora might not be exactly what she claims.
Episode two sees Cora dig into the case of a convicted killer who may actually be innocent, while the third and final episode – which airs on 5 today – finds her distracted by love while another killer is on the loose.
“It’s quite unusual to be the eponymous heroine. It’s been a while, if ever, since I have been. That just means you’ve got more to do than anyone else and more lines to learn,” Logan jokes. “But it was fantastic to get this great character, who’s so full of life, ridiculousness and eccentricity. It was such a joy to get stuck right into something like that and to work so closely with Charlotte, who plays my niece. We had a great rapport and they’re just such great characters to play. As well as being fantastic, she’s a joy to work with.”
Logan admits she was daunted at the prospect of the role when she first received the scripts. “It is quite a lot to take on, and I knew the workload was going to be massive, as indeed it was,” she says. But encouraged by her husband and fellow actor Kevin McNally (Pirates of the Caribbean), she signed on – and quickly found it was much more fun than she expected.
“It was hard work, I’m not going to lie, but it was really enjoyable,” she says. “My husband came to see it [at a screening] and he said, ‘God, you’re really funny in this,’ with a note of surprise, which I could have taken umbrage at but I didn’t.”
Logan estimates she had just two days off during the 12-week shoot, with a shooting schedule that would see her taken to the Belfast set at various times between 5.30am and 2pm – the latter on days when shooting would stretch into the evening.
“We had lots of night shoots, which are a bugger really, because it puts your circadian rhythm all over the shop,” she says. “So it was relentless. No time off whatsoever to think. I’d just go back to the hotel room of a night, look at the next day’s stuff to make sure I had it all under my belt and then have a shower and go to bed. End of story. That was my life.”
On set, Logan fell in love with Cora – a chain-smoking, wisecracking, borderline alcoholic who thinks nothing of downing a Bloody Mary for breakfast or lighting a cigarette whenever she feels like it. She’s also not afraid to throw a few swear words around – which makes her stand out in a world of reluctant cosy crime investigators.
“That’s what I love about her. She couldn’t care less, really. She’s not somebody who worries about what the rest of society thinks about her,” Logan says. “That complete non-PC-ness is very refreshing for me to portray, I must say. There’s an element to her as well where she claims to be something she maybe isn’t necessarily, but there’s also a steeliness to her that I really enjoyed.
“If you think of some of the things she says and does, it seems quite insensitive to other people’s feelings, and she is to some degree, but she gets away with it, I hope, because it [her insensitivity] comes from a true and good place.”
For viewers who only know Logan from her role as Downton’s strict-but-kind Mrs Hughes, Cora is certainly a juxtaposing character – with a century between them. The actor admits it was sad to hang up Mrs Hughes’ chatelaine for the last time when production wrapped on Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, “but it’s been a good run and it’s very dear to my heart. But on to the new, and to have a character like this, it’s chalk and cheese. It’s an absolute privilege and joy and gift to be given this.”
Reading the scripts by Dominique Moloney (Father Brown, Doctors), Logan says Cora leapt off the page, while the relationships between Cora and Sherry, Sherry and journalist love interest Anton (Alistair Brammer), and Cora and DCI Hooper all intrigued her.
“There are all of those wonderful elements in it – great storylines, great characters, intriguing relationships within all the characters. For me, it ticks every box going.”
To help her get into character, Logan worked closely with costume designer Elle Kent to create a “fantastic array of outrageous” costumes. “She found a look for Cora and I absolutely ran with it,” says the actor, who highlights the character’s comfortable boots and shoes as opposed to anything with a heel. “I can’t do that nowadays,” she laughs.
Cora’s eccentric wardrobe also includes pairing “wild” earrings with three or four necklaces layered together. “I just really loved the costume, and that really helps,” she says. “The character in Dominque’s scripts, she’s all there, but given this extra element of my costumes, plus what they did with my hair and makeup, it just created this look. I can’t tell you how useful and how wonderful it was to have that. Once that all came together, hair, makeup, costume, it was, ‘Bingo, we’ve done it.’”
Logan also enjoyed her collaboration with producer and director Tom Dalton (Agatha and the Midnight Murders), who would welcome any suggestions she might have. Moloney, meanwhile, invited some improvisation, which isn’t something Logan has done much on screen since starring alongside Timothy Spall and Brenda Blethyn in Mike Leigh’s 1996 feature Secrets & Lies.
“That is only improvisation,” she says of the film. “When you have a script, sometimes you don’t want to [improvise], especially with the script being so good. But there were certain elements where it was either to do with location or how to get from one thing to the other where we needed a bridge and Tom was great for saying, ‘OK, give that a try. Go for it.’ He’s so collaborative and so open to suggestions, it was great to work with him. Charlie and I both felt that, and some great stuff came out of it.”
Produced by Factual Fiction and December Films and distributed by ZDF Studios outside of the US, where PBS Distribution is the rights holder, The Puzzle Lady is part of an ongoing revitalisation of ‘cosy crime‘ and murder-mystery series around the world. Logan rightly points out the genre has never gone out of fashion and instead has perhaps merely been overlooked during the streaming boom, “but there does seem to be an awful lot more of them being made because there are so many more outlets for them.”
She adds: “People have got an insatiable appetite for them. Maybe they want to solve the crime before the denouement at the end. It is intriguing to try to outwit the writer by saying, ‘I know who did it.’”
Against the increased competition, The Puzzle Lady stands out thanks to the mysteries in each episode and its touch of “French farce and silliness,” Logan says. “It has its serious undertone, because we are talking murders here, but within that, it does have a genuine comic take on many things, just not the murders themselves.
“The way the script is, it’s the characters that really drive it, not the crimes. I hope people find it amusing because it does have that element to it. I find it is a bit different from the norm.”
As for Cora, her secret won’t be revealed here, except to say that solving murders might be something she’s actually good at. “She actually takes it onboard and runs with it, much to DCI Hooper’s disgust,” Logan adds. “He wishes she would just retire happily in her little enclave and leave him alone, but she won’t because she’s like a dog with a bone when she gets wind of something. She’s a worthy sleuth.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Ludwig: David Mitchell stars as a reclusive puzzle-maker who becomes entangled in murder cases following the disappearance of his identical twin brother, who happens to be a police detective.
Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators: A quicky crime drama about a pair of mismatched private detectives who investigate bizarre cases in Stratford-upon-Avon.
The Marlow Murder Club: A retired archaeologist and crossword setter calls in her friends to help investigate a mysterious murder, leading them to support the local police on a series of perplexing cases.
RELATED CONTENT
Lockerbie’s untold story
Novelist-turned-screenwriter Jonathan Lee details how years of research led him to write The Bombing of Pan Am 103, a BBC drama exploring the investigation into and response to the Lockerbie disaster in 1988.
Austen powers
The creative team behind PBS Masterpiece and the BBC’s period drama Miss Austen discuss how they have adapted Gill Hornby’s novel to shed light on a real literary mystery surrounding the life of Jane Austen.
Goodbye Downton: DQ studies the period drama’s legacy
As Downton Abbey enters its sixth and final season, those to have played their part in the wildly successful period drama, both behind and in front of the camera, bid an emotional farewell. Michael Pickard reports.
tagged in: 5, December Films, Downton Abbey, Factual Fiction, Murder Most Puzzling, PBS Distribution, Phyllis Logan, The Puzzle Lady, ZDF Studios