My Life is Murder is an Australian and New Zealand murder mystery, crime comedy-drama television series featuring fearless and unapologetic Alexa Crowe, played by Lucy Lawless whose unique skills and insights allow her to unravel the truth behind the most baffling of crimes.
Tropes:
- Accidental Murder:
- In "Another Bloody Podcast", a fight between brothers turned deadly when a punch caused one of the participants to fall and hit his head on a paving stone. However, it was a Time-Delayed Death and circumstances conspired to make it look like a hate crime.
- In "All That Glitters", the killer only intended to set up an accident that would injure the victim and force them to pull out of the show. However, they did not foresee the 'accident' causing water to leak into the stage lights, resulting in a High-Voltage Death.
- Boulder Bludgeon: In "Lividity in Lycra", the killer swaps the Victim of the Week's water bottle with an identical one spiked with monkshood. However, they miscalculate the dose and it is not enough to kill their target, and they forced to finish the job by hitting him on the head with a rock.
- Clock Tampering: In "Wild Life", following a "Eureka!" Moment when the power going out in her apartment causes the oven clock to reset to 0:00, Alexa realises that the killer created an alibi by resetting all of the clocks in his house (including his wife's phone) ahead by twenty minutes to make it appear that a crucial phone call happened later than it actually did.
- Coffin Contraband: In "Remains to be Seen", the killer needs to dispose of the Victim of the Week's personal belongings to make it look like he skipped town, so they pack them into the oversized casket of someone due to be cremated the next day.
- Cop/Criminal Family: Alexa's father was a con man, while she became a cop. In season two her brother is also revealed to be in jail for being a con man.
- Corpse Temperature Tampering: In "Can't Stand the Heat", the murder occurs in a commercial kitchen. The killer turns off the ventilation and turns all of the industrial ovens on full to keep the room hot and the body warm, and goes off to establish an alibi for the rest of the night. She makes sure she is the one to 'discover' the body, so she can turn off the ovens and ventilate the kitchen before calling the police.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: In "Sleep No More", Alexa spends much of the case obsessing over a the fact the Victim of the Week had a deep fresh cut on his finger, but there was no blood at the crime scene. She eventually works out that he had deliberately cut his finger on a meat hook after he was Locked in a Freezer and wrote his killer's name on the wall only for the person who found his body to clean it off.
- Cramming the Coffin: In "Remains to be Seen", a husband and wife had arranged to be buried in the same grave. When the wife dies several months after the husband, the grave is reopened to allow her interment, but the gravediggers discover the Body of the Week atop the husband's coffin.
- Death by Falling Over: The death in "Another Bloody Podcast" turns out to a case of Accidental Murder caused by this. During a family quarrel, the killer threw a punch that caused the Victim of the Week to fall and hit his head on a paving stone. However, the victim got up and the killer left thinking he was fine, only for him to suffer a Time-Delayed Death shortly after from a bleed on the brain.
- Drag Queen: In "All That Glitters", Alexa's personal and professional lives collide when she investigates the death of a drag queen whose career was on the rise.
- Edible Bludgeon: In "Can't Stand the Heat", the killer smashes the Victim of the Week's head in with a frozen chicken in the kitchen of a cooking school. They then arrange the body to make it look like he slipped in spilt oil and hit his head on the metal bench. They put the chicken back in the freezer and it is cooked and cut up during the next day's lesson.
- Fair Cop: Alexa was this in flashbacks when she was a police officer, but then she retired and became a baker and part-time detective.
- Fashion Show: The episode "Killer Fashion" in season three is about a young model's death backstage at a fashion show. Alexa goes undercover as a model agent and Madison as a new model.
- GPS Evidence: In "Feet of Clay", Alexa identifies the killer, and then is able to provide the evidence the police need because of the dirt and leaf litter trapped in the killer's shoes that could only have been picked up at the murder scene.
- Head-Tiltingly Kinky: In "Fake Empire", Alexa and Madison are looking at photos the Victim of the Week took of himself and his mistress. Madison cocks his head to one side, then asks:Madison: How does he get his leg in that position.
Alexa: That's not his leg. - High-Voltage Death: In "All That Glitters", the Victim of the Week is a Drag Queen who dies in a seeming accident after faulty stage lights electrify the stage. However, Detective Harry Henare is not convinced and asks Alexa to investigate.
- I Have This Friend: Alexa's doctor assumes this is happening in "Feet of Clay" when she asks about cancer treatment. He starts to tell her about the dangers of using the internet for self-diagnosis. When she says it is not for her, he says "Oh, a 'friend'?" in a skeptical tone. However, she is actually asking because it is relevant to the case she is investigating.
- In Medias Res: The penultimate episode of season 2 starts with Alexa hanging over a precipice literally holding on for her life. Then the show flashes back to one week to explain How We Got Here.
- Killer Outfit: The murderer in "Killer Fashion" uses a poisoned garment to kill.
- Locked in a Freezer: In "Sleep No More", the Victim of the Week is drugged with sleeping pills and then locked in a walk-in freezer with a broken handle that means it cannot be opened from the inside.
- Locked Room Mystery: The second episode of the series Alexa has to solve how a man was shot and killed, in a locked hotel room.
- Make It Look Like an Accident:
- In "Can't Stand the Heat", the killer smashes the Victim of the Week's head in with a frozen chicken in the kitchen of a cooking school. They then arrange the body to make it look like he slipped in spilled oil and hit his head on the metal bench.
- In "Feet of Clay", the murderer shoves the Victim of the Week out into the street where they are hit by a car. This was actually a piece of improvisation on the killer's part, as their original plan involved a bus but it had been delayed by traffic. The killer lucked out and the car was being driven by a drunk driver who took the blame.
- Manchurian Agent: In "Call of the Wild", a psychiatrist discovers that one of his patients is super-susceptible to hypnotism. He programs her to shoot anyone she sees wearing purple (knowing that his intended victim jogs at the same time every day, wearing the same outfit) on hearing a particular musical Trigger Phrase. He then programs that Trigger Phrase into her phone as the ringtone for the number he will call her from.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In a season one episode Alexa is able to prove that a clairvoyant learned details of the crime from the real murderer and not through psychic talent. However, the same psychic is able to tell Alexa a secret about a gift from Alexa's husband. The show suggests that this may or may not be supernatural.
- Medication Tampering: In "Mirror Mirror", the murderer laces the lidocaine cream being used on the Victim of the Week's chest for a minor cosmetic procedure with barbiturates. This knocks the victim out several hours later and the killer force feeds her more barbiturates and then injects her with a fatal dose of botulinum toxin to make it look like a case of self-medication gone wrong.
- Murder by Mistake: In "Old School", the murderer laid a trap for the deputy headmistress. However, the headmistress, who usually left precisely at 4:30 every day, stayed late because she was filling for the history teacher and wound up taking the bait instead.
- Phony Psychic: In "Fake Empire", when Kieran presents Alexa with another unsolved murder—a nurse stabbed in the back a week after proposing to his girlfriend—Alexa declines until Kieran mentions the involvement of clairvoyant Chloe Angel, who knows details about the case not released to the public. Ever the skeptic, Alexa is determined find the killer and prove that Chloe is a phony. She does.
- Private Detective: Alexa is an ex-cop turned private detective (and part-time baker).
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The show moved from Australia to New Zealand between seasons one and two. So Detective Inspector Kieran Hussey, Alexa's friend in the police department who brings her the cases of the week, is replaced by Detective Harry Henare, who becomes her friend and gets her the cases of the week. Alexa's friend George who owns a cafe (and buys her bread), stayed in Australia, and Alexa now has her friend Rueben who owns a cafe (and buys her bread).
- Downplayed with Captain Thunderbolt, Alexa's adorable grey cat in season one is replaced by "Chowder" in season two, an orange and white cat but they fulfil the same function.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: In "Lividity in Lycra", the killer swaps the Victim of the Week's water bottle with an identical one spiked with monkshood. However, they miscalculate the dose and it is not enough to kill their target, and they forced to finish the job by hitting him on the head with a rock.
- Time-Delayed Death: The Victim of the Week in "Another Bloody Podcast" dies after being punched and falling and hitting his head on a paving stone. He stood up again and the killer left, assuming he was fine, only for him to expire shortly afterwards from a bleed on the brain.
- The Prima Donna: Former supermodel "Faith Cooper" is the main suspect in the episode "Killer Fashion." Her self-centeredness is part of the cause for the episode's murder.
- Trigger Phrase: In "Call of the Wild", a psychiatrist hypnotizes a patient into being his Manchurian Agent. He trigger phrase is a particular piece of music he programs into her phone as the ringtone for the number he will call her from when he knows she is in sight of the intended target.
- Wacky Cravings: In "Another Bloody Podcast", a pregnant woman sends her husband out for a Mars Bar and a jar of anchovies.
- Wedding Crashers: In "Another Bloody Podcast", the Victim of the Week was a gay man who was the best man at his brother's wedding. The wedding was crashed by the victim's extremely drunk partner, who was upset at not being invited and created a huge scene. When the best was murdered the same night, his partner became the number one suspect.
- Writing Indentation Clue: In "Sleep No More", Alexa uses a crayon to bring out the indentation on the top sheet of pad. While the sheet reveals what appears to be a confession, the fact that is on the top sheet means that it could not have been written weeks ago on the night of the murder as claimed.
- Your Other Left: In "All That Glitters", Alexa is investigating the suspicious death of a Drag Queen. She gets Madison to run through the dance routine the victim had been rehearsing when they died, and tells her:Now you need to turn to your left. (Beat) Your other left.
