50 Fun Facts About Murdoch Mysteries

Who plays Detective William Murdoch in Murdoch Mysteries?

Yannick Bisson has played him since 2008 and works behind the camera too: he made his directing debut with the season four episode Buffalo Shuffle.

When Murdoch Mysteries begins, what is Dr. Julia Ogden's job?

City coroner Julia Ogden examines the bodies in Murdoch's early cases, then keeps reinventing herself: she later retrains as a psychiatrist and a surgeon.

Which author's Detective Murdoch novels inspired the TV series Murdoch Mysteries?

Maureen Jennings modelled her hero on a real lawman: John Wilson Murray, who in 1875 became the province's first full-time government detective.

Murdoch Mysteries moved to CBC in 2013, but which Canadian network first aired it?

Citytv launched the show in 2008 and dropped it after five seasons; CBC picked it up for the sixth, and there it found a much larger audience.

Under what title did Murdoch Mysteries air for years on the US network Ovation?

The Artful Detective was Ovation's own title for it; in 2019 the arts channel dropped the name and began showing season 12 under the original one.

What does Murdoch call fingerprints in the series?

Fingerprinting, blood testing and trace evidence were all unusual methods for the 1890s.

Which body of water does Murdoch search with a primitive sonar in one episode?

Lake Ontario holds the answer in a case about gold stolen during the American Civil War, so Murdoch builds the Graphizer, a box whose pencil arm draws sound waves from under the water.

Who plays Inspector Brackenreid in Murdoch Mysteries?

Thomas Craig came to acting late: he worked as a plumber from 16 to 22 before going to drama school, and was a Coronation Street regular before he became the inspector.

From which English county does the whisky-loving Inspector Brackenreid hail?

Yorkshire is home for the actor too: Sheffield-born, he took his stage name from a Sheffield Wednesday footballer, and the inspector wears the club's tattoo on his arm.

Who plays Dr. Julia Ogden in Murdoch Mysteries?

Hélène Joy won the part on the strength of a smaller one: she had a supporting role in a 2004 Murdoch TV movie, and the novels' author pushed for her to play Ogden.

What career does Constable George Crabtree dream of in Murdoch Mysteries?

Mystery novelist is the dream, and he gets there: his first book, The Curse of the Pharaohs, comes out in season five, and by season 15 he is often away on book tours.

Which young doctor joins Murdoch Mysteries in season five as Dr. Ogden's protégée?

Dr. Emily Grace soon catches Constable Crabtree's eye, then falls for suffragette Lillian Moss; after Lillian is murdered in season nine, she leaves to carry on the cause overseas.

Whom does Dr. Ogden marry in the season four finale, years before she weds Murdoch?

Dr. Darcy Garland was a colleague from her spell at a Buffalo children's hospital; she goes through with the wedding when Murdoch, busy freeing a prisoner, never comes to stop it.

Which detective transfers from Station House One in season ten and stays on at Station House 4?

Watts first turns up to reopen a murder case Murdoch closed twelve years earlier, then loses his place at his own station over personality conflicts he freely admits are his fault.

What is the title of the season 17 musical episode of Murdoch Mysteries?

Why Is Everybody Singing? is Murdoch's own question: shot in the head and lying in a coma, his injured brain turns what people say at his bedside into song, and the cast did all their own singing.

Which real inventor helps Murdoch solve an electrocution in the very first episode of Murdoch Mysteries?

Nikola Tesla steps in after a beauty queen dies at a public demonstration against alternating current; his experiment proves the switch she pulled had been tampered with.

Which actor plays Albert Choi, who becomes Murdoch's boss in season 18?

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Appa on Kim's Convenience, plays the outsider brought in to run Station House 4 after Murdoch turns the inspector's job down.

To which post is Inspector Brackenreid promoted in the season 17 finale of Murdoch Mysteries?

Chief Constable of Toronto is an office he once fell foul of: in season nine a corrupt holder of the job had him arrested and demoted to a clerk in the city records.

Where does Dr. Ogden move with her daughter after season 17 of Murdoch Mysteries?

England takes her and young Susannah away while Murdoch stays in Toronto; when he visits in season 18, the two are promptly drawn into a murder investigation at a hotel.

Which architect appears in season 12 of Murdoch Mysteries to design the Murdochs' home?

Frank Lloyd Wright's avant-garde house has a rough start: the housewarming ends when a man is found cooked to death in Murdoch's closet-sized microwave prototype.

In Murdoch Mysteries, Crabtree's sweetheart Florence Nightingale Graham starts selling face cream under which famous name?

Elizabeth Arden really was born Florence Nightingale Graham, on a farm in Woodbridge, Ontario; in the show it is Crabtree who talks the nursing student into selling her cream.

Which faith sets Detective Murdoch apart from most of his colleagues in Murdoch Mysteries?

Catholicism makes him an outsider in Protestant Toronto: he crosses himself over each body he finds, and for years the faith keeps him from being made an inspector.

Who played Detective Murdoch in the three TV movies made before Murdoch Mysteries became a weekly series?

Peter Outerbridge had landed the lead in the sci-fi series ReGenesis by the time a weekly show was ordered, so the part had to be recast.

Which visiting author takes a sceptical Murdoch to a séance in season one of Murdoch Mysteries?

Arthur Conan Doyle is in Toronto to speak on spiritualism; the medium leads them to a murder victim's grave, yet Murdoch still exposes her as a fraud who researches her sitters.

Which British actress played Dr. Julia Ogden in the 2004 Murdoch TV movies?

Keeley Hawes, then known for the BBC spy drama Spooks, was Ogden in the films only: when the weekly series followed, every regular part was recast.

Which Canadian awards gave Murdoch Mysteries 14 nominations in 2008 but only two wins?

The Geminis went to its score and a guest actor that year; in 2012 they were folded together with film's Genie Awards into the Canadian Screen Awards.

In which English port city does an amnesiac Murdoch wake up in the season three opener?

Bristol hosted the show's first filming outside Canada; Murdoch is hunted there as a killer and hidden by publican Anna Fulford, with whom he later learns he has a son.

Which Canadian prime minister played a clueless cop in a 2011 episode of Murdoch Mysteries?

Stephen Harper, a self-described fan who visited the set with his daughter, played a desk sergeant who fails to recognise the prime minister of the day, Wilfrid Laurier.

Constable Crabtree's many 'aunts', who raised him in Newfoundland, are each named after what?

Flowers: Aunt Chrysanthemum and Aunt Oleander are two of them, and season seven reveals that the women who raised the foundling were prostitutes housed by a kindly reverend.

In Murdoch Mysteries, which future British prime minister wakes up hungover beside a murdered friend?

Winston Churchill is in Toronto to give a lecture and cannot recall the drunken night before, so Murdoch retraces his steps to clear him of running his friend through with a sword.

Which famous performer becomes a bank robbery suspect in season two of Murdoch Mysteries?

Harry Houdini looks guilty: a sealed bank vault is emptied without its door being opened, and a witness swears he saw the escape artist fleeing the scene.

Which future writer is Murdoch's prime suspect as a death-obsessed teenager in season ten?

H. P. Lovecraft, the future master of horror, has fallen in with a gang of morbid teenagers, and it is a girl's body and some grotesque sketches that lead Murdoch to them.

Which writer did William Shatner play in a guest role on Murdoch Mysteries?

Mark Twain comes to 1903 Toronto to give a talk and stirs up so much anger that Murdoch has to guard his life; Shatner was 84 when he put on the white suit.

Which future author of a famous orphan story joins Crabtree's creative writing class in Murdoch Mysteries?

Lucy Maud Montgomery arrives from Prince Edward Island as an eager student, years before Anne of Green Gables came out in 1908, so it is the constable who hands out the writing advice.

Which two Dragons' Den investors guest-starred in separate episodes of Murdoch Mysteries?

Arlene Dickinson and David Chilton each got an in-joke: she played a business magnate called Miss Dickinson, and the Wealthy Barber author played a barber who hands Brackenreid financial advice.

Which novelist made a cameo in Murdoch Mysteries as amateur birder Loren Quinnell?

Margaret Atwood needed little research for the part: she is a devoted birder herself, and her late partner Graeme Gibson wrote The Bedside Book of Birds.

Which astronaut plays an amateur 'rocketman' in a Murdoch Mysteries episode about Halley's Comet?

Chris Hadfield plays the calm one: with the city convinced the comet means the end of the world and a doomsayer murdered, his character tells people to enjoy the sight.

With which CBC crime drama did Murdoch Mysteries stage a crossover in 2013?

Republic of Doyle is set a century later, so Murdoch met Jake Doyle's Victorian ancestor on a chase to Newfoundland, and a modern-day Murdoch descendant then turned up on Doyle's own show.

Which comedian joked on Twitter that he was the last Canadian actor not on Murdoch Mysteries, then guested in 2017?

Colin Mochrie got more than a cameo: his sour hotel detective, Ralph Fellows, kept coming back and turned criminal, even abducting Julia along with Murdoch's son Harry.

Which production company makes Murdoch Mysteries?

Shaftesbury Films first adapted the novels as three TV movies; its producer thought the characters could carry a weekly series, and in 2007 the company began making one.

Which criminal mastermind is Murdoch's recurring nemesis, burying Dr. Ogden alive and framing her for murder?

James Gillies starts out as a gifted physics student who murders his professor just to see if he can, and from then on treats every scheme as a game of wits against Murdoch.

Which recurring inventor builds an electric car and a rocket in Murdoch Mysteries?

James Pendrick is years ahead of his time and gets little thanks for it: Murdoch keeps suspecting him of crimes he turns out not to have committed.

Which Yukon town did Murdoch Mysteries visit for its Klondike-set season five opener?

Dawson City is where a suspended, heartsick Murdoch has gone to prospect for gold; a murder there pulls him back into detective work and, soon enough, back to Toronto.

In Murdoch's web series The Curse of the Lost Pharaohs, whom do the mummies target?

Queen Victoria is the target, and the web series, part live action and part animation, was woven into the plot of that season on television.

Which Toronto-born future Hollywood star appears as a child actress in the first Murdoch Mysteries Christmas special?

Mary Pickford, born Gladys Smith in Toronto in 1892, plays the lead in a charity staging of The Little Match Girl at a rich man's Christmas party, which ends with the host murdered.

Which Station House 4 constable marries the eccentric heiress Ruth Newsome?

Henry Higgins remakes himself for her: he hires a butler at Ruth's suggestion, and after the season 12 wedding he goes by Higgins-Newsome.

Which big-screen Santa played Kris Kringle in the first Murdoch Mysteries Christmas special?

Ed Asner, Santa in the film Elf, plays a man caught handing out stolen goods who insists he is the real St. Nicholas, which stirs up Brackenreid's sour memories of childhood Christmases.

Which government spy keeps commandeering Murdoch's cases as 'a matter of national security'?

Terrence Meyers answers to Prime Minister Laurier and is heartily disliked at Station House 4; years in, Murdoch and Brackenreid stumble on his hidden civilian life as a family man.

In which other detective series does a retired, wealthy George Crabtree turn up as a guest?

Frankie Drake Mysteries is set in 1920s Toronto and was created by two Murdoch writers, so an older Crabtree drops by in its first season, retired from the police and rich from his investments.

Which sport is being played when murder interrupts a season 15 charity game in Murdoch Mysteries?

Basketball was James Naismith's idea in Massachusetts in 1891, but the episode stages its tournament in Almonte, his hometown near Ottawa, and hands him the key to the city.