Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Coroner’ On The CW, About An Anxious Widow Whose New Job As A Toronto Coroner Brings New Challenges

Coroner is a CBC-produced series that The CW imported to add to its late-summer schedule. We know that lots of quality shows come from Canada, but this character-driven procedural seems like it would fit a bit better on CW’s corporate cousin CBS. But the show isn’t a pure procedural, as it makes a real effort to make the overall narrative character-driven. Read on for more.

CORONER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A shot of an indoor swimming pool, where a race is about to begin. Dr. Jenny Cooper (Serinda Swan) is there with her husband David Khalighi (Emmanuel Shirinian) to root on their son Ross (Ehren Kassam).

The Gist: As we see the end of the race, we flash to a therapist’s office three months later. The therapist is asking Jenny about how she’s feeling since that day. After the race, David, weirdly disappointed with his son’s second-place finish, collapsed by the side of the pool and fell in; Jenny dives in to get him and uses her skills as an ER doc to try to save him, but can’t. In the flashback, we see a black wolf-like dog hovering nearby as Jenny tries to save her husband.

It turns out he died of a brain aneurysm, and Jenny’s been suffering from clinical anxiety since then. On her way to her first case as a new Toronto coroner, she not only is playing motivational tapes to get her psyched up, but she also pops a Xanax to keep things under control. The first case is in a juvenile correction facility, where she meets detective Donovan “Mac” McAvoy (Roger Cross). A girl looks like she hung herself with a trash bag, but a big abrasion on her heel is making Jenny question that idea. While there, a boy is found dead in his cell, with similar injuries.

Jenny tries to get answers during the autopsy from chief pathologist Dr. Peterson (Michael Healey), who is ready to rule these kids as suicides while ignoring Jenny’s suggestions. Later, when he releases the bodies back to the families without heeding Jenny’s order to look at the girl’s heel, she fires him for cutting corners, making Dr. Dwayne Allen (Lovell Adams-Gray) the chief pathologist.

When she comes home after that first day of work, she finally looks at the pile of mail and notices that their house is in foreclosure. Not only that, but a second mortgage is also in default. Turns out that David, a gambling addict, left them broke, which adds to Jenny’s anxiety. As she works through the case, dealing with parents who are clueless and having to actually go the funeral home to collect a skin sample from the girl’s heel, she goes to the house of an elderly lady who died of natural causes and meets Liam (Éric Bruneau), a mysterious handyman working on their house. The attraction between them is undeniable.

Our Take: Like when we do reviews of most procedurals, the case that is solved in the first episode of Coroner, a CBC-produced series which The CW is importing to fill some schedule gaps, isn’t all that important when it comes to our review. Like most modern procedurals, it takes some giant leaps of logic to reach the conclusion Jenny and Mac reach, and a bunch of eye-rolling events like Jenny taking a skin sample in a funeral home. There really is no attempt to clue the viewers in so they could try to solve the case alongside the characters they’re seeing on screen.

Unlike many police procedurals, though, Coroner is very invested in developing Jenny’s story and making the characters around her into three-dimensional humans instead of archetypes. Yes, there are one too many scenes where Jenny is exhaling heavily in order to alleviate her crushing anxiety. But we see more than enough about Jenny — how she’s haunted by David’s death, her extremely close relationship with her teenage son, the way she mutters to the bodies when she first examines them, etc. — to get an idea of what this show will be about. And Swan does a good job making sure Jenny’s vulnerabilities aren’t just tics; they’re real and they’re something she needs to be good at her job.

The rest of the characters are, for now, procedural archetypes: Mac questions authority, and revels in the fact that he’ll have to help Jenny reopen Dr. Peterson’s cases; Jenny’s admin Alison (Tamara Podemski) is on top of everything, and has the quirky personality to match. We’ll likely see these characters deepen as time goes on; it’s inevitable that will happen given creator Morwyn Brebner’s character-driven focus (the series is based on a novel by Matthew Hall).

Sex and Skin: Well, Jenny and Liam have network-television sex (i.e. underwear stays on) in the cab of his truck. That counts.

Parting Shot: After her call with Mac about Dr. Peterson’s cases, Jenny exhales to try to relieve her anxiety, and she sees the image of the black dog again.

Sleeper Star: Tamara Podemski’s character Alison is being set up as the character with more tics than a clock. But it’s fine to have that in a side character, and she’ll become a reliable help to Jenny down the line.

Most Pilot-y Line: Speaking of tics, Alison tells Jenny to “Tick tick” because Jenny is late to the meeting with Dr. Peterson. “I think it’s ‘tick tock,'” Jenny says. “No, ‘tick tick'”, Alison retorts. So, yes, Alison is quirky.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Swan is appealing as Jenny, and we’re always happy when a procedural focuses as much on characters as it does on the case of the week. It’s a sign that Coroner will only get better.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Coroner On CWTV.com