Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Three Pines’ On Prime Video, Where A Police Detective Investigates Murders In A Tiny Village In Quebec

If you go over Alfred Molina’s IMDb listing, you see over two hundred appearances. And he’s played everything, from a cop in a Law & Order spinoff to Hercule Poirot to Doctor Octopus. Still, when he appears on our screens, we’re always glad to see him, because he brings depth to whatever role he does. He plays a cop again in a new Quebec-set mystery series on Prime Video, and he makes it a whole lot better than it should be.

THREE PINES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Tiothiá:Ke (Montreal)”. A protest over the disappearance of Indigenous women takes place outside the station of the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), the provincial police. A senior detective in glasses watches the protests from a window.

The Gist: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache (Alfred Molina) is sympathetic to the families who are protesting; thousands of Indigenous women have disappeared or been murdered over the past few years, and the SQ has done little to none about it. He even comes to the defense of the mother and sister of one of those victims, Blue Two-Rivers (Anna Lambe), when they’re physically restrained by the officers trying to control the crowd.

He drives Blue’s mother Arisawe (Georgina Lightning) and sisters Missy (Crystle Lightning) and Kara (Isabel Deroy-Olson) home. He asks a colleague to run a plate related to the case, though the colleague thinks like the rest of the SQ, that Blue just ran away.

In the village of Three Pines, CC de Poitiers (Simone-Élise Girard), who just released a tell-all book, is off sleeping with her photographer, Saul Petrov (Iannicko N’Doua-Légaré) and completely ignoring her passive husband Richard (Robert Moloney) and their daughter Crie (Roberta Battaglia). Later, at a Boxing Day curling tournament, de Poitiers sits in a metal chair, then all of a sudden gets hot. Blue fluid drips around her feet. Then suddenly, she’s electrocuted and collapses dead in the chair.

Gamache is sent to Three Pines to investigate — he thinks it’s punishment for driving the Two-Rivers family home. He’s met there by Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir (Rossif Sutherland), Sergeant Isabelle Lacoste (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) and over-eager local officer Yvette Nichol (Sarah Booth). With the help of Yvette, they set up a situation room in the gallery of Bea Mayer (Tantoo Cardinal), who is surprised to see an Lacoste, who is Indigenous, in the SQ.

As Gamache presses on, he gets news about Blue Two-Rivers; she’s been seen alive in Brooklyn. However, Missy thinks that she’d call if she were still alive. And while Blue haunts his dreams, he starts to realize that everyone who was present when CC de Poitiers died likely had a reason to want her dead.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Three Pines has a few similarities to Alaska Daily, with regards to the storyline about the disappearance of thousands of young Indigenous women. But in essence, the show is more like a traditional detective show along the lines of Acorn’s many detective shows, like Whitstable Pearl, Midsomer Murders and others.

Our Take: Three Pines is based on Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache novel series, and it’s trying to balance a few different police procedural genres to weave together a story that’s more complex than the average detective series.

You have the traditional mystery of CC de Poitiers’ murder — Gamache even confronts all the suspects during a book club meeting and talks about why each one might want to kill her, like he’s Hercule Poirot (which Molina has played in the past) — but there’s also a more in-depth story that represents the very real disappearance of thousands of Indigenous women in Canada and Alaska. In addition, Gamache has some mysteries in his own life, which he’ll need to confront as he investigates both cases.

It all flows together pretty well, mainly because of Molina. It’s not exactly the first time he’s played a police detective, but he still makes Gamache unique from the other times he’s played a cop, mainly because he’s so effective at showing Gamache’s vulnerabilities. He’s not the typical SQ cop who sees these missing person cases as runaways and basically give the families no answers, but he still has to fight against the mistrust the Indigenous population has towards law enforcement.

A quality supporting cast and a light sense of humor also helps. Not every aspect of the show is light and airy, but it seems to know when it needs to be serious and when it needs to lighten things up. Because of this, Three Pines give viewers an interesting murder case to follow, quirky small-town folks with secrets, and a more serious case that tests its main character’s abilities. What else can a viewer want?

Sex and Skin: Besides CC waking up next to Petrov, there isn’t any in the first episode.

Parting Shot: When Yvette asks Gamache which one of the townspeople killed CC, he quotes Frankenstein and says, “What if it was all of them?”

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Claire Coulter, who plays cursing town eccentric Ruth Zardo, who totes around her pet duck all over town.

Most Pilot-y Line: CC screams at her husband and daughter, “The only mistake around here was getting married to you and giving birth to that.” “That” is her daughter. Wow, that’s cartooinshly cruel.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Alfred Molina and a fine supporting cast elevates Three Pines above the standard detective drama, if only because it smoothly operates on more than one level.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.