TV Reviews : Lighthearted Fun in ‘Over My Dead Body’

Another of TV’s in-fighting, crime-battling odd couples debuts tonight.

Can a 60-ish mystery novelist and a brash young newspaper obituary writer somehow get along well enough to work together? Two guesses.

“Over My Dead Body,” the lighthearted mystery series debuting at 9 tonight on Channels 2 and 8, is one of the weariest formulas in prime time. And its two-hour premiere has infinite holes and a mystery that isn’t in the least mysterious. If you can’t identify the murderer early on, you’re a corpse.

That “Over My Dead Body” is nevertheless breezy fun despite its serious flaws is due to the likability of its protagonists, cranky British novelist Max Beckett and brash obit writer Nikki Page, and to the chemistry shared by the actors who play them. Edward Woodward and Jessica Lundy are a very good mix.

The setting is San Francisco and the plot is thin and familiar: No one believes Nikki when she insists that she witnessed the murder of a hooker through her apartment window. To help her solve the crime, she recruits someone she knows only through reading his books. Yes, it’s the reluctant Max, a somewhat jaded, slightly cockney former Scotland Yarder whose marriage is ending and whose mystery writing career is on the skids. He’s a binge drinker, a bit sad and a bit of a phony--in other words, the perfect partner for an earnest, revved-up kid like Nikki, who aspires to be a newspaper reporter. They fight, they unite.

Co-executive producer David Chisholm’s story buckles almost immediately. It’s too much to believe, for example, that Nikki would charge into the victim’s apartment in hopes of catching the killer, armed only with a tennis racket. It’s no less a stretch that Nikki, who barely knows Max, would roust him from bed at 2 a.m. by breaking his window with a rock.

These are relatively small things, however. Like much TV drama, “Over My Dead Body” focuses on characters and their relationships, not plot. The intense Woodward so skillfully juxtaposes Max’s wit and melancholia, and Lundy is so fresh and appealing as Nikki, that the story’s credibility seems less important than its style and amusement.