A couple of years ago, Brooke Shields, whose television career covers everything from sitcoms (Suddenly Susan) to dramas (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), began working on a project with Robin Bernheim, her frequent collaborator. Shields would play a New England–based novelist who solves a friend’s murder by teaming up with a young influencer (Amalia Williamson). Tonally, she wanted the series to have the same soft-edged feel as some of her favorite whodunits — Matlock, Only Murders in the Building and Murder, She Wrote.
“There’s suspense but also humor, and it’s not depressing or scary or gory, and there’s triumph in the end,” she says of her Acorn TV series, You’re Killing Me, slated for release in 2026. “It’s just entertainment. You come out feeling like after yoga or a spin class, where you’ve forgotten everything going on in your life for a while.”
Whether Shields knew it or not, what she was describing was a “cozy” mystery, a breezy crime-show subgenre that typically features bumbling amateur sleuths, unexpected plot twists, eccentric locals and fishy alibis, all unfolding in a bucolic setting where wrongdoing sends shockwaves. Other reassuringly familiar aspects of cozy crime? No f-bombs or similarly salty language. Sex may be essential to the story, but it happens off screen. And while murder is the reason anyone’s watching, there’s no need to see it actually happen.
It makes sense, then, that You’re Killing Me ended up at Acorn TV, a streamer refreshingly clear-eyed about what it doesn’t offer. “We’re not where you go if you want a dark, tortured antihero,” says Don Klees, Acorn’s senior vice president of programming. “As a brand, we’re like comfort food. There’s the mental gymnastics of puzzle-solving, the rewarding feeling of putting together all the clues and the sense of accomplishment you get at the end of a mystery. It’s TV that makes you feel good — like your time has been well spent.”
For years, Acorn has been regarded as a home for older, well-educated Anglophiles with an insatiable hunger for British or international dramas — especially adaptations of cozy novels they’ve already devoured (e.g., Agatha Raisin, Whitstable Pearl and The Brokenwood Mysteries) and are eager to see come to life on screen.
In recent years, however, the streamer has sought to broaden its viewership by developing original programs led by actors beloved by the public. This past summer, Acorn introduced Art Detectives, a cozy procedural about a socially awkward crime-solver who spouts trivia about Vermeer. It stars Stephen Moyer, whom fans remember as Bill Compton, the courtly 173-year-old vampire on HBO’s Southern Gothic mystery, True Blood. Written and cocreated by writers Dan Gaster, Will Ing and Paul Powell, Art Detectives was inspired by an article Gaster read about a real-life, three-person branch of London’s Metropolitan Police called the Art and Antiques Unit. “It turns out they’re in the news all the time — every week there’s a weird and wonderful [art crime] that happens,” Gaster says, adding that after meeting with Acorn executives, he and his partners knew they’d found a home. “It just felt like a really good fit. They were so enthusiastic about it.”
Roughly two months after Art Detectives premiered came Irish Blood, a light mystery executive-produced by and starring Alicia Silverstone as an imposing Los Angeles divorce attorney who jets to Ireland’s lush County Wicklow to track down her estranged dad. Once there, she finds herself in the middle of — what else? — a murder investigation. In this case, Acorn actively sought out Silverstone, who brought major magic to Clueless, the 1995 high school comedy that put her on the map. To this day, that movie looms large in the mind of Courtney Thomasma, the executive vice president of streaming at AMC Networks, which purchased a controlling interest in Acorn parent RLJ Entertainment in 2018.
Alicia Silverstone in Irish Blood / Conor Horgan/Acorn TV
“I will fully admit, as a millennial, that [Clueless] was by far the most-watched movie in my sleepover era,” Thomasma says, adding that the actress took what Silverstone calls “a blurb on a page about this girl searching for her father who goes to Ireland” and created a project where she was encouraged to weigh in on casting, scripts and even post-production.
“Sometimes you’re trying so hard to make something better, but nobody actually wants the input,” Silverstone says, comparing her experience on Irish Blood to Excess Baggage, a 1997 comedy she starred in, where she used her two-picture deal at Columbia to hand-pick the director, help with casting, tinker with the script, choose the music and produce. “With this one, they really, really, really wanted my involvement in a deep way.”
In the end, Irish Blood broke records as the most-watched show in Acorn’s history. “The series checked all the boxes for what we think of as a great Acorn TV original: well-crafted, well-produced storytelling; a unique sense of place; and dynamic, three-dimensional characters you can root for,” Thomasma says. Right below Irish Blood on the most-watched list? Art Detectives.
To grasp just how well Acorn understands its subscribers’ preferences and tastes, it helps to remember that the company began in the late ’90s as a boutique direct marketer of VHS tapes and later DVDs, keeping careful tabs on who was buying U.K. dramas and other international programming. So, when Acorn decided to move into streaming in 2011, it had an enormous existing library and a built-in audience. Its first big victory was to land exclusive rights to the premiere of the sixth season of veteran British cozy mystery Doc Martin. In 2015, Acorn TV became the first niche streamer to compete at the Emmys when Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Curtain, Poirot’s Last Case was nominated for Outstanding Television Movie.
But even Klees admits that Acorn TV was slow to find its footing. “There was some experimenting going on about what we should be — and I sometimes joke that was our chance to figure things out,” he says. “We’ve obviously advanced a lot since then. But the essence is still the same.”
In the past couple of years, though, that essence has become a go-to for viewers who want to switch off the evening news in favor of hot tea, red herrings and townspeople who come together in a crisis. “As times get more chaotic, I think anything that ends with order and justice prevailing is appealing to viewers,” says Matt Piwowarczyk, cohost of All Things Cozy, a biweekly podcast so dedicated to lowering the temperature that it features a recurring segment on scented candles. Acorn’s pitch to ease your mood is simple: For less than $10 a month, subscribers get access to more than 3,000 hours of content. But some of those hours are bleaker than others, so Piwowarczyk suggests checking for warm colors in the opening credits. “That’s a big giveaway in terms of, ‘Okay, this mystery is going to lean cozier,’” he says. “It’s like they’re glowing at you, instead of all the washed-out, desaturated colors of something like Slow Horses, where I’m just met with a cold blue.”
He also likes a “prancing” score, adding, “If the thumbnail is an older woman wearing a nice, fuzzy cardigan, I know I’m in for a good time.”
Follow Piwowarczyk’s advice, and you’ll eventually land on Murder Before Evensong, an Acorn original that aired in October and checks all the genre’s boxes. Adapted from the first of Rev. Richard Coles’s best-selling mystery novels, it stars Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films) as Canon Daniel Clement, a sweet-natured clergyman who springs into action when a murder spree rocks Champton, the picturesque fictional village where his church is located. And those pitter-pattering sounds in the background? They’re courtesy of Daniel’s two scampering dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda.
Thanks to early conversations with Acorn TV, says Emmy-nominated Evensong producer Radford Neville, he knew what the streamer expected. “Acorn was very keen for us to deliver something with really high production value that looks beautiful,” he says. “I think we pulled together a fantastic cast of British actors.”
He also found the cozy format flexible enough to allow for unexpected darkness in the six-part series. “There’s a little bit more grit to it,” Neville says, noting that the lead character, for example, rejects the church’s punitive stance during the AIDS epidemic. (The series is set in the 1980s.) “We were keen to show Daniel as a character who is prepared to stick his neck out. He may be a member of the church, but he believes in something. He will fight for it, and he’ll do the right thing. He’s got a little bit of steel in his soul.”
Should it take off, Evensong, filmed in England’s rural West Midlands, could even become an immersive experience for Acorn viewers. Seven years ago, the streamer partnered with a company called Transcendent Travel for “The Best of Acorn TV: A 7-Day Tour of England,” which takes fans to production locations for Doc Martin, Midsomer Murders, Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Agatha Raisin, The Chelsea Detective and others. There’s even an interactive falconry exhibition.
The thing about Acorn TV, though, is that if you don’t have the cash to visit every country in the Commonwealth, cozy mysteries — with their postcard-pretty scenery — can take you there. “We’re big on sense of place,” Klees says. “Not every crime drama needs to take place in central London. My Life Is Murder is in New Zealand. We’ve got Darby and Joan taking place throughout Australia. Irish Blood is set in Ireland. It appeals to the armchair traveler in us.”
As it happens, cozy-mystery makers aren’t breaking the bank to produce in far-flung locations. “If you think about the quintessential murder mystery, it privileges sleuthing over action or special effects,” Thomasma says. “It’s deductive reasoning and the power of the mind that are solving crimes — not guns or superpowers or big action sequences. That lets us produce shows at a budget that makes sense.”
Over the past year, Acorn has seen all-time highs in viewership and engagement — a sign that the wider appeal of a once-pigeonholed genre is paying dividends. “We’ve been focused on finding ways to introduce it to a broader, younger audience, tapping into talent we think will resonate with them,” Thomasma says. “We’ve been thoughtful about adaptations, mining IP and books that have dedicated, loyal readerships.”
That doesn’t mean Acorn is turning its back on its long-running titles and sizable back catalog. Following the British TV format, a new Acorn show usually ends its season after six episodes. On the other hand, for a convert to the streamer, or someone in a revisiting mood, there’s nothing like a deep dive into a show such as Midsomer Murders, which kicks off its 25th season this month. In 2026, Murdoch Mysteries and The Brokenwood Mysteries will air their 19th and 12th seasons, respectively. The allure of these mainstays, says All Things Cozy’s Piwowarczyk, is their consistent formula. “It’s like Law & Order,” he says. “One reason people watch that show is for the structure — it’s comforting, familiar.”
Yet the truth is that all three shows continue to evolve. “[Murdoch Mysteries] is a series that had real creative renaissances and reboots over the years,” Thomasma says, noting that one way Murdoch keeps viewers on their toes is with quirky stunt casting — e.g., William Shatner as Mark Twain and novelist Margaret Atwood as an ornithologist and photographer. “This season, you’ll see everyone from Countess Luann de Lesseps from The Real Housewives of New York City to Sally Lindsay, whom Acorn stalwarts know as antiques dealer Jean White on The Madame Blanc Mysteries.”
Irish Blood and Art Detectives have a way to go before they catch up with those cozy TV staples, but they’ve begun the journey: Both have been renewed for a second season.
Recently, Rob Fox, executive vice president of production for AMC Networks and AMC Studios, was talking about Brooke Shields’s You’re Killing Me, then in the early stages of establishing its own well-crafted coziness in Nova Scotia. “It’s always a concern when you’re waiting to see how it’s cutting together,” he said. “But I just got a sizzle reel from the first few weeks of shooting. It gave me goosebumps; it was so perfect.”
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #13, 2025, under the title "Killer Charm."
