It’s a show & a season that just recently concluded a couple of weeks ago, the first of what I hope is a few seasons atleast as I did like this show a lot. Cop & crime dramas are dime a dozen and almost every actor wants to be a cop/detective atleast once in his or her career. Motive is a Canadian crime/cop procedural drama on CTV (ABC in the US) set in & produced in Vancouver. It premiered in February of this year and completed a 13 episode run of it’s debut season. The show stars veterans Kristin Lehman (around whom the show is centered around), Louis Ferreira, Brendan Penny, Roger Cross & Lauren Holly.

As a twist for this show, something different, each episodes starts off with showing us the victim & the killer. Which means there is no “who dunnit?” mystery for the viewer. However, what we don’t known and only find out towards the end of each episode is the – you guessed it – Motive, as the killer usually seems to have no connection with the victim until their paths cross. That motive often is not fully understood by the detectives until they catch the killer(s). It;s up to single mom & lead detective Angela Flynn (Lehman) along with her partner Oscar Vega (Ferreira) who also utilize  Brian Lucas (Penny), a rookie detective to find out the motive. For forensic & medical data is Dr. Betty Rogers (Holly), the lead medical examiner and support from Staff Sergeant Boyd Bloom (Cross). Cameron Bright plays a recurring role as Angela’s independent teenage son.

Often we will wonder why the killer (as identified in the very first scene) wanted to kill the victim. Like Tom, an often picked on high school student who kills his teacher, a popular singing science teacher who seemed to look out for Tom. Or a former public prosecutor and now the popular candidate for mayor, who murders his babysitter as she finds out he’s been videotaping her having sex with her boyfriend, and also a recording of him sleeping with another teenage babysitter which, if made public, would destroy David’s mayoral bid. Or my fav episode so far, a mild mannered cruise ship terminal customs agent who is setup by a pretty woman to kill Scott Hayward, a limo driver, who was found dead next to his still running vehicle in Stanley Park. episode 4 is a single mother who works at a grocery store who is going through a messy divorce and custody battle killing a lawyer for the winning lottery ticket. Next is a clothing store lady who killed a popular raw foods advocate for the photos of him raping her & other women many years ago. And the Toronto cop who recently celebrated his one year sobriety at his AA meeting but kills his estranged daughter’s ex-husband for a messy divorce and possible sole custody of her child.

And a former Czech surgeon who is recognized by an ex-Canadian soldier who was in the UN peacekeeping unit and who wants her to pay for not stopping crimes committed by the Communist regime in her former country and watching while innocent kids were killed. A really good one is two fathers, who agree to kill for each other & provide strong alibis for each other – an Indian father who has a contracter kill the boyfriend, a former junkie, of his daughter. In return the contractor wants the father of the girl to kill his brother in law who he blames for his young son’s death. Next is an aging mother with a bad back who kills a lady who works for an art gallery. The motive – her son had his heart broken by the lady when he asked her out for a date and the lady bought a painting from the mother, a new painting on an old canvas for some money; the old painting is a lost treasure item and will fetch a large sum! A young man, fired from his last job, kills a priest who cared for him growing up but who hid stolen money that the young man’s father had informed him about. A former Olympic boxing champ is killed by his crippled younger brother for disagreements on how their struggling gym should be run. A lawyer for a plastics company is the intended target but the man she was having a secret affair with is unintentionally killed by a dying victim of the same company’s products and the lawyer’s case helped the company go scott free.

The season finale is a different case – a manipulative psychiatrist & sexual predator who influences troubled young men who come to see her professionally. She is having an affair with one young man and when a new one enters her life she has to chose between them. The older one kills the younger and is made to commit suicide by the doctor. Angela & Oscar find out that it’s the doc who is the real criminal and she is killed by Angie as she points a gun to shoot her. Really good show and I can’t wait for season 2.