Watch Murder Call

TV-MA
1997
2 Seasons
7.1 (506)

Murder Call is an Australian crime drama series that aired from 1997 to 2000. The show explores the lives of a group of detectives and forensic experts who work together to solve various homicide cases in the city of Sydney. The show's lead character is Tessa Vance (Lucy Bell), a strong-willed and intelligent detective who partners up with her colleague, Steve Hayden (Peter Mochrie), to investigate murders. Together, they navigate through complex cases, using their sharp instincts and experience to solve crimes and bring justice to the victims and their families.

Apart from Tessa and Steve, other recurring characters on the show include Peter Faithful (Geoff Morrell), the head of the forensic team, and Detective Sergeant Lance Valdez (Mark Hembrow), who frequently works with the duo to solve murders.

The show's strong point lies in its storytelling and character development. Each episode presents a unique mystery, with intricate plot lines and clues that keep viewers engaged until the very end. The characters are well-rounded, with their own personal struggles and backstories that add depth to their personalities and motivations.

The show also places a heavy emphasis on forensics and technology in solving crimes, presenting a realistic portrayal of police work in the late 90s. The inclusion of new forensic techniques and equipment adds an extra element of excitement to the investigation process, as the detectives and forensic team work together to piece together evidence and build a case against the culprit.

Another noteworthy aspect of Murder Call is its use of location and cinematography. Each episode is shot entirely on location in various parts of Sydney, providing a vibrant and authentic backdrop for the series. The camera work is also masterfully done, with dynamic camera angles and close-ups that help to build tension and convey the emotions of the characters.

The show has received critical acclaim for its strong writing, direction, and performances from its cast. Lucy Bell, in particular, has been praised for her portrayal of Tessa Vance, a complex and multifaceted character who struggles to balance her personal and professional life. Peter Mochrie also delivers a solid performance as Steve Hayden, providing a grounded and reliable counterpart to Tessa's impulsive nature.

In summary, Murder Call is a gripping crime drama that expertly weaves together suspenseful storytelling, complex characters, and realistic police work. With its strong cast, engaging mysteries, and beautiful cinematography, it remains a beloved classic in Australian television.

Murder Call is a series that ran for 2 seasons (55 episodes) between August 10, 1997 and on

Filter by Source

Free Subscription

Amazon Prime Tubi TV

Do you have Prime Video?

What are you waiting for?

Nice! Browse Prime Video with Yidio.

Ad Info

Seasons

2 1

32. Bone Dead

February 9, 1999

Deep in the foundation excavations, a fossil tooth has been found. A team of palaeontologists, led by legendary palaeontologist Dr Charlie Minogue, sift the clay in the hope of uncovering more clues. Then one morning the team finds a quantity of fresh bones in the trench. Someone has murdered Dr Minogue, sandblasted the flesh off his bones and buried them as some sort of macabre joke.

31. Done to Death

February 2, 1999

The cleaner in a beauty salon is greeted by a putrid smell when he opens up on Monday morning. The smell is traced to one of the tanning booths, inside which the cleaner makes the gruesome discovery of a naked woman hanging, handcuffed, with her flesh burnt almost beyond recognition. The victim has been literally cooked to death by the UV lights for more than thirty-six hours.

30. House of Spirits

January 26, 1999

When medium and psychic, Quentin Warburton, is shot by a floating gun, Tessa and Steve are told by witnesses that the killer was Arthur Pitman. Unfortunately, Arthur has been dead for three years. In order to unravel the mystery surrounding Warburton's death, Tessa and Steve have to work out how Warburton convinced the Pitman family that Arthur returned in spirit to kill him.

29. Absent Friends

January 19, 1999

Tessa hasn't seen her high school friends in many years and attends a reunion. The last thing they did together was pose for a series of macabre photos, a representation of their deaths. Poppy plans to stage a recreation of her photograph, but her plan backfires and she is stabbed through the heart and left to die. Tessa helps the investigation, but Thorne takes her off the case.

28. Mix 'N' Match

January 12, 1999

The Dean of Studies is murdered and gruesomely displayed on a table in the canteen like some Frankenstein monster. Only the "monster's" head belongs to the torso. The limbs are from four other corpses. The murderer has left a series of cryptic clues in the form of place settings at the gruesome "dinner table". Each setting has a name card. Possible suspects or could one be the killer?

27. Still Life

January 5, 1999

Controversial artist Vincent Osborne exhibits his artwork "The Seven Deadly Sins" - body parts moulded in plaster - in the Nossiter Gallery. When a fellow artist, drunken painter France Garcia makes an emotional protest "art is dead", Osborne's central exhibit crashes to the floor and Osborne or at least, his severed head and hands, are discovered inside his own work of art.

26. Evil Chances

December 29, 1998

A sports mistress is found impaled by a garden fork, through her neck. The number of suspects is quickly narrowed down to the only five people present at the school. Tessa and Steve are puzzled by the apparent lack of motive for the murder. When another person appears to narrowly escape a similar fate, they wonder - is someone killing by chance?

25. Dead Offerings

December 22, 1998

A young blind man is found dead in a swimming pool and one of his eyes has been removed and placed on a pile of clothes - exactly mimicking a case that was solved 6 years earlier, a case Tootsie recently described in one of her lectures to the Forensic Society. Horrified Tootsie realises this is the third time her lectures have been used as a blueprint for murder.

24. Scent of Evil

December 15, 1998

Beautiful model, Samantha Reading, is lured to a secret garden, where she expects to meet her lover, only to find death waiting for her. Tessa and Steve investigate the gruesome murder. The victim has been mauled to death by two vicious dogs. They trace the woman's car to her agent Jack Turkington and discover that the dogs were stolen months ago from the victim's best friend, Andrea Thatcher.

23. Last Act

December 8, 1998

When a young mime artist collapses and dies while busking, it's thought to be the result of a drug overdose. However, during the autopsy, Tootsie discovers that man was poisoned by lantana berries mixed into a salad. The Detectives' only lead is an address which leads to a warehouse, where Tessa and Steve find that all four inhabitants hold grudges of varying degrees towards the deceased.

22. Paid in Full

December 1, 1998

Lindsay Frampton, a fairground king and games arcade millionaire, liked his simple pleasures. Friday night was pizza night - a pizza best enjoyed in his bubbling spa. But this Friday night Supreme with extra pineapple goes cold. The millionaire is found face up in the spa, a fat wad of one hundred dollar notes jammed in his mouth as a grim last message from his murderer.

21. Tongue Tied

November 24, 1998

Fifteen years ago, Malcolm Thorne joined the Homicide Squad and the first major case he was assigned to involved three murders. The victims were slashed almost beyond recognition and their tongues were cut out. The murderer was never caught. Now another body has been found. The wounds are similar, so the removal of the tongue. Thorne experiences a strong sense of d

20. Grave Matters

November 17, 1998

A small funeral cortege moves along the avenue of crypts in a cemetery. A woman is to be interred, but an unpleasant surprise awaits us when the crypt is opened. It is already occupied by a stinking corpse. Nobody seems to know how the body came to be here, and a week has elapsed since the murder, giving the killer plenty of time to cover his or her tracks.

19. A Stab in the Dark

November 10, 1998

Sebastian Tombs is celebrating the sale of the film rights of his latest horror novel. Sebastian "lives" his genre, from the decor in his apartment, to his belief in the beneficial effects of black humour. His guests are forced to listen, in darkness, to taped readings of the latest chapter of his work. After such a reading, the lights come up, and Sebastian is lying dead, a knife in his back.

18. Cut and Dried

November 3, 1998

A customer brings his dead rat to a taxidermy store to have it stuffed but it's unlikely it'll be a successful venture given that something is bleeding on it while it sits on the counter. That "something" is a severed head, mounted on a backboard and hung about the store's counter. Tessa and Steve find that nothing is as it seems in trying to solve the murder.

17. Booming Business

October 27, 1998

Brian Hart is on a train met by a woman he obviously knows. An argument follows. She leaves as his wife calls him on the mobile phone. Moments later Brian Hart is killed when a letter bomb concealed in a card explodes. Was Brian Hart having an affair? Had his wife found out about? Nothing is what it seems as Steve and Tessa begin to uncover the web of intrigue surrounding this horrific death.

16. Cold Comfort

October 20, 1998

The body of a young woman is delivered to the morgue. Tootsie arrives shortly afterwards to discover the body is missing and her new morgue clerk, Ziggy Felden, has been murdered. A foreign set of prints in Ziggy's office is their only lead until the missing body of the girl turns up in the boot of Tootsie's car. Who stole then returned the body of the girl and why?

15. Hide & Seek

October 13, 1998

When Cyril Crease, an elderly worker at Bilby Leather Factory is found dead, mangled beyond all recognition, inside a paddle drum at his workplace, it is initially thought to be an unfortunate accident. But when his skull plate is found dented, and when a hammer is found that matches that dent, then murder is very firmly placed on the agenda.

14. Blowing the Whistle

October 6, 1998

When a referee of a women's fame of soccer is murdered in full view of a hundred people, our Detectives are puzzled when they have no eye-witnesses. The only witness turns out to be the video footage shot by Dee. After examinations of the video, Tessa realises it's not necessarily what is happening in the foreground, but the lies being played out in the grainy background.

13. Instrument of Death

September 29, 1998

The Klein String Quartet is a hotbed of passions and hatreds. When it's founder and first violinist, Hugo Klein is found macabrely murdered, the other three members come under Steve and Tessa's spotlight, betraying their own animosities towards Hugo and each other. There appears to be no shortage of motive amongst this small group of intense and volatile personalities.

12. Dared to Death

September 22, 1998

Jerome Soeteman leaps from the roof of his apartment building, the 1812 Overture playing loudly as he does so. He is found hanging in a harness outside the window of his apartment. Dead. Is it suicide? Accident? Or murder? To complete the mystery, Soeteman was shot through the head and the murder weapon was an antique Russian military pistol.

11. Something Fishy

September 15, 1998

Two bodies joined together in death, skewered to the wall by a spear from a speargun. James Holland and Pauline Hook, business partners in life. Or was there something more than just business that bound these two together? Very fishy indeed.

10. A Dress to Die For

September 8, 1998

When the detectives attend the extravagant costume hire shop "Dresses to Die For", they find the shop's young security guard/delivery boy, Reuben O'Rouke, dead. Bizarrely, he has been propped inside an elaborate costume. Is it a misadventure, a crime of passion, or a none-too-subtle message to the costume shop's proprietors to withdraw from the upcoming Frock of the Year contest?

9. Fatal Charm

September 1, 1998

In the back streets of the city the first rays of sunlight are fighting their way into the gloom, where a charred and twisted body is testimony to a fatal Friday night. It's Melissa Hindwood. Tessa and Steve break the news to her parents. As far as they are concerned their daughter should have been at their exclusive tennis club. The detectives soon discover Melissa led another life.

8. A Blow to the Heart

August 25, 1998

Professor Richard Worthington is panicked when his assistant, Carl Tatum, is locked inside a vault. Worthington's secretary, the keeper of the combination to the vault, is summoned immediately, but only minutes later she is found kneeling beside the dead body of Worthington - who has been fatally wounded by a single blow from a screwdriver.

7. A View to Kill

August 18, 1998

A sneak preview of a new exhibition at the "Maritime Historical & Conservation Museum" ends with a bizarre twist when the curator is found dead in one of the boat's. Tessa and Steve investigate the death of Ezekial Hartman and soon realise that his public face as a knowledgeable, hides a private life littered with sexual indiscretions and money troubles.

6. Menu for Murder

August 11, 1998

El Mar, seafood restaurant. Nothing special about it, except that tonight, a well-known food writer Roberta McKinnon is dining here. And except that tonight, Roberta McKinnon dies. There is no obvious signs of foul play. It's just that the critic's companion has cried "murder", on the strength of a threatening note she received that morning. Trouble is, the note was just one of many.

5. Murder in Reverse

August 4, 1998

The body of Eva Blanfield is found in a local dump. When they inform her husband, he claims she had been the victim of a kidnapping. The ransom note threatened to kill her if he contacted the police. He is distraught as he has paid the money, but his wife is dead. Meanwhile, another kidnapping victim Penny Whittaker was released once the ransom was paid. Why release one victim and not the other?

4. Dead Fall

July 28, 1998

Tessa and Steve respond to a murder call only to find no body, no crime scene and they, they suppose, no murder; until they discover that the eye witness is their boss, Inspector Malcolm Thorne. Thorne is convinced he witnessed a man being pushed off the roof of a building, but he is perplexed as the rest of them when no evidence of a crime can be found.

3. Death Down Market

July 21, 1998

When Faith Pecci is found bludgeoned to death and hanging upside down in the living room of her house, it's the local gang who are immediately blamed. The victim's sister Rose however believes her sister's ex-husband is the killer Tessa and Steve are searching for. Who did kill Faith Pecci? Was it a gang or the ex-husband? Or is the killer far more devious than either of these?

2. Bad Business

July 14, 1998

A shop assistant opens up for the day in "O'Leary's Dry Cleaners" and lets in the first day's customer. But there is more hanging on the rack than the coats and evening wear today - namely one very dead dry cleaning owner/operator, Irene O'Leary. It looks that it's a simple case of robbery ending in murder, but as the details unfold, it appears that there is much more to this case.

1. Many Unhappy Returns

July 7, 1998

A fiftieth birthday party of Gerard Gault turns out to be more than anyone bargained for when he is discovered dead amongst his cactus collection the next morning. A simple heart attack? That's what the death certificate says but an anonymous caller is making it clear that some doubt surrounds that diagnosis ... the caller believes Gerard Gault was murdered.

Description

Where to Watch Murder Call

Murder Call is available for streaming on the website, both individual episodes and full seasons. You can also watch Murder Call on demand at Amazon Prime and Tubi TV.