{"id":18237,"date":"2017-11-04T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T06:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=18237"},"modified":"2017-11-03T23:54:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T05:54:46","slug":"dvd-review-father-dowling-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/dvd-review-father-dowling-season\/","title":{"rendered":"DVD Review: Father Dowling Season Three"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=adamsblog03-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B00ALTQRNO&amp;asins=B00ALTQRNO&amp;linkId=4d2550e96770590e4806d6b273f08563&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=adamsblog03-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B06XX9KY6Q&amp;asins=B06XX9KY6Q&amp;linkId=efee24c10e2e96b0a8f9591db4e91535&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nAfter a TV movie and two partial seasons, ABC gave the Father Dowling Mysteries a regular season of 22 episodes in 1990-91.<\/p>\n<p>The same cast of regulars from Season 2 returned with Father Frank Dowling (Tom Boswell), Sister Steve (Tracy Nelson) investigating mysteries and Father Prestwick (James Stephens) and housekeeper Marie (Mary Wickes) providing comic relief.<\/p>\n<p>The series maintained a pleasant, family friendly voice tone with likable characters. Steve does a lot of undercover work and handles most tasks well, but you don&#8217;t get the impression she&#8217;s unrealistically super competent in everything like during Season One.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the past seasons had episodes that could more rightly be called &#8220;adventures&#8221;\u00a0 than &#8220;mysteries,&#8221; but these are true mysteries. The plots are thought-out but never too intricate.<\/p>\n<p>The one thing I did miss from Season Two was the little touches that made Father Dowling and Sister Steve seem more like a real Catholic priest and nun. Except as discussed below, they don&#8217;t do anything to cut against that idea other than the fact that the two can always run off to investigate a mystery.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite episodes of this season is, &#8220;The Christmas Mystery.&#8221; It&#8217;s a nice mystery with a few suspect twists, but it&#8217;s a fun Christmas treat and there aren&#8217;t enough good Christmas mysteries out there. In, &#8220;The Moving Target Mystery,&#8221; a contract killer comes into Father Dowling&#8217;s confessional and confesses he was hired to kill him. He is backing out because he won&#8217;t kill a priest but somebody else will. It&#8217;s a good set up for a story.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;Fugitive Priest Mystery,&#8221; finds Father Dowling on the run thanks to his evil twin Blaine, and he has to clear his name and find out what Blaine&#8217;s up to. &#8220;The Hard-Boiled Mystery,&#8221; is my favorite episode of the season. Father Dowling goes to have words with a writer who decided to write a story based on Father Dowling. It&#8217;s set during the 1930s with Dowling as a hard-boiled priest-detective. We flash from the present to the hard-boiled detective scenes and they&#8217;re absolutely hilarious.<\/p>\n<p>On the downside,\u00a0 some stories just didn&#8217;t work. After having an angel in Season 2, the writers decided, &#8220;How about having Father Dowling encounter the devil?&#8221; Thus we were given, &#8220;The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Mystery.&#8221; What we get is a Hollywood version of the devil who is defeated by a plot ripped off from, &#8220;The Devil and Daniel Webster.&#8221; The story introduces an older brother for Steve and contradicts a previous season&#8217;s story featuring Steve&#8217;s younger brother. Further, it has the characters acting really out of character. It&#8217;s the worst episode of the series.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Consulting Detective Mystery,&#8221; is a bit of clunker. Father Dowling makes a deduction as to who committed a crime. He&#8217;s wrong, leading to an innocent ex-con losing his job. This leads to Sherlock Holmes appearing in order to restore Father Dowling&#8217;s confidence. It&#8217;s not a great setup and the actor playing Holmes doesn&#8217;t work. It&#8217;s not as bad as, &#8220;The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Mystery,&#8221;\u00a0 but it&#8217;s weak and poorly executed.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the box set is serviceable and fun. Father Dowling was never a big budget show, and it never featured television&#8217;s most clever mystery writers. It was a show you could enjoy with the whole family. Another reviewer described the show as &#8220;cute,&#8221; and I&#8217;ll go with that. This season, in particular, features Father Dowling and Sister Steve working to save a cute zoo monkey framed for murder. It&#8217;s easy viewing with a bit of nostalgia for simpler times thrown into the deal.<\/p>\n<p>Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 1em 0px; color: #444444; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; word-spacing: 0px; white-space: normal; -ms-word-wrap: break-word; box-sizing: border-box; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: #ffffff; text-decoration-color: initial; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial;\"><em>This post contains affiliate links, which means that items purchased from these links may result in a commission being paid to the author of this post at no extra cost to the purchaser.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 1em 0px; color: #444444; text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; word-spacing: 0px; white-space: normal; -ms-word-wrap: break-word; box-sizing: border-box; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: #ffffff; text-decoration-color: initial; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial;\"><em>If<\/em>\u00a0you<em>\u00a0enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B004U8SET2\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=adamsblog03-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B004U8SET2\">automatically to your kindle.\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a TV movie and two partial seasons, ABC gave the Father Dowling Mysteries a regular season of 22 episodes in 1990-91. The same cast of regulars from Season 2 returned with Father Frank Dowling (Tom Boswell), Sister Steve (Tracy Nelson) investigating mysteries and Father Prestwick (James Stephens) and housekeeper Marie (Mary Wickes) providing comic&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[298,123],"tags":[796,1987,138,533,94],"class_list":["post-18237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd-review","category-golden-age-article","tag-dvd-box-set","tag-dvd-review","tag-father-dowling","tag-mixed-review","tag-tv-detectives"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-4K9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18237"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18253,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18237\/revisions\/18253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}