How to Relax, With Gardening and Murder

There’s a category of television that I tend to discuss with my friend Kate (@kateduguid): the genre of absolutely no-stakes TV. There are no competitions (even over cupcakes), no shouting, no emotional roller coasters. This type of TV functions more like a lazy river, carrying you away from a day of stress, pain and pandemic into the merciful, blissful world of gardening or people (often British people) solving murders, or both.

Murder, you say, relaxing? Well, yes. Wait and see. To help you choose, I’ve given rough ratios of gardening to death.

Rosemary and Thyme (Prime)
50% gardening, 50% death
Two gardening experts – Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme – are called to various locations to solve plant troubles, like a blood-red resin oozing from trees or patches of lawn that just won’t grow. Kate loves it “because they are gardeners and just happen to dig up a dead body every time,” and “whenever they go to do a gardening job they sleep at the place they’re working in single beds in the same room,” which makes it “very cozy.” The show is cozy, murders aren’t gruesome, and our heroes always solve the case with a little elbow grease and two green thumbs.

Love Your Garden (Prime)
90% gardening, 7% heartwarming stories, 3% death
I could watch this show forever, which is good, because each episode feels like a century. Celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh visits deserving households and revamps their backyards, turning humble plots into gorgeous tumbles of flowers and shrubs with his team. The family stories are often very moving (this is where the death comes in) and the joy palpable. It’s not actually that exciting to watch someone else garden, but it is awfully calming.

All Creatures Great and Small (PBS)
10% gardening, 85% animal husbandry, 5% death (mostly animals)
Follow the gentle adventures of a country vet, dedicated to the people and animals of the Yorkshire Dales. Kate loves it because “there are very good descriptions of hearty Yorkshire meals,” as well as a particularly beautiful story about a man “whose dog died, who had been his only companion since his wife died, and instead of mourning the dog he celebrates his life by smoking a very, very old cigar with the vet on a hill.” That’s really the spirit of the show. I tend to call it “Big Animal, Small Animal” because I can’t remember its name, but whatever you call it, it’ll soothe what ails you.

Agatha Raisin, Season One, Episode Four: "The Potted Gardener"(Prime)
30% gardening, 70% death
A city slicker moves to an idyllic but murder-prone village. Regrettably, only one episode of this preposterously named series (adapted from books of the same name) features a garden. Watch that one.

Bonus show:

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (Prime)
45% death, 5% gardening, 50% fashion
She’s Australian, not British, and she solves murders. And while there are some lovely shots of flowers winding their way through 1920s Melbourne, the real distraction is Phryne Fisher’s fashion, which consists of the finest satin drop-waist dresses on television and very serious hats. The crimes in this show are slightly more disturbing, so it’s not a perfectly zenned out experience. But the style is to die for.