Yes, it’s fun to be a village vicar’s crime-solving wife

Scattered through the English countryside, it seems, are villages suitable for rest, relaxation and murder mysteries.
Cara Horgan (shown here) can verify that. She grew up in one and now works in another, she’s one of the stars of “The Marlow Murder Club,” which starts its second season at 9 p.m. Sunday (Aug. 24) on PBS.
“These small towns exist all over the UK,” Horgan said by Zoom. “And Marlow is quintessentially British.”
It’s a real town of 14,000 that’s been around for about 10 centuries. T.S. Eliot and Percy Shelley wrote poems there; Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein” there and (appropriately) Robert Thorogood is writing his “Marlow Murder Club” novels there.
“Marlow” has the police reluctantly get help from three mismatched women.
Judith (Samantha Bond) is a retired archaeologist with a grand home. Suzie (Jo Martin) is a dog-walker; Becks (Horgan) is in a special position.
“Because she’s the vicar’s wife, she’s trusted,” Horgan said. She’s not above inviting herself in for tea, then snooping for evidence.
And she does it with zeal. “She has a real enthusiasm for solving the cases, because it uses a part of her brain” she’s not using at the vicarage.
Horgan knows the turf. She grew up in a West Sussex town smaller than Marlow, with a businessman dad and a mom who was the next best thing to a vicar’s wife — a hairdresser. “There’s something about doing people’s hair …. You know all of the people; you know all of their business.”
As “quite dramatic” people themselves, she said, her parents didn’t object to show-biz dreams. She did youth shows and has had a packed theater career — including the title role in a modern “Hedda Gabler” and a two-year stint with a theater company that sometimes leapt into unfettered improvisation.
There have been interesting film roles — Alice B. Toklas in the Picasso mini-series, Mary Shelley in “The Romantics,” Zelda in three episodes of “Sandman.” But “Marlow” offers a chance to be part of an ongoing team.
“There’s less of a hierarchy” in British productions, Horgan said. Actors are together at lunch, at the make-up table and beyond.
She can absorb stories from Bond (who plays Robert’s sister in “Downton Abbey” and was Miss Moneypenny in four James Bond films), Martin (the “fugitive Doctor” in “Doctor Who”) and others.
That includes Rita Tushingham, who — 60 years ago — was at the core of the British film surge. At 83, she plays the cantankerous Mrs. Eddingham.
Yes, Horgan, 40, had already seen Tushingham’s films, including one from 1961: “‘A Taste of Honey’ was a huge, seminal film …. She’s still so bubbly and energetic and funny — so funny.”
The first season had a single, four-week mystery. The second has three tales, each going for two weeks; so does the third, now being filmed.
Each season offers Horgan a 12-week burst of small-town living and small-cast bonding. Then it’s back to London for other jobs plus real life.
“I always wake up super early in the morning,” she said, “whether it’s my alarm to go filming or it’s my daughter (age 3) in my ear, telling me she’s hungry.”