  In the Canadian TV series, Murdoch Mysteries, Montreal actor Yannick Bisson portrays Inspector William Murdoch who takes a new, more scientific approach to solving crimes way back in the 1890s.
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Man, those collars are white.
Big and white.
Detective William Murdoch, played by Yannick Bisson, arguably has the most impressive collars in the history of TV (Don Cherry notwithstanding).
And since the excellent Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries, which kicks off its second season tomorrow night on Citytv, is set in Toronto in the 1890s, maintaining the cleanliness of a white collar is no small feat.
"You know what? We talked about that a lot in the beginning," Bisson said with a chuckle.
"There was talk about people's teeth and the collars. Toronto was 'muddy York.' It's still a very muddy city. And the fact that Murdoch has more than three suits is just absolutely ludicrous, too. So there's a lot of stuff like that."
POETIC LICENCE
Ultimately, some of the choices in Murdoch Mysteries came down to poetic licence.
"For me, if you're looking at the same person for 13 hours of television, and all you can look at is that half their teeth are missing, you can end up missing some of the story," Bisson said. "We opted to go as neutral as we could with that kind of stuff, and make the other stuff stand out more."
There actually is a lot of stuff about Murdoch Mysteries that stands out in a really good way.
Murdoch is a young police detective who uses then-radical forensic techniques, like fingerprinting and trace evidence, to solve some of Toronto's most gruesome murders.
His unconventional approach sometimes elicits ridicule from fellow officers and scepticism from his boss, Inspector Brackenreid, played by Thomas Craig.
But the series deftly avoids "Quincy syndrome" (i.e., the tiring proposition in which the main character is always right but his colleagues never catch on to the notion that if he's always right, maybe they should listen to him more often).
Murdoch does have a couple of philosophical allies in pathologist/subtle-love-interest Dr. Julia Ogden (played by Helene Joy) and Constable George Crabtree (played by Jonny Harris).
And by the way, the always memorable Nicholas Campbell guest-stars in the second-season premiere tomorrow night as touring showman Buffalo Bill Cody.
Murdoch Mysteries is part procedural drama, part historical drama, and we grew more and more fond of it as the first season progressed. It's not necessarily something you'd see on American primetime TV -- but seriously, Canadian TV often is at its worst when it tries to mimic American fare.
Rather, Murdoch Mysteries is closer to something you might see on British TV, and we mean that in a complimentary way.
"There's a lot of whimsical stuff and a bit of fantasy, but it touches on some history, accurate stuff, and then you've got the procedural stuff, too," Bisson said.
"What the plots are based on varies. It's not just the crime, or solving the crime. Some of the stories are more about human interest or romance. So it's a tough one to peg down.
ENTERTAINING
"Strictly a procedural? No. But the procedural part of it is kind of the common thread."
The tone of Murdoch Mysteries isn't necessarily heavy, but we admire it for not shying away from some of the realities of life and police work in the 1890s: The physical battering of suspects, racism, homo-phobia, etc.
"It's a fine line, because we tackle that hard stuff, but you have to do it in keeping with the thread of the show," Bisson said. "Also, some of that stuff has been done so much, and it's unpleasant. You have to strike the balance and be entertaining."
Well, Murdoch Mysteries is doing something right, because to our eyes, it is entertaining.
And we're not just saying that because of those big, white collars.
