I've seen all Brokenwood episodes up to this one, and I do like the show. But the season 7 opener is a letdown.
The good: It starts great, with a gruesome locked-room murder. The best part of the plot is the process of zeroing in on the timeline for the crime, with, as usual, everyone apparently having a good alibi for why they could not have done it.
There was good material for Dr. Kadinsky, the pathologist, who is always a colorful character in the series. Also, the surfer / electrician character was well written and well acted.
The bad: the rest of the writing is not up to standard. The show really loses its narrative thread by the middle, and mostly becomes scene after scene of short interviews with various suspects. This can work for one-hour detective shows, but there needs to be a stronger thread to keep interest over 90 minutes.
In other Brokenwood episodes, there is often an attempt to flesh out some local industry or hobby. This one had little more in that regard than tiresome squabbling among TV personalities.
There has been an effort to deepen Detective Sims' character in the past few seasons, but unfortunately this episode has her reverting to the shallow snippiness of the first seasons. Nor was there much of interest to color Mike or Breen.
The scenes of someone watching the gruesome zombie movie go on for way too long for my taste. I understand "Braindead" is supposed to be a classic NZ horror film in real life, but I'm not a fan of the genre, and I really didn't enjoy what seemed like minutes on end of splattery gore.
I'm hoping the rest of the season improves from here.