Detective Lt. Joe Kenda is the calmest man on TV — bar none.
And that was true even when the Colorado Springs detective was putting vicious, murderers behind bars.
If you’re a fan of murder procedurals, whether it’s “Prime Suspect” or “NCIS,” you know how scripted murder investigations go.
Investigation Discovery has gone one step further — or maybe backward — and dragged this detective out of retirement to tell his real procedural stories for “Homicide Hunter.”
Kenda is a strange guy, and listening to him is like hearing a great storyteller of the Will Rogers ilk weave a tale — if Rogers had told tales of murder, that is.
And we’re not talking one murder. During his tenure, Kenda and his team solved (yes!) 387 murders. Who knew people in Colorado were that murderous?
Anyway, unlike other true-crime shows, Kenda just sits there and tells stories in a complete deadpan. I mean, the guy’s talking murder, and yet his voice never betrays emotion — even when he’s repeating an interrogation in a singsong voice saying, “Well, Anthony, Lorraine is dead, and you made her that way … so don’t lie to me.”
Since watching Kenda tell his stories in that deadpan, slowww country way might be annoying after a while (especially to New Yorkers who want the facts, ma’am, just the facts in a New York minute), his tales are interspersed with interviews with victims’ family, cops who worked the cases with him and the DAs involved.
Of course, there are also the usual dopey reinactments. But it’s Kenda who makes the show. At first it’s like, what’s up with this guy with the bad rug — and then you become riveted by what he’s saying, instead. I mean, the man solved 387 murders!
“Homicide Hunter” is similar to what Joe Kenda says about murder investigations.
“You want to get my attention? You just got it.”