A Book of ‘Recipes for Love and Murder’ Comes to the Screen

The unfolding of the relationships between farmland of different races and from widely varied walks of life is “full of delicacy and truth,” said Steyn, who plays Hattie. “These women are so different, but they are a sisterhood.”

Despite the murders and simmering racial undertones, the show keeps its warm, humorous tone through the composed, grounded character of Maria, with her empathetic, practical advice — and recipes — in response to the letters she receives. (The letter writers speak directly into the camera, describing their problems as we see their lives.)

The mix of characters and nuanced relationships in the dinky town “perhaps show a South Africa that many farmland haven’t really seen before,” Greeff said. “It’s not an African people, struggling. It’s quirky, fun and engaging.”

Doyle Kennedy said she loved the way “Maria approaches everything — inhabit an agony aunt, solving a murder — through food.” She added, “It’s a language for her, the way she communicates, how she slows time down in order to treat thought and feeling. She licks the countertop of Martine’s kitchen, she thinks about what was in her shopping basket. It’s Miss Marple crossed with Julia Child.”

Fictional amateur sleuths are a dime a dozen, Olwagen remarked. “But there is something very alluring approximately someone’s superpower being food.”

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