beachorchid800 Motive is a very special treat. I love how instead of figuring out "who dunnit" the show is based on "why they dunnit." It's such a great twist to try to come up with the motive. A show giving you the victim and the killer right up front is really turning the tables. You have to think in a slightly different way. It's a great concept that works. Sometimes murder mysteries are easy to figure out and very boiler plate. In Motive the acting is excellent. The stories are well thought out and don't follow a cookie cutter format. I look forward to every episode. I hope this show goes on for many seasons because quality TV is so very hard to find. This show is a gem! I highly recommend it!

jfb333 I really like this show, but I only watch it recorded on DVD because sometimes I have to watch it 3 times to "get" all of it. Critically important plot points are sloughed over with unintelligible dialog. That, on top of non-linear timeline techniques with no SUPERs make things very hard to follow.Having said that, I am still a big fan because the basic premise of the show is excellent. Too many TV dramas focus on carnage and action and good guys without explaining WHY the bad guys did what they did. This show makes the WHY the focal point and does it with good storytelling.Recommended, but record it. If you watch it "live" you won't get all of it.

kols Quirky has been in now for quite some time - lately Perception, The Neighbors and Suburgatory, Fairly Legal, Person of Interest, How to Live With Your Parents - all quite successful and, now, from Canada, Motive.Premise is dangerous for two reasons: many cop show fans (as demonstrated by some of the reviews) watch for the mystery and its solution, period. That decimates Motives' potential fan base.Second reason - what the hell do you do with the rest of the 46 minutes, once victim and perp are exposed? You're forced to focus on character interaction and, in that respect, Motive excels. Perkypops' review nails it for me.Kristen Lehman, alone, is worth my 9 stars (actually 10, doesn't get any better) and she gets strong assists from Louis Ferreira and Lauren Holly as well as the rest of the ensemble.Flaws, there are a few (actually a few more than a few) arising from trying to deal with the premise but the strength of the ensemble overwhelms them. It's just plain fun to watch these characters interact.Finally I'll return to a personal tonic: review the show. Many of the negative reviews don't and I particularly note the 'Columbo' comparison. Loved Peter Falk and occasionally enjoyed an episode but wasn't a fan. Too Hollywood, too Desi-Lu like, too just plain blah! Comparing Columbo to Motive is like comparing Cheers to The Love Boat.Kinda, what?

barrywilliams993 I just watched "Crimes of Passion". Meh . . .That's all I can muster for this "twisted" cop show where we find out the killer and the victim first thing and have to wait for the motive. There is where the problem is for me. You see, the motive comes in too early so the last 10 minutes of the show are a drag. I mean, the suspense is gone.Based on that episode and the poor reviews the show is getting, I predict that ABC will be looking for something else for this time slot before the summer is over. There was a glaring plot hole in this episode for me. The killer uses the boyfriend's car to murder the girl. The cops find this out early on but the boyfriend seems to be unaware of the death of the girlfriend so not really viable as the killer. However, the cops never pull the security footage from the garage. If they had, we'd have gotten the motive even sooner and would've needed to sit through even more boring "who cares".No thanks. I'll watch reruns of Columbo. Hey! There's an idea! What about a remake of that gem? Now, who to cast as Columbo . . .