The unexpected return of Valerie Cherish in The Comeback has been one of the true highlights of this year’s spring TV. The beloved and very real docuseries, which follows a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Cherish’s most recent multi-cam sitcom, How’s That?, is just as stellar as it’s always been. Sadly, the same has not been true for the show at its center. Cherish plays a kooky B&B owner whose establishment is falling apart on top of her, and How’s That?’s milquetoast sense of humor is no doubt due in part to its well-documented AI authorship. But the primary draw of How’s That?, as well as the docuseries about its creation, is always Cherish herself.
While viewers wait and hope that How’s That? will find its footing so Cherish can have a long-term home on TV again, the comparatively underwhelming debut is also an opportunity. It’s a perfect time to catch up on Cherish’s broader television filmography, some of which remains criminally underappreciated. There’s more than just her viral, catastrophic run on The Traitors! There’s been an uptick of interest in her original breakout series, I’m It!, and the internet is full of Cherish Heads with endless opinions on Room and Bored and Seeing Red. But as of now, there’s been very little attention paid to a more recent Cherish gem lurking in the depths of the streaming archives, just waiting to become a cult classic: her delightful cozy mystery series, Mrs. Hatt.
Reminiscent of classic whodunits like Murder, She Wrote, Rosemary & Thyme, Murdoch Mysteries, and Father Brown, as well as the mid-2000s-era USA “blue sky” shows like White Collar and Royal Pains, Mrs. Hatt ran for two seasons on Epix but deserved so much more. The series features Cherish as a part-time gardener who solves crimes with the help of her husband, an ex–police chief. Known for her love of all kinds of hats but most especially practical, sun-blocking headgear to protect her while out in the garden, Mrs. Hatt spends her time placidly tending to her dahlias while stumbling across an implausible number of mysteries buried just under the surface of her small New England town. The show’s tagline, “What will she dig up?,” is both descriptive and a bit of a joke itself — on Mrs. Hatt, there’s always some new body to be discovered.
Episode six of The Comeback documents Cherish rewatching one of the best episodes of Mrs. Hatt’s too-short run, in which Mrs. Hatt realizes there’s something wrong with her neighbor Charlie’s hydrangeas. Played by the inimitable Paul Dooley, Charlie stares in dismay while Mrs. Hatt lays out the problems of the case: “My hydrangeas across the street grow so high, and your and Nelly’s here are way lower,” Mrs. Hatt tells him with typical, unflappable calm. “I think these have been replanted recently. Which makes me question: What’s buried underneath there?” Then Mrs. Hatt drops the hammer. “Question two: Where is Nelly?”
Shows like Mrs. Hatt rarely find the kind of critical acclaim that’s so often slathered onto grim male dramas full of weeping and unending cycles of trauma, and it’s a shame. It’s easy to point to big star-driven series like Task or Apple TV’s Down Cemetery Road as the TV defining our current moment. Meanwhile, series like Ludwig, Mrs. Sidhu Investigates, Vera, Shetland, and, yes, Mrs. Hatt are perfectly happy to meet viewers where they are without reinventing the wheel. They’re full of comforting crime rhythms and humane portraits of people struggling for justice and redemption and compassion in a world full of cruelty and avarice.
At another time, in another TV context, Mrs. Hatt could have run for at least five 20-episode seasons. The critical response was muted at the time, but more than one TV critic I know considers the special-edition Mrs. Hatt baseball cap that circulated in Epix press boxes from the time to be among their most prized possessions. (Unlike access to the Epix service itself, a thing no one seemed to want or know how to obtain, which Cherish herself has acknowledged.) But outside of the BritBox and Acorn spheres, streaming platforms have struggled to find viewership for Mrs. Hatt–style procedural mysteries, especially those without the promise of multiple seasons available for long-term binge-viewing. Revivals and unexpected renewals are not unheard-of on TV these days — The Comeback itself is proof that some series can remain long dormant and then pop back into our lives just when we need them most. There’s no reason not to hope that Mrs. Hatt might one day get the belated third season it so badly deserves. Stranger things have happened!
The best hope we have for Mrs. Hatt’s future is that Cherish herself seems to be particularly attached to the project. Her recent public appearances have been full of Mrs. Hatt reminders, including one scene from The Comeback where she reminds a costume designer that her character in How’s That? should not be wearing a hat — that’s Mrs. Hatt’s territory. So if you haven’t had the opportunity, consider a deep dive on Mrs. Hatt or the French series it was adapted from, Madame Chapeau. As Cherish herself says, “People would’ve liked it!”
