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In “Coroner,” the pixie-cut Cooper partners with detective Donovan McAvoy (Roger Cross) to investigate suspicious deaths. In their first assignment together, the premiere “Black Dog,” they come upon two supposed suicides in a juvenile detention center. The deceased teens were supposed to participate in a performance of Romeo and Juliet, but the symbolism of their joint deaths feels too convenient to Cooper. During the second episode, “The Bunny,” the pair are called to a luxury high-rise where a dead man lies naked on his bathroom floor, his body bloodied by his killer gouging him with shards of glass. 

The fiery Cooper and the calm, cool McAvoy share a perfectly balanced chemistry. When McAvoy comes upon Cooper crying in her car, as a lark, he sings during their drive together to calm her. McAvoy also allows for Cooper’s quirks (when coming upon a dead body she gently places her hand on the deceased’s head and whispers a prayer). Conversely, when a witness openly flirts with McAvoy, Cooper jokingly chides him for reciprocating. 

The pair’s cases are neither convoluted nor interesting. Instead, the overly simplistic mysteries exist in the background to Cooper’s rocky personal life. Still reeling from the death of her husband, her house is up for foreclosure, and her son is close to discovering some ugly truths about his dad. When called to investigate the death of an old woman, she crosses paths with a new romantic partner in Liam (Eric Bruneau), a landscaper to the deceased woman, and an Iraq war veteran living in a treehouse. 

Both Liam and Cooper suffer from some form of mental illness, the show’s most prevalent theme. Addled with PTSD, when Cooper asks Liam what he did during the war, he bluntly answers, “I killed people.” Meanwhile Cooper regularly visits a psychiatrist, Dr. Sharma (Saad Siddiqui), and copes with her anxiety by popping anti-anxiety pills. Demonstrating an incredible aptitude for her job through her perceptive instincts, her medicine presents the only option for her to thrive. “Coroner” goes one step further than “House” by actualizing her anxiety. Cooper often sees visions of a black dog when around dead people. Winston Churchill often referred to his depression as the “black dog,” and one might surmise the visual reference springs from him. Swan delicately presents Cooper’s moments of near-crippling worry, whether by the hesitancy she displays when walking into a crime scene or her anger when someone subverts the truth. 

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