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Reviewspreviews
Murder She Wrote
One of the most admired murder-mystery TV series, Murder She Wrote is guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat for many gripping hours. Although there is a dearth of special features here, the three-DVD box set is enough to provide you with non-stop entertainment.
Highly popular for its entire 12-year run, Angela Lansbury’s portrayal of Mrs Jessica Fletcher, a widow and celebrated mystery writer, may have been an inspiration from her depiction of Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple in the early 1980s. But the cases are original, amazingly conceived and thoroughly enjoyable. Just like Miss Marple, Fletcher lives in Cabot Cove, a small fictional village in Maine but unlike her, she rides a bicycle, types her notes in a pre-computer era and has friends at the right places.
Mrs Fletcher stumbles across a murder in each of the 21 episodes of season one in every setting imaginable but ends up as the first and on most occasions the only person to understand the motive and know the method. The popular show followed a formula where the characters were introduced at first, then their motives were brought in and then the murder.
The pleasure comes from investigating the transgression and deducing the killer along side Jessica who is aided by a list of celebrities as guest stars to help her solve the case. Renowned film and TV actors namely Martin Landau, Peter Graves, Andy Garcia, Joaquin Phoenix (who was 10 years old and went about by as Leaf Phoenix), Jeff Conaway, Jerry Orbach, Leslie Nielsen, Olympian Bruce Jenner, Linda Blair, Caser Romero and Barbara Babcock, all made brief appearances and helped Jessica give the ‘guilty’ verdict in each episode, in her own style.
The murder in all 21 episodes wasn’t as violent and fierce as it is in the TV shows of today. The pre-forensics ‘whodunit’ cases were solved elegantly by Lansbury who received 12 consecutive Emmy Award nominations from 1984 to 1996 (along with four TV movies) but without winning even one. Unknown to many, she was not the first-choice for Mrs Fletcher as the character created by the makers of Colombo (William Link and Richard Levinson) was first offered to and rejected by renowned actresses Jean Stapleton and Doris Day. Their loss was Lansbury’s gain and helped the show become the longest-running mystery show on television.
So go ahead and enjoy Murder She Wrote and investigate homicide like never before.— Omair Alavi
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