by Anthony Shaw, 1997.
Starring Keith David, Don Fischer, Harriet Sansom Harris, Mel Harris, Angela Lansbury, Lowell Raven, Richard Riehle, John Vargas.
Rating: 10/10, 3.5/10.
After I saw Disney’s Beauty And The Beast, I was talking to my mother about how much I love Angela Lansbury, and naturally Murder, She Wrote came up. I hadn’t realized it before, but I miss the dickens out of that show. I mean, I always knew I loved it, but I didn’t fully understand how empty my life was without it. Without Cabot Cove and its fifteen or so murders per year, without Jessica Fletcher and her ten vacations per year, each happening to bring her to the right place and time to solve a murder. Without the full profile shots that indicate the entrance of the person who will end up being the murder, without the slightly off-profile shots that indicate the entrance of the person they want us to think will end up being the murder.
Then just a few days later, my mother told me that CBS would be showing a Murder, She Wrote TV movie that very night. Needless to say, I tuned in with great anticipation.
And I was not disappointed. I might have slightly preferred to see a more low-key kind of mystery than the government intrigue spy satellite story I got, but seeing Jessica stumble on to and solve the mystery brought me so much joy and filled my empty soul so well that I could give it no less than a ten for entertainment. My only real complaint is that the opening credits sequence I know and love was missing. Oh, how I wanted to see Angela Lansbury riding her bicycle to the accompaniment of my beloved Murder, She Wrote Opening Theme. Alas!
I would give a brief summary of the plot, or at least the setup of the plot, but just in case someone out there reading can’t figure out the culprit from the first five minutes, or likes to pretend they can’t, I worry about revealing too much (actually, though, for once the story had me in doubt of my initial suspicions just for a moment, and until Jessica explained it all I didn’t quite understand how or why the murderer did it). Plus, the plot, as usual, was so unnecessarily complicated by red herrings and utterly unneeded characters that I don’t actually remember much of what happened.
As always, this edition of Murder, She Wrote was full of "Hey! It’s that guy!" spottings. Check out the guy who loads up the luggage on the train, and the woman in the irritating couple, just as examples (I saw her on Frasier!). And this outing had even more of the ridiculously creepy or eccentric supporting characters than I ever remember from the show. The woman working at the hotel was my favorite, with her Jessica Fletcher obsession. And best of all, this one had perhaps my favorite line of angry denial from the murderer at the end ("I hope your books are more plausible than this!").
Not much more to say, really. It was Murder, She Wrote, no more, no less, and no amount of grandiose plot could (or could even try to) change that. And goddammit, it made my year.
nb: The picture is not from this particular Murder, She Wrote. It's from some episode. Sorry.