murder she wrote - classic or dud?

I love the William Windon character in Cabot Cove ("JessicAH!!!") but the big thing I remember about this show is how the endings were either "my friend's name is cleared and I'm happy!" freeze-frames of her face or a "my friend actually committed the murder and I'm very sad" face.

"i was just baking this layered cake and i... layers! oh james i think i just worked out who killed julie and how they burried her..."

Shows like these that I love:

Columbo
Quincy
Diagnosis Murder

I've recently done the Meltzer on the following ("if you think long and hard enough about all that legitimacy then you can turn it into nice old usable illegitimacy" paraphrase):

Starsky & Hutch
Magnum

Which means I have more viable watching options now.

That I hate:

Murder She Wrote
Doctors
Petrocelli

That I'm OK with:

CHiPS

Still struggle to get my head around the fact that Angela Lansbury is George Lansbury's daughter.

rockford files

and petrocelli rules! also who was that polak guy, baranek or something

Mind you, it's really pretty rubbish. But I do like a bit of Dick.

I like Monk a great deal. The star actor is great, and it's clever stuff.

It may be possible that Bert Convy guest-starred in every show mentioned in this thread.

CLASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSIC

For some reason when I was 12 I used to watch MSW all the time. Now I don't think I could sit through more than ten minutes - the plots move slower than Monk.

Cabot Cove sacres the fuck out of me. There's like, what, 300 people in town and somebdoy gets whacked every week.

So in other words, CLASSIC when there were only four TV channels and no Internet, DUD-ISH now I can sit around downloading pr0n all day.

Cabot Cove sacres the fuck out of me. There's like, what, 300 people in town and somebdoy gets whacked every week.

Yeah, it's like Midsomer.

haha but jessica travels, too! so the murders aren't all in cabot cove

Mandy Moore's playing Jessica Fletcher in the M. Night Shyamalan movie.

never saw a single episode

haha but jessica travels, too! so the murders aren't all in cabot cove

I wonder why the police never notice that? "Lieutenant, there's been a murder here in usually crime free <insert location here>, but luckily crime writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher is here! She always just happens to turn up when there's been a murder. Hey wait a minute..."

Remember the episode with Harvey Feinstein? He played a cartoonist. His "friend" was the murderer.

I really really really wished they had ended this series by outing Angela Lansbury as a psycho serial killer who went around offing people and then framing innocents using her mystery-writin' skills.

alas.

haha but jessica travels, too! so the murders aren't all in cabot cove

I wonder why the police never notice that? "Lieutenant, there's been a murder here in usually crime free <insert location here>, but luckily crime writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher is here! She always just happens to turn up when there's been a murder. Hey wait a minute..."

-- snoball, Friday, 9 November 2007 17:05 (1 hour ago) Link

i know! they never ask for her help, she's just always there. "well, this could be a murder..."

It's sort of like the way Columbo spends an entire episode irritiating the person who just happens to turn out to be the murderer. Maybe he sees the pre-title sequence or something. Or if it's an episode with Robert Culp as guest star just arrest Robert Culp. I also like the way the theme music at the end of the show is simply called "Mystery Movie Theme"!

I always hated the "reveal" ending scenes where she would calmly explain to the killer exactly how s/he did it - killer either breaks down and confesses and she lends a sympathetic "aw, well time to go to jail" expression, or killer tries to take out Jessica only to be stopped by the local cop who she just happens to have brought along who's been hiding in the shadows listening to the killer implicate themselves.

awful.

aww it's not awful it's just the formula! i know, it's incredibly quaint and uneblievable

she was incredibly nice to C-list actors who needed dough.

GUYS SHE HAS A TYPEWRITER: CLASSIC.

Old lady sleuths: generally have some classic.

ya

"I used my k-tog knit/purl shills to prove the golden ratio was used by this killer and therefore the murder weapon must be placed in the first...first...second..third...fifth...EIGHTH empty tile in his wall."

there were a lotta typewriters around when MSW began. I had one!

so did Slap Maxwell

You'd think that a prospective murderer would plan ahead and murder Jessica Fletcher first, and then the person they actually intended to murder second?

Prospective Murderer: "I'm gonna kill that sonofabitch that ripped me off. But first I'd better kill Jessica Fletcher. And Columbo... And that Belgian guy with the twirly mustache... And the guy who wears the funny hat and smokes a pipe, what's his name? Oh yeah, John Holmes..."

DONT FUK WID MA HOMIES

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/72/MurderSheWrote_Cast.jpg/300px-MurderSheWrote_Cast.jpg

http://jesmaine.tripod.com/images/image.bookcover5.jpg

i was watching this the other night with a brit. he called her a bad actress which i was like, don't say that

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ref=pe_63660_17692720_pe_07/?ASIN=B003ZJ0POO

contain your excitement people!

she lends a sympathetic "aw, well time to go to jail" expression

lol -- yes

there's a film of this set in ireland, with gardai and leprechauns etc. i woke up one day after a heavy e session in 2005 and it was on tv. almost wept with joy at its existence.

She put it best in a 1985 New York Times interview: “Mostly, I've played very spectacular bitches”.

Hallmark runs a mini marathon every Saturday and Sunday. Best part of waking up.

http://i.imgur.com/z2aocJY.gif

A lovely read.

What really drew me to the show, however, was Jessica herself. Brilliantly embodied by Lansbury, she is a sassy, smart and funny older woman who — despite not knowing how to drive — is totally independent. As she travels the world, she seems as comfortable in Cairo as she does back home in Maine. While she has many admirers, she doesn’t have any interest in moving on from her dead husband Frank. She has no children. This is not as sad as it sounds; she’s genuinely happy with life.

Her contentment without kids made me feel more secure about my own choice to not become a parent. When it comes up in conversation, I’m often told I will regret the decision, and some wonder who will take care of me when I am older. But Jessica, who seemed to have an abundance of friends and extended family, showed me that being a senior woman doesn’t mean that you will be alone in the world. Setting aside the dead bodies and the half-serious fan theories imagining her as the real killer in each case, she might be the healthiest, most stable character I have ever seen on television.

All that and she met Magnum and was able to resist his charms.

That reminds me how great Lansbury was in the « Murder on the Nile » movie !

there's a youtuber called Pushing Up Roses who recaps some 80s and 90s shows including Murder She Wrote. I liked her video on the VR episode.

there are entire episodes of MSW on youtube, it's so great

my theory of this show -- based on the lighting as much as the plots and the casts -- is that jessica fletcher is in hell

lol
this is one of my favoriet shows of all time i watch it all. the. time

Jessica Fletcher is in hell.

Cabot Cove is the waiting room.

i have a Cabot Cove tshirt!

if Jessica is in hell, then she must be the devil

https://media1.giphy.com/media/eWUi7JIBsWFeE/source.gif

Did y'all know that there were four MSW television movies made after the fact? I stumbled across a DVD collection a while back, but I haven't watched any of them yet.

Whenever I see the covers of 'Siamese Dream' or 'Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness' all I can think of the Murder, She Wrote title card. It's a very distinctive font that I haven't seen anyplace else.

Knight Rider had it, kinda

Clearly a font of a certain time and place

a friend of mine had a rather sheltered upbringing but they watched this show a lot as a kid. as a result, they believed that being an adult involved a regular and ordinary risk of being murdered.

Did y'all know that there were four MSW television movies made after the fact? I stumbled across a DVD collection a while back, but I haven't watched any of them yet.

― Maria Edgelord (cryptosicko), Sunday, January 26, 2020 1:28 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i have them all

my god George Clooney and his mullet are in an early episode

Jessica Fletcher is in hell.

Cabot Cove is the waiting room.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 24, 2020 12:02 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

i have a Cabot Cove tshirt!

― surm, Friday, January 24, 202

I always hated the "reveal" ending scenes where she would calmly explain to the killer exactly how s/he did it - killer either breaks down and confesses and she lends a sympathetic "aw, well time to go to jail" expression, or killer tries to take out Jessica only to be stopped by the local cop who she just happens to have brought along who's been hiding in the shadows listening to the killer implicate themselves.

awful.

― Shakey Mo Collier

lol

https://i.imgur.com/S1ecece.jpg

otm

been laughing at this all morning:

JESSICA:
Looking for this? (She holds up an earring)

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE:
Jessica! No, I was just… I thought I heard a dog, in the bin.

JESSICA:
I’m afraid it’s over, Someone’s Wife. You killed Desperate for basically the same mundane, practical reason as one of the male suspects, but you didn’t get much screen time so it still seems like a surprise. I found your earring at the crime scene, and when I give it to the police I’m sure they’ll prove it was yours.

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE:
Not if I happen to have a gun on me and draw it now, honestly planning to kill an old lady over some fairly flimsy evidence but for some reason wanting to warn her first!

POLICE IDIOT:
(Emerging from the shadows) Drop it, Someone’s Wife!

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE:
Oh for God’s sake. Why do you let her do these things as a weird piece of theatre?

POLICE IDIOT:
Her chain of evidence is always hopelessly weak, so we just have to hope you’ll either kill her or confess.

JESSICA:
It’s true. I have no reason to mention this beyond simple smarm now, but I never found any earring.

haha irl lol

who wrote it?