Murder, She Wrote

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domino harvey
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Re: Pre-2000s Television on Blu-ray

#1 Post by domino harvey » Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:58 am

Fucking Murder She Wrote just got a Blu-ray release in the UK

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Murder, She Wrote

#2 Post by Noiretirc » Sat Jan 16, 2021 6:44 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:58 am
Fucking Murder She Wrote just got a Blu-ray release in the UK
I saw the Complete Series in a local store at a slashed price, and I ran here to find out if anyone talks about how good or bad it may be, because I have never seen it.

So.....Fucking Murder She Wrote, huh?

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Re: Pre-2000s Television on Blu-ray

#3 Post by domino harvey » Sat Jan 16, 2021 6:47 pm

They're disposable Agatha Christie-type murder mysteries every week, with a few waning guest stars and everything. My strongest memory of the show is that my grandparents referred to it as "Jessica". As far as late 80s/early 90s television dramas go, I'm sure it holds up better than most due to the format, but it's hard to fathom wanting the complete series on Blu-ray

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Re: Pre-2000s Television on Blu-ray

#4 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:03 am

domino harvey wrote:
Sat Jan 16, 2021 6:47 pm
They're disposable Agatha Christie-type murder mysteries every week, with a few waning guest stars and everything. My strongest memory of the show is that my grandparents referred to it as "Jessica". As far as late 80s/early 90s television dramas go, I'm sure it holds up better than most due to the format, but it's hard to fathom wanting the complete series on Blu-ray
I like Murder, She Wrote a lot but I have always been curious about whether the opening title sequence which briefly shows Jessica Fletcher in danger in some sort of cobwebbed catacomb ever actually put her in any danger. As far as I can recall Jessica has the heaviest plot armour of any character ever created, existing above and beyond the day to day shenanigans of the particular episodes, so cannot really be in any real danger, whatever the pre-advert break stings try and imply on occasion. The series was mostly Jessica going to a new locale on a publicity tour or research for her latest book (or to visit an old friend, or go on holiday in Ireland at one point) and then watching on for the first act whilst one particularly abrasive character systematically upsets everyone in their vicinity to such an extent that when they turn up dead that there is a big enough pool of suspects to choose from. Then we get the fuddy-duddy by the book police inevitably arresting the wrong person because all of the evidence points to them, which is when Jessica gets involved as the wrongly accused person is more often than not the person that she has been coming to see, or at the very least the one person who she had a nice chat with and seemed a decent enough sort in the early scenes of the episode.

Then we get a few twists and turns as the murderer looks shifty and tries to cover their track whilst Jessica proves the innocence of her friend by inevitably having to fight against the narrow minded but eventually winnable over police chiefs (or even the leader of the Amish community in one episode set in that milieu!), often to the extent that they let her set up traps to bait the killer into making a midnight visit in order to try to silence another witness for good, letting them monologue to their potential victim enough to incriminate themselves before Jessica and the cops burst in. Then everyone politely stands around to let Jessica explain Agatha Christie-style just exactly how she managed to pick up on the clue that so-and-so was the actual killer, the killer readily admits that they did it and curses their sloppiness, and the cops then take them away, everyone acknowledging that it was only the intercession of a great crime novelist that managed to solve such an audacious (but obvious enough that the casual TV watching audience can pick up on it) crime!

That description might sound that I am cynically dismissive of it (and indeed it could be seen to be Columbo-styled, just with a female lead and an approach of not telling you who the murderer is straight away but letting you have a bit of light guesswork about it), but I really do like the show as a comfortably familiar mainstay of the schedules. It was always pretty big in the UK back in the 1980s and even to a certain extent in the 1990s on the ITV commercial channel (and I even got into regularly watching ITV3 - i.e. the crime drama and murder mystery channel - a couple of years back when they aired it around 7 or 8 p.m.). It even got a board game, which I have fond memories of playing with my parents and grandmother on one family holiday.

There were a couple of novel settings for episodes, including one where Jessica is getting a Virtual Reality computer game made of one of her books!

But the one thing I really wanted from the show was for it all to have ended with the big twist that Jessica Fletcher was committing all of the murders herself and audaciously pinning the crimes on innocent people (but deserving ones, always making sure to save her friends!) or accomplices who she somehow was always able to silence, which is why she always seemed to be around whenever a murder was being committed! Though that may just be because our family playing of the Murder, She Wrote board game back in the day went a bit awry!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Pre-2000s Television on Blu-ray

#5 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:26 am

Colin, have you seen “A Slight Case of Murder,” Brian Helgeland‘s episode of Tales From the Crypt about the Agatha Christie-type author? You’d prob get a big kick out of it!

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Re: Pre-2000s Television on Blu-ray

#6 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:30 am

Also, huge LOLs at this part of the Wiki article on the series
Murder occurred with such regularity in her vicinity that the term "Cabot Cove syndrome" was coined to describe the constant appearance of dead bodies in remote locations. Indeed, if Cabot Cove existed in real life, it would top the FBI's national crime statistics in numerous categories, with some analysis suggesting that the homicide rate in Cabot Cove exceeds even that of the real-life murder capital of the world.

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Re: Pre-2000s Television on Blu-ray

#7 Post by cdnchris » Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:44 am

Thats what got me about the series, which my mother watched religiously. It was a small town and I remember thinking that if it took place in my home town, the whole place would be wiped out in months.

Plus whenever Jessica visited another location, there was a murder there!

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Re: Pre-2000s Television on Blu-ray

#8 Post by Ribs » Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:56 am

I believe in the show’s intro there is a clear shot establishing a sign showing Population 1000, which means over the course of 300 episodes over half of the town either killed someone or was themselves killed.

To bring back a little to topic the original Stargate series has been released by VEI Entertainment. First eight seasons are SD video though.

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Re: Pre-2000s Television on Blu-ray

#9 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jan 17, 2021 12:28 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:26 am
Colin, have you seen “A Slight Case of Murder,” Brian Helgeland‘s episode of Tales From the Crypt about the Agatha Christie-type author? You’d prob get a big kick out of it!
No, not yet. I actually actively avoided the Tales From The Crypt series back in the day as despite my love of horror I am rather scared of decomposing skeletal zombie creatures, especially the erudite and punning ones!
cdnchris wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:44 am
Thats what got me about the series, which my mother watched religiously. It was a small town and I remember thinking that if it took place in my home town, the whole place would be wiped out in months.

Plus whenever Jessica visited another location, there was a murder there!
The Midsomer Murders series in the UK later on took this to such a ridiculous level that it was always amazing that it was also meant to stand in for the perfect quaint and quiet English village too!

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Re: Pre-2000s Television on Blu-ray

#10 Post by dustybooks » Sun Jan 17, 2021 1:10 pm

I was weeding fiction at the library last week and didn't have the heart to toss the last remaining one of Donald Bain's Murder, She Wrote novels which were "credited" to Jessica Fletcher. When I started working there in 2006 those remained very popular with elderly patrons and gradually have whittled away to the point that they no longer get mentioned or asked about and most of said patrons are no longer with us. Living through epochs is terribly depressing.

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#11 Post by aox » Sun Jan 17, 2021 2:22 pm

I've never seen the show, but given the data you guys are presenting, are their any internet-folk hypotheses that Jessica was the serial killer or behind the killings (Manson-style) that could be plausible? A precursor to Dexter?
Last edited by aox on Sun Jan 17, 2021 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#12 Post by Big Ben » Sun Jan 17, 2021 2:26 pm

I think it's a ludicrous show that has remained compulsively watchable over all these years. The crossover episodes with Magnum PI have to be seen to be believed. Although the one were a dog is trained to murder by pushing a button is absolutely my personal favorite on the WTF scale.

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#13 Post by Gregory » Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:44 pm

I never watched this, so I enjoy the fact that my personal experience of Angela Lansbury consists almost exclusively of her performances in The Manchurian Candidate, Gaslight, and State of the Union.

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#14 Post by Noiretirc » Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:57 pm

Well, look at this thread! Thanks especially to colinr0380 for his thoughtful post. I should add that I was looking at the DVD box-set (I know, right?) for $64CDN. That's around 25 cents per episode. I wonder if my 12 year old might enjoy this harmless fun. I would imagine that over the course of 264 episodes, there must be several that score high on the WTF scale. Are there many "Spock's Brain" type detours over the 12 years?

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#15 Post by bottlesofsmoke » Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:58 pm

This show and other murder mysteries are like comfort food, I think, they scratch a particular itch when you don’t want to think too much about anything more than motive and opportunity.
My mother and mother-in-law both love this show and others like Diagnosis: Murder. Like the father and his friend in Shadow of a Doubt, they’ve discussed multiple times together how to commit the perfect murder, which I suppose should concern me. (I believe an icicle in summer was their favorite theory.)

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#16 Post by Big Ben » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:07 pm

Noiretirc wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:57 pm
I would imagine that over the course of 264 episodes, there must be several that score high on the WTF scale. Are there many "Spock's Brain" type detours over the 12 years?
Yes absolutely. There is an episode dedicated entirely to puppets and there's also a downright absurd episode featuring a VR helmet. The show goes off the rails frequently which I confess is part of it's charm, at least for me.

Image

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#17 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:49 pm

Noiretirc wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:57 pm
Well, look at this thread! Thanks especially to colinr0380 for his thoughtful post. I should add that I was looking at the DVD box-set (I know, right?) for $64CDN. That's around 25 cents per episode. I wonder if my 12 year old might enjoy this harmless fun. I would imagine that over the course of 264 episodes, there must be several that score high on the WTF scale. Are there many "Spock's Brain" type detours over the 12 years?
I definitely watched stuff like this and the 90s revival of Burke’s Law with my parents when I was about that age

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#18 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jan 17, 2021 6:29 pm

Gregory wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 3:44 pm
I never watched this, so I enjoy the fact that my personal experience of Angela Lansbury consists almost exclusively of her performances in The Manchurian Candidate, Gaslight, and State of the Union.
I often wonder if her role as the rather nosy dowager in the 1978 adaptation of Death On The Nile (where she gets added to the pile of bodies near the end just for getting too involved in the proceedings) was the thing that eventually led to Lansbury eventually starring in a murder-mystery series of her very own. A lot of the success of these kinds of series is dependent on how charismatic their main character is, and its just relaxing to spend an hour in the company of Jessica Fletcher even if everyone around her is dropping like flies!

The other thing that I loved about Murder, She Wrote is that almost every episode inevitably has to end on a freeze frame of Jessica (and sometimes her companions) laughing together over some casual joke or other now that all of that horrible murder business is all neatly tidied up! It was only that shot before the rest of the credits played out under a montage of stills from the rest of the episode but it only got even funnier when I finally got to see Police Squad's spoof of those kinds of freeze frame endings! And Police Squad was parodying that kind of thing two years before Murder, She Wrote started!

Noiretirc, I did not remember it off the top of my head but that Pushing Up Roses channel as well as the VR episode mentioned the one that was inspired by the then recent Clue movie. And she's done many more videos on some of the wilder episodes, including the one Big Ben mentions where the murderer turned out to be a dog!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:38 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#19 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jan 17, 2021 6:39 pm

Colin, I imagine it was probably more that she played the very Jessica Fletcher-y Miss Marple a few years after Nile that cinched the deal, though starring in back to back Agatha Christie adaptations prob did indeed help

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#20 Post by Shrew » Mon Jan 18, 2021 12:49 am

aox wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 2:22 pm
I've never seen the show, but given the data you guys are presenting, are their any internet-folk hypotheses that Jessica was the serial killer or behind the killings (Manson-style) that could be plausible? A precursor to Dexter?
Yes.

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#21 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:17 am

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Jan 17, 2021 6:39 pm
Colin, I imagine it was probably more that she played the very Jessica Fletcher-y Miss Marple a few years after Nile that cinched the deal, though starring in back to back Agatha Christie adaptations prob did indeed help
Oh yes, I forgot The Mirror Crack'd! Kenneth Branagh has not got around to remaking that one as yet.

On the subject of murder-mystery TV shows more generally, and inspired by dustybooks' comment about books ubiquitous in libraries, does anyone remember that brief trend after The Name of the Rose for medieval monk sleuths? The main one in the UK in the 1990s was Cadfael starring Derek Jacobi and based on the books by Ellis Peters (which I am still familiar with on our bookshelves as my mother collected almost all of the series). Did that translate to the US and do you have (or had) any Ellis Peters on your library shelves dustybooks?

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#22 Post by dustybooks » Mon Jan 25, 2021 2:05 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:17 am
based on the books by Ellis Peters (which I am still familiar with on our bookshelves as my mother collected almost all of the series). Did that translate to the US and do you have (or had) any Ellis Peters on your library shelves dustybooks?
Ellis Peters was quite popular here for a time, but I'm very rarely asked for the books anymore. However, a number of them are still on the shelf at one of the larger branches. A quick search tells me that all of them have been borrowed in the last three years, so apparently someone's still out there reading them.

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#23 Post by Black Hat » Tue Jan 26, 2021 3:38 pm

Not that I'll ever do this, but as the place many stars of old Hollywood gave their final notable performances I think the show has considerable watch value.

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#24 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Wed Jan 27, 2021 3:38 pm

I'm with colin, I would've loved the final twist to have been that Jessica was a serial killer and that she was able to cover every murder up and pin on someone else. I don't know how any Cabot Cove policeman stayed in their job given that Jessica did it for them.

I always liked in the credits where you saw Jessica finish her book off - it always cut to "Arnold raced out of the door". Maybe the rest was total shite.

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Re: Murder, She Wrote

#25 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:02 am

I have to admit I would read a book with that sentence in it! Maybe not the two hundred or so that Jessica Fletcher presumably wrote all with that line in them, but then again maybe that would lend an air of cozy familiarity 'comfort read' quality to reading them, getting to casually wonder at what point Arnold is going to perform his signature move! If only dustybooks had kept those books in his library he might have been able to leaf through one to see if the line makes an appearance!

That makes me think about whether Jessica Fletcher needed all those murders to keep occurring in order to provide her inspiration for her novels! Perhaps she is one of those writers who just cannot make things up in their own heads but need to live events in order to properly put them down on the page. So really all the people buying her books and making her a successful author with all the attendant pressures and deadlines (and ability to spread her reign of terror across the country on book tours) were just encouraging her to murder more! And Arnold was the one who got away that she was unable to forget, but will track down eventually! :wink:

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