Fisher, Richard Levinson and William Link, premiered in 1984, when streaming did not exist and cable was still a word mostly associated with telephones (Google it.) The show stepped into a template left by the short-lived “Ellery Queen,” and the vacuum left by the more popular “The NBC Mystery Movie,” a wheel series that rotated weekly episodes of “Columbo,” “McCloud” and “McMillan and Wife,” which ended in 1977.Įntertainment & Arts Appreciation: The genius of Angela Lansbury: She could play anyoneĪngela Lansbury, the star of stage and screen who died on Tuesday, put her talents at the service of story. “ Only Murders in the Building” plays with all the iterations of the genre, including the podcast. Television may have moved away from the traditional procedural sleuth series in favor of season-long investigations, but never from its love of a good mystery. “See How They Run” is a murder mystery involving the production of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” the longest-running play in history, and the “Knives Out” sequel, “ The Glass Onion,” is one of the fall’s most anticipated films (especially now, since it includes a cameo by Lansbury, in her final performance). With the almost back-to-back hits of “Murder on the Orient Express” and “ Knives Out” (I will draw a veil over “ Death on the Nile”), it is currently very much in star-studded vogue on the big screen. Over the years, its popularity has cycled through film and television. (Nor is it the first time television executives have been wrong.)Īlmost from the moment of its invention (by Edgar Allan Poe? Wilkie Collins? Arthur Conan Doyle? Debate among yourselves), the murder mystery has been a workhorse of popular fiction. In hindsight, it isn’t surprising at all. “Murder, She Wrote” eschewed car chases, gun fights and gruesome corpses most of its murderers were as ordinary as its main character and usually went quietly when caught.Įven with Lansbury, beloved star of “Mame” and “Sweeney Todd,” stepping into the role, originally offered to Jean Stapleton, CBS considered “Murder, She Wrote” a long shot, snuggling it into the Sunday night berth following “60 Minutes.” ![]() Even with “Police Woman,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Cagney & Lacey,” female detectives were thin on the ground, never mind female amateur detectives of a certain age. When Jessica Fletcher first appeared, jogging the streets of Cabot Cove, tapping away on her manual typewriter and putting two and two together in that clear-headed, unsentimental way of hers, no one knew quite what to make of her. ![]() But as the many appreciations that marked her death on Tuesday made clear, Angela Lansbury was in a class by herself, and “Murder, She Wrote” was, all that quaintness notwithstanding, revolutionary. ![]() It isn’t every five-time Tony winner and multiple Oscar nominee who is most famous for starring in a CBS mystery procedural.
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