Murder, I Blog

I *love* Murder, She Wrote. I love everything about it.

I love Mrs. Jessica Fletcher and her busy-body ways.

I love Cabot Cove, Maine.

I love that supposedly both Jean Stapleton and Doris Day turned the role down until Angela Lansbury stepped in.

I love the cross-over episode where she and Magnum, P.I. solved a crime together.

I love the fact that she traveled the world for 12 years visiting nieces and nephews and former college roommates in far flung places, and each time a murder would take place.

I love all the sophisticated guest stars from the golden age of cinema, Broadway, and vaudeville, not to mention the up-and-comers. Everyone from Sonny Bono to George Clooney to Rue McClanahan to Mercedes McCambridge to Leslie Nielsen to Lynn Redgrave to heaps more - and not certainly least Miss Nina Foch.

One I watched recently even featured Maxwell Caulfield from Grease 2 putting on an Irish brogue as a stablehand - rather eerily similar to the time Humphrey Bogart put on an Irish brogue to play Bette Davis' stable hand in Dark Victory.

I love the exposition lines. "Jessica, we may have been roommates in college, but..." and "Jessica, you remember my fiance, the son of daddy's rival in the race-track business?"

I guess what I like about them is how cozy the mysteries are - kind of like the ones that Rita Mae Brown writes where her cat helps her solve crimes.

And the bestest part? Each ep opens with Miss Angela Lansbury intoning "Tonight, on Murder, She Wrote..." as we watch scenes from the episode we're about to watch, just so nothing takes you by surprise. How cozy and great is that?

Here, enjoy the opening credits, if you haven't in a while.