Murder, She Wrote – Not So Secret Obsession

I have all the available seasons of Murder She Wrote saved in my NetFLix Streaming queue, I find them comforting, like old friends.  Even the crimes seem civilized, somehow.  Maybe I will watch one tonight, maybe you should too.Murder, She Wrote is an American television mystery series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for 12 seasons from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network, with 264 episodes transmitted. It was followed by four TV films and a spin-off series, The Law & Harry McGraw. It is one of the most successful and longest-running television shows in history, with close to 23 million viewers in its prime, and was a staple of its Sunday night lineup for a decade. The series is also successful around the world.

Lansbury was nominated for a total of ten Golden Globes and 12 Emmy Awards for her work on Murder, She Wrote. She holds the record for the most Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for outstanding lead actress in a drama series for Murder, She Wrote, with those nominations netting her four Golden Globe awards. The series received three nominations but no wins in the Outstanding Drama Series category at the Emmys. It was nominated for a Golden Globe in the same category six times and won twice.

Since the series ended in 1996, a series of four TV movies were released between 1997 and 2003, a game created by Legacy Interactive was released for the PC platform in 2009, and a second game is to be released in March 2012. and a spin-off book series, written by Donald Bain, continues to the present.

The show revolved around the day-to-day life of a retired English teacher who, after being widowed in her early fifties, becomes a very successful mystery writer. Despite fame and fortune, Jessica remains a resident of Cabot Cove, a cozy coastal town in Maine, and maintains her links with all of her old friends, never letting her success go to her head. Exterior shots of Cabot Cove were filmed in Mendocino, California.

Murder rears its ugly head with great regularity in her vicinity (so improbably often that the mystery term “Cabot Cove syndrome” was eventually coined to describe the constant appearance of dead bodies in remote locations). Jessica invariably proves more perceptive than the official investigators, who are almost always willing to arrest the most likely suspect. By carefully piecing the clues together and asking astute questions, she always manages to trap the real murderer, who, given the series’ “special guest star” policy, was often played by a famous film or TV personality.