La signora in giallo

I absolutely love this show. Angela Lansbury was great as Jessica Fletcher and made the show her own.The weird thing about this show is that Jessica Fletcher rarely had a love interest. She may not have had a love interest but she did have a lot of male companions who would regularly help her solve the murders, like for instance Seth Hazlet. She would be pondering about the murder and Seth would say something and suddenly everything would fit together and she would have the murderer.

The show can be enjoyed by all but only if you see it as escapist fun that is not taxing on the brain. It shouldn't be seen as a realistic TV show, if viewers watch it expecting it to be realistic then they will be sorely disappointed. For instance to obtain evidence Jessica would break into offices, people who watch a lot of murder mysteries(like me) would know this evidence would be inadmissible in the court of law and the killer would get off scot free.

The show ended in 96 but I normally catch it on reruns. Although I am a fan of the series but I still feel it should have ended after the 93 season. After the 93 season the plots became increasingly tired and predictable. In fact I thought the story lines became far more soapy, it became more about the characters and less about the murders.

Out of all the murder mystery shows I watch I like this the most. It was fun to spot stars like Ceasar Romero (the Joker from the Batman T.V. series. Over the years most stars came on the show more than once but in different roles.

For me, it was the first bite from the detective series. in the sense than the other films/series, adaptations of novels by Agatha Christie or Georges Simenon or propositions of smart, cold, ironic men were not boring but too far for me, at the early ages. and the love for Jessica Fletcher remains fresh today, after decades . because the mix of lovely old woman, almost a sort of good fairy and many , many cases, the universe of a writer, her friends, the danger against here, the humor and the deductions are pieces of a seductive portrait. it remains more than a good serie. or a legendary one. but one of lovely memories about the great and admirable art of Angela Lansburry.

This has to be one of the best shows that ever came out. Angela Lansbury truly created one of the great detectives that ever graced the small screen. However, the best episodes actually took place in her hometown of Cabot Cove where she had a fine supporting cast. Doc Hazlett proved to be the Watson to Jessica's Holmes and Sheriffs Tupper and Metzger couldn't get along without her. This show is truly a classic.

I'm not quite sure why Murder She Wrote isn't still running. I'm willing to bet that Angela Lansbury could command any kind of deal she could have if she wanted to do more episodes of this wonderful series.

Angela Lansbury is maybe one of the kindest and most unselfish of players ever to grace the big screen, the small screen and the legitimate theater. Let's not forget she's a star in all three mediums. What I like best about her is the fact that she used her star power to give lots of work to her fellow performers from the golden age of Hollywood's studio system who weren't as lucky with their careers as she. Just look at the cast list of any random selection of Murder, She Wrote episodes.

For twelve years she got every weekend to show up the police in every corner of the globe that they had the wrong solution to a given murder. The amazing thing is that most of them simply went with the flow as far as her interference with their investigation. It was part of her charm for them and for us.

About half the episodes took place in the little New England coastal town of Cabot Cove where William Windom as the town doctor and first sheriff Tom Bosley and then sheriff Ron Masak got assistance from Jessica Fletcher every time she was in town at her home. I liked the Cabot Cove shows best and I suspect most viewers did. Though that presents a problem in that Cabot Cove given the percentage of the population might just have the highest murder rate in the country. Good thing she WAS around. But even there she never embarrassed Bosley or Masak in solving the cases.

Her best scenes are with William Windom, the crusty old town doctor, Seth Hazlitt. I suspect that back in their youth Jessic and Seth were an item and the way Lansbury and Windom are with each other, you can see the bonds are strong. The writers in Murder, She Wrote very wisely never made Dr. Hazlett any kind of buffoon the way Nigel Bruce was as Doctor Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes. Windom played it absolutely straight and his medical knowledge occasionally helped Lansbury solve the case. I think it's a shame that William Windom never got an Emmy for playing Dr. Hazlitt.

My hope is that somebody gets the bright idea to have a reunion episode and maybe finally marry Jessica Fletcher and Dr. Seth Hazlitt. It would be the highest rated show of a given season.

If you haven't watched this please do. Angela Lansbury was amazing in this!