Murder Takes the Bus

John Davis Chandler was one of the scariest actors in Hollywood. He had a wonderful way of playing weasel-like psychopaths...cold, calculating and just plain nuts! Because of this, it's a real same that he's barely in the show. In fact, he barely gets anything to say or do, as he was the murder victim in this episode...and he died VERY early into the show.

As for the show itself, the plot seems very, very familiar...too familiar. I've seen quite a few films and TV shows that were much like this one in many ways.

Jessica and her friend Sheriff Tupper (Tom Bosley) are going on a bus ride to Portland, Maine. The night is very stormy and eventually the storm becomes so bad that the bus is forced to stop...and when everyone gets off the bus to hang out in a cafe, one of them can't...as he's dead. Obviously SOMEONE on the bus was a killer.

The story, as I said above, is filled with story elements I've seen quite a few times already. The stranded bus, the victim who was involved in a robbery where the money was never recovered and more...all stuff that murder mystery fans will remember from other shows and movies. Now that does NOT mean it's a bad episode, the acting is quite nice, but it cannot be a great episode with so little new and unique content.

Murder follows wherever Jessica Fletcher goes, even on a bus that she and Tom Bosley are taking to different destinations.

This story is a homage to Agatha Christie's classic Murder On The Orient Express where John Davis Chandler is murdered on the bus. Turns out Chandler was a career criminal just released from prison who stashed a lot of loot from his last job before he was caught.

And like in the fame Christie classic a whole lot of the bus passengers had some kind of connection to Chandler even to one of them just being an insurance investigator hoping Chandler would lead him to the hidden loot. But greed is not the only motive for killing this man.

I have to say the murderer figured a clever way to give himself an alibi, just not clever enough.

We learn that Tom Bosley before he became sheriff drove a bus for a while. His knowledge of the operation of the vehicle turns out to be valuable.

One of the best of the series.

Jessica and a slew of passengers are forced to take refuge from a storm at a remote diner when one of the passengers is found stabbed in his seat on a bus to Boston.

An excellent entry that is confined to one area, in this case a cafe. Trains have been well-established as a setting for Murder, this one is committed in a bus, screwdriver in the neck. It's revealed in the course of Jessica's investigation that most of passengers knew the dead man, who just been released from State Penitentiary for a bank robbery along other gang members. The plot is unravelled like fine silk, the twist comes like a sharp knife. It's also good to see Jessica and Sherrif Amos Tucker ( my fave character) working together.

Amos accompanies Jessica on a bus trip to Portland, where she plans to give a speech. The weather takes a turn for the worse, and a worried looking man boards the bus, headed for Portland. As they continue on their journey they break down. All passengers head into a Cafe, as the bus driver remains outside to fix the engine problem. Jessica returns to the bus to collect a book, where she discovers the worried man, dead, with a screwdriver stuck in his shoulder.

There are many fans of the show that would place this episode top of the pile, for good reason. It is a brilliant mystery, has a true whodunit setup. It's dark, stormy, loaded with suspects, the principle cast are all cut off, and there's a big twist at the end. The music is arguably the best score to feature on the show. There are virtually no flaws to this episode, it's a wonderfully interesting cast, the villain has history, he's not just a bad guy upsetting all and sundry, even Amos Tupper shows a level of intelligence, proving he can observe and think, ahead of Jessica.

Every single thing about this episode is spot on, it's brilliant. 10/10

Jessica is accompanying Sheriff Tupper to a Sheriff's convention in Portland, traveling by bus. Jessica is to give a speech and Amos hopes to win a door prize-a large screen TV-he feels "like it's going to be his year."

The bus driver is unknown to our heroes, telling them the regular guy is sick. He is played by Room 222's Principal, Seymour Kauffman (Michael Constantine). Other passengers leaving from Cabot Cove are an old man name Cyrus Leffingwell (veteran actor David Wayne, best known for portraying Inspector Richard Queen, on the sadly-short-lived series Ellery Queen in the 70s, also created by Levinson and Link), a sea captain named Joe Downing, a middle-aged couple, the Radfords, played by Rue McClanahan and MASH's Frank Burns (Larry Linville), and a young couple, Steve and Jane Pascal, (St. Elsewhere's Dr. Peter White (Terence Knox) and Linda Blair.

As they are going, a man hails the bus from just outside a state prison and climbs aboard paying the driver for a ticket. Shortly after that, another man with a car off the road does the same. Along the route, a terrible rain storm forces them to take an alternate route. At some point, the bus driver says he has a mechanical problem and he stops just outside a roadside diner run by a man named Ralph. Almost everyone goes inside to wait while the driver, Ben Gibbons tries to fix the engine.

They all get better acquainted inside. Jessica observes through the window that two men appear to be having an argument inside the bus-Steve and that first man who boarded while the bus was on the road. Later, she returns to the bus and finds a dead man-I guess that's no spoiler on this series.

The rest of the episode deals with Amos and Jessica trying to solve the murder. Phone lines are down and the storm has caused so much flooding that trying to continue their bus route is dangerous. It seems the dead man was convicted of a big bank robbery over a decade ago, and had two helpers, one of whom is believed to now be one of the people involved with his death-someone inside that diner.

Now the one bad thing about this episode to me is the Miriam Radford character. She is supposed to be a librarian. She acts panicky about almost everything, frequently telling everyone that if the killer isn't caught, they'll probably all be killed. If this was one of those shows where almost everyone gets killed, I'd have voted for her to be the next one offed, just for our own sake.

Otherwise, I think this episode stands as one of the very best in the series. It has a really good mystery, with no obvious killer. More than one of the people is not what they first appear to be. We really were shown an important clue early on that could have led us to the killer long before Jessica figured it out. But when watching you don't feel dumb for not letting the clue lead you to the murderer because it wasn't painfully obvious, like they sometimes are. Amos appears to be a clever sheriff throughout, unlike a couple of the earliest episodes.

I think a roomful of, oh three dozen people watching this for the first time, if you could stop the tape just after the body is discovered and ask them who they think the killer is, would likely find everyone in the episode except Amos and Jessica getting at least 3 votes. Once they start revealing more information about the dead man and the people who were on the bus, there were reasons to shift your vote from A to B...or C...etc.

There was the threat of danger to the people in the diner, lots of clues to lead you one way and then the other, and plenty of decent suspects-all adding up to a 10 from this viewer.