Sing a Song of Murder

I loved this episode, people complaing about the accent. Do any of you know Angela Lansbury sang that song in, the picture of dorian Grey. And of course her accent is gone look how long she's been in America. People are never satisfied, just have to complain about something.

Jessica's cousin Emma McGill pulls a trick worthy of her American relative when she fakes her own death and asks Jessica to come for the memorial service to investigate. With Emma hidden away in a Streatham flat, Jessica pokes into the behind the scenes life of the Mayhew theatre to discern who might have wanted her dead. Then Emma's dresser becomes the victim of another apparent attempt on her life. With the secret breached, can Jessica figure out who is threatening her cousin before her curtain comes down for good?

Love the accents, America's view of a quaint British portrait of music hall and afternoon tea where every daughter says daddy - it's a little tedious at times but grand performances from Lansbury, Patrick Macnee and the scrumptious Olivia Hussey, an underrated actress, keep this interesting.

I catch this episode all the time on re-runs and it always makes me laugh. In spite of the fact that MSW was such a big success, the budget clearly didn't run to any real location filming so....the studio recreated London on the back-lot.

As usual, The Palace of Westminster and especially BIG BEN and ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL are added (as glass shots or matte paintings) whenever possible to make sure the audience doesn't forget where we are supposed to be. Isn't it amazing how it's possible to see these world famous buildings no matter where in London one happens to be.....

Others have commented on the wretched accents. All I will add is that Ms Lansbury has clearly lived in America for far too long, as she just cannot bring her old British accent back, no matter how hard she tries.

Great fun though, all the same.

I won't review the story as this has already been done, as has the obvious Non-British locations.

The 'English' Actors seem to have had the same voice coach as Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Even the British ones have bad accents; I've never heard Patrick Macnee and Glynis Johns, both very talented, that bad! Don't know what was worse, Macnee's odd English or Johns appalling Irish.

Do Americans really think we talk like that, or just American directors? Certainly the Americans I know don't.

Please. if you want British characters, let them sound British. If you want an Irish accent, get an Irish actor to play it. The same applies to Scottish which thankfully there were none to be murdered in this film but are often done very badly in American films.

We want Characters, not Caricatures.

While I found the fake background to be so cheap and fake driving was amusing, that's part of it's charm. I absolutely loved Kristoffer Tabori's English accent along with his performance, he almost reminded me of the late Peter Lawford, Kristoffer also went on to use his English accent on another MSW episode in Truck Stop. With accents, what frustrates me with American productions, they don't seem to separate the Northern Ireland accent from the Republic of Ireland accent, as they are both very different from each other.