Something Foul in Flappieville

JB is watching the Flappieville puppet show with a keen eye, as Inspector Lachère is her creation, something she came up with for her grand nieces and nephews, and now Flappieville Toys want to take Inspector Lachère on the road. She soon gets pulled into a murder investigation when one of the studio backers is murdered and the puppet based on her character is used as the murder weapon.

Even in the children puppet industry things can become cutthroat which leads to murder. It's an interesting setting, but a rather pedestrian episode that ambles on and lacks that urgency. However Jessica is always great to watch.

This episode is interesting. It shows the kind of things puppeteers go though to perform and puppets updated. The art work, the voice characters, the setting and more.

One thing that brought my attention was one of the puppets was named Lestrad. This may be the wrong spelling but Lestrad was a detective in Agatha Christie stories. Lestrad worked in harmony with Poirot.

In this movie Lestrad had a mustache, a French cap, French accent and was a detective.

This episode is based on changing and updating current puppets and getting rid of old ones. New deals were made to keep the old puppets one of which was a dog.

JB Fletcher supposedly was in this episode because she wrote a story that was being used for the puppets to play in. Jessica was taking notes regarding the story and also the appearance of the puppet Lestrad. She wanted Lestrad to look more professional as a detective. So a raincoat was made for him and a magnifying glass held in his hand. He also had a red bow tie. I am a big fan of Agatha Christie's and her Poirot series. The characters name though is in Arthor Doyles, Sherlock Holmes Inspector Lestrade.

To me this is like plagiarism. Poirot had a mustache, was a private detective, had a French accent and wore a bow-tie pictures Check out Poriot's images on Google. He has dark bowties and light one.

The story has a nice ending so in all I thought it was pretty good but I would have hoped they did not make Jessica take credit for a character written by someone else, Ms Lansbury is a great actress and is the executive producer of many of these shows, her nephew is also a producer so she had some say about the story line

This episode of Murder She Wrote has Jessica Fletcher branching out so to speak. She's gone into the business of writing a children's book with an engaging animal character who is a policeman. Now she's dealing with television who would like to give her character a show.

If Angela Lasnbury thought the publishing business could be cutthroat wait till she has to deal with the various egos involved with television. Stephen Kay who at times is almost childlike himself like Michael Jackson is the host of a current show who'd like to get Lansbury to collaborate with him. Kay is woeful as a business person.

A security guard is killed preventing someone from stealing a prototype puppet and notes on the character. Kay looks good, but we know it won't be him.

Who'd have thought kid's television could be so nasty?

Jessica is at a television studios, where her latest project sees one of her creations about to come to life, to entertain millions of children. A murder on the set throws the show into chaos.

This is a lighter episode, not necessarily amusing, but it's a jolly enough murder mystery, the puppets are cute, and it does feel quite original, but there are some flaws, how on Earth is Jessica involved in a puppet show, it makes no sense.

I'll credit them for the murder victim, that seemed to come out of nowhere, not the victim I was expecting.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't help but think of The Happytime Murders, a film from a few years ago, which featured the Muppets.

It's officially Murder, she wrote's easiest mystery to work out, even if you're only half listening, you'll spot the glaringly obvious clue, it needed to be a whole lot more subtle.

6/10.

"Something Foul in Flappieville" is an episode set at a TV studio where a kids show is being made. However, considering that the days of "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" as well as "Howdy Doody" were LONG past, I had a hard time accepting that any kid would enjoy this sort of 'entertainment'.

The story is about some new, annoying French character that's been added to the pantheon of Flappieville. This results in the pusillanimous creator of the show selling off or giving away well over 100% of the profits from merchandising away...and this, indirectly, leads to a murder. Who is behind it and why?

This is just an okay episode. The killer admits to everything instead of asking for a lawyer (a typical cliche in the series), the show seemed rather dumb and there isn't a lot to make this a standout episode.