Forty years ago Jessica Fletcher entered homes to solve mysteries in Cabot Cove. This week, Brook and Sarah discuss the lasting influence Murder, She Wrote has on the mystery genre.
Discussed
Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996) CBS
Thursday Murder Club (2020) Richard Osman
Only Murders in the Building (2021-2024) Disney+/Hulu
The Golden Girls (1985-1992) NBC
Lilian Jackson Braun
Magnum PI (1980-1988) CBS
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Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but sometimes errors slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi, Brook. |
| Brook | Hi, Sarah. How are you? |
| Sarah | I’m doing really well. How about you? |
| Brook | I’m great. |
| Sarah | Well, today I’ve got a little treat for you. |
| Music plays | |
| Brook | Oh, Sarah, I know what that’s from. And all it takes is a few notes of that familiar piano tune to clue us in that another good mystery is about to start. Today we celebrate Murder, She Wrote, a show that changed the landscape of television and influenced the trajectory of mystery fiction. In the early |
| Brook | In the early 1980s, the US television network CBS was looking for a way to revive its Sunday night lineup. On a whim, they ran an Agatha Christie movie and easily came out on top of the ratings. Thinking it might be a fluke, they tried it again several weeks later and took the top spot. This proved to network execs that the viewing public wanted more good mysteries, and they began brainstorming series ideas. |
| Brook | Now, male leads in detective shows were still the norm, with shows such as Magnum PI and Miami Vice being popular in this era. But the success of that Miss Marple movie made them wonder, could a female character carry a mystery series? They asked network writer Peter Fisher to come up with a script to test it out. |
| Brook | His main character was a retired English teacher and author, turned sleuth, named Jessica Fletcher. The network’s first choice to play this experimental character was Jean Stapleton, and Stapleton is best known for her TV role as Edith Bunker on All in the Family. |
| Brook | But after reviewing the script, Stapleton didn’t really like the character and asked for many changes in order to accept the role. The writers felt sure of their lead character, so they decided to look for another actress, and they had heard that stage star Angela Lansbury was interested in breaking into television, so they sent the script to her. |
| Brook | But at the same time, Lansbury was being pitched a sitcom role by TV legend Norman Lear, and CBS assumed that they were just going to lose her to Lear. But they were pleasantly surprised when within days, Lansbury accepted their offer to play Jessica Fletcher. |
| Brook | In an interview that I watched, Lansbury said that there was just something she immediately liked about the character. And she knew that she could work with it and make it her own. |
| Sarah | I can’t imagine Angela Lansbury in a sitcom. And I can’t imagine anybody else playing Jessica Fletcher. |
| Brook | Right? And when I heard that the idea originally was Jean Stapleton, I thought, oh my goodness, that just doesn’t work in my brain at all. |
| Sarah | No. |
| Brook | But Lansbury was 59 years old when the show began and really the perfect age to play this retired teacher turned mystery solving heroine. Um, but she vowed that she would never play Fletcher as a dowdy old woman. And this is in large part based on the fact that Lansbury had this career-long history of being cast in frumpy roles and sidekick roles much older than her actual age. And so at this point, she was not going to play a new character as anything but you know active and stylish and just a real go-getter of this middle-aged woman. |
| Brook | Murder She Wrote was an immediate hit. It gained top spots in the ratings for years to come, and it really changed the landscape of television. I mean, the very next year after its release, The Golden Girls, another show starring older characters, it it premiered just a one year later and became this major hit. And, you know, I would say that Golden Girls probably never would have been if it weren’t for the big success of Murder She Wrote and Angela Lansbury on screen. |
| Brook | And then let’s not forget the continuing trend of older sleuths. I mean, we’ve got the Thursday Murder Club and Only Murders in the Building. um In addition to that trope, the show also popularized other aspects of cozy mystery that I’m sure we’ll talk more about, Sarah, like author as sleuth, small town strife, quirky characters, just so many things um became popularized that we see over and over again now. |
| Brook | Over the 12 years that the show ran, there were 268 murders solved, 2,000 guest stars, many of which were older stars that Angela kept working by having them on her show, and 12 Emmy nominations for Angela Lansbury. She never won, but she was awarded two Golden Globes for her work on the show. |
| Brook | And although it’s been off the air for years, Murder, She Wrote remains a cult classic. There’s merchandise featuring the iconic sleuth, computer games, and websites. And of course, reruns continue in syndication, bringing lots of new gen… And thankfully, reruns continue in syndication, bringing new generations of fans to the show. And I don’t know about you, Sarah, but I still get excited when I hear Lansbury say, “Tonight on Murder, She Wrote”. |
| Sarah | Such a quirk of the show, right? This little like preview that happens before. |
| Brook | Yeah, yeah, it’s something that I don’t know that any other show, I mean, other people have probably copied it, but I can’t really think of that. And that, ah you know, a little snippet of the plot is given away to hook you in. |
| Sarah | Yeah, yeah. Well, sometimes you’ll see that like next week or in the next episode, right? |
| Brook | Mm-hmm. |
| Sarah | But you don’t, I can’t think of many other shows that have a trailer just before the show starts. |
| Brook | Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it works there on the very first episode. So I kind of previewed that. I didn’t watch the entire thing cause I had seen it before. |
| Brook | And then I also watched the last episode. That’s kind of, I kind of bookended it this week, but, um, she breaks the fourth wall and she’s talking to the audience and telling them about, you know, like basically the backstory, how she got here and what’s going on. |
| Sarah | Yes. |
| Brook | And I, I just love that episode so much because it’s so cozy. It really is. and And you get an immediate feel for who this character is. And I would just like want to be her friend. |
| Sarah | So I love that you watched the first and the last episodes. I couldn’t find it streaming here in Canada. |
| Sarah | So I had to rely on the library and borrowed, um, season seven, the DVD set of season seven, because we still have a DVD player. Um, and that’s right in the middle, right? Because it ran for 12 seasons. |
| Brook | Mm-hm. |
| Sarah | Um, and after we watched the first episode, my husband and I turned to each other and we we’re like, well this still, it still stands up. Like it’s, it’s pretty good. Um, And I think I watched four or five episodes from that season. And what struck me was that each one was really different. So there was one that was in Cabot Cove. There was one that I think they call it a bookend episode where she introduces it, but the whole story features someone else ah doing the investigating, right? Like, she’s not actually involved at all. It’s um this insurance investigator who, I guess, just, you know, reading a little bit about the show appeared in a few episodes, you know, maybe one or two each season or one each season or something like that. |
| Sarah | There was one episode, I think, where she was in San Francisco and maybe another when she was elsewhere. And and so I just thought it was really interesting the way that it didn’t get stale. And um I think that they did that style or those various styles of episodes throughout the show. It was never just like 20 episodes of Cabot Cove. |
| Brook | Right. |
| Sarah | So i I really liked that. |
| Brook | I think that that was a smart way too because that you know, in some of the research I did this week, I learned like if the, there were still so many murders in Cabot Cove that it would have like blown away the actual you know city in the world that has the most murders. You know it would be by far the biggest murder capital in the whole world. But it was a way to break that up. And it um it worked because she was this jet setting, like very ah recognized author, so she was going to book signings and she was being, you know, wined and dined by this editor and this and that. So it gave her an excuse to travel. One episode, and I didn’t see it this week, but I’ve seen it in the past, is even historical. And I can’t recall how that happened. I can’t remember how Jessica ends up in the past, but it’s like set in colonial America. |
| Sarah | I love that. um There’s also a crossover episode with Magnum PI. That so that I didn’t see that because I think it’s in an earlier season, but I think I’m going to have to put my name on the hold list at the library and get that season because I think that would just be amazing to watch. |
| Brook | Yeah, that sounds so much fun. And I was reminded of how spunky she is and like how how like sophisticated. |
| Sarah | Totally. |
| Brook | Like She really did stick to that part of like not wanting to be a dowdy old granny. She dresses to the nines. She always got has like a brooch. Her hair is always beautiful. Her makeup is very pretty. Like she is like what we all aspire to be when we’re like a retired person, right? She’s just so, um, just sassy and chic. |
| Sarah | Well, and the other thing that struck me, so yes, I totally agree with with what you just said. She’s always looking very sharp, um but she’s also very kind. She’s not um she’s not biting in any of her comments. She’s firm, right? There’s um one character who’s the newspaper publisher in in Cabot Cove and he keeps asking her out and and she is you know pretty firm with him when she when she refuses, um which I thought was very good. But I just really liked the way that she spoke to other people and the way that she kind of would give the the bad guy a bit of the benefit of the doubt. |
| Brook | Exactly. Yeah. She definitely had, I liked the way that they had her interrogate people. And I don’t know how much I did read that, you know, over time, Angela Lansbury really influenced the character of Jessica Fletcher. There’s a melding there where it’s kind of hard to know who is who, but I know at least initially, I like the way the writers um made her do those interrogations because there was such a soft touch. |
| Sarah | Mm hmm. |
| Brook | You could see the look in her eye because she’s such an amazing actress that she doesn’t believe what they’re saying, but she never confronts them right there. She just kind of tucks away that bit of information. And I feel like that is such a um something we see over and over now in cozy mystery, right? Versus the detective fiction that everyone had seen where he would have like, you’re lying or you know maybe confronted the bad guy because she’s an amateur sleuth. She’s just like taking it all in. And I just, I really love that. Like you said, very kind and um and kind of soft in the way she goes through her investigations. |
| Sarah | Yeah, she’s she’s assertive, but not aggressive. |
| Brook | Mm hmm. True. Yeah. |
| Sarah | um Yeah, she has this wonderful life where she knows all of these people. She gets invited to these fantastic parties. And then she just has her regular life in Cabot Cove where she you know eats at the diner and and… |
| Brook | Rides her bicycle. |
| Sarah | Rides her bicycle and chats with the police sheriff who seems to tolerate her, um you know, in inserting herself into various investigations. It started when I was quite young. I think it was 1984, was that? but Yeah, because it was 40 years, right? |
| Brook | Right. |
| Sarah | um So I was I was a little bit too young to be watching Murder, She Wrote. um But by the time it finished, like I would have been familiar with it. |
| Sarah | And I feel like um I would have really enjoyed watching it with my grandmother. And you know, I don’t, I don’t have any clear memories of that being something that we did together, but I i think she would have enjoyed it. Uh, and now I do really want to watch all of this season. It’s like, I’m, I’m really disappointed that it’s not super easy for me to get it here in Canada. |
| Brook | Exactly. And that was one of my questions because, uh, you know, I, I grew up in the U S obviously I live in the U S and it was such a big deal. You know, I even said to my husband, like, do you remember watching murder? She wrote and he’s like, Oh yeah. I mean, he’s like, I don’t think it was like anybody’s like favorite show in my household, but of course it was on. And you know, we would watch it. It was just like such a popular show. Um, and I wondered like if it had that popularity in Canada when you, when it was on the air originally. |
| Sarah | Yeah, i I think it did. and And remember, it was a totally different time in terms of what we would have had access to in terms of television. Right. You you know, it was on at, I don’t know, say eight o’clock on I think it was Sunday nights and. |
| Brook | Mmhmm. Yes. |
| Sarah | There probably wasn’t much else. NBC might have had something. And here in Canada, we would have had CBC. I don’t know what we would have had at that time of night. But there just wouldn’t have been much else. And we didn’t obviously have streaming, probably even limited VHS tapes at the time. So it really would have been the only thing for people to watch. |
| Brook | Yeah. |
| Sarah | So it’s not surprising that the numbers were so high, right? Sunday evening is a popular time to just unwind and kind of get ready for the week, right? |
| Brook | Yeah. That’s a really good point. It is much more difficult these days for a show to take off like that because it’s, it’s so plentiful. But, you know, same, we had like basically three, maybe four networks. |
| Brook | So that’s how many choices you had. Sunday night, somebody’s probably playing a football game in the US. So if you needed, you know, something to watch on Sunday night, um, yeah, you had about three or four choices. |
| Brook | So it was much easier for a show to really get traction and especially a great show, right? That’s not, it’s not saying that it it didn’t deserve those ratings. |
| Sarah | So, Brook, not only did Murder, She Wrote kind of opened the door to more cozy type television programming. I think it also opened the door to more television, sorry, more cozy books. So if you remember when we talked about cozy mysteries and Lilian Jackson Braun, she had published a few books in the 1960s and then nothing again until 1986. |
| Sarah | So, you know, the the mood was really set for people to have this appetite for more cozy type stories. |
| Brook | Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, that timing is just spot on, isn’t it? When the, the viewing public and, uh, you know, mystery fans were really liking that type of, um, cleaner, more lighthearted mystery, then we started seeing the books coming out like that too. And, you know, now the, the sub genre is still going strong. |
| Sarah | Oh, definitely. I think it’s one of the more popular subgenres if you’re looking in the mystery space. |
| Sarah | You mentioned Only Murders in the Building and the Thursday Murder Club. And there’s a couple of other things that I can think of that feature older sleuths, but between Murder, She Wrote and the last three or four years, I feel like there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to celebrate or see older characters in these kind of roles. |
| Brook | Yeah, i I agree. I think right then, like I said, the Golden Girls came, which the idea of having a full cast of all 50 plus women and women, right? So it was women and older. That was a real um change in television. But I agree. I feel like it probably slipped back into some of the other stereotypes. And we’re now we’re seeing like a big resurgence again. And I don’t know if it’s the age of our population and many of us, you know, like more and more people are having like that second act. And that was something I really loved about um the parallel between Jessica Fletcher and Angela Lansbury. Angela Lansbury had been a working actress, a stage actress, and had some amazing hits on like Broadway. But as far as being a recognized celebrity, she really didn’t have that until this show. And then she became this huge star in her late 50s and early 60s. |
| Brook | And you know that’s kind of what happens to Jessica in the story too. She had been an English teacher and you know lived in small Cabot Cove. She just had this sort of mundane life. And then she gets this great mystery author career and that then blossoms into this sleuth. So there’s a lot of parallels there to coming into your own later in life. And so I think our population is really celebrating that, as you said, and in this decade. |
| Sarah | You mentioned some of the awards that the show got. And I think it’s really interesting that it received a Edgar award twice for two different episodes for the best episode in a TV series. |
| Brook | I did not know that. That’s fantastic. |
| Sarah | Yeah, I know. And you know, other programs that have received that, uh, you know, Magnum PI in 1981, uh, Hill Street Blues in 1982. |
| Sarah | Um, so this would have been probably one of the first very cozy, um, television programs to get that kind of award. Later on, there’s Masterpiece Mystery that um receives awards and Law and Order gets some, gets several actually. I think it’s, um i I love that it got ah an award for, from what I always consider to be like a literary um award body. |
| Brook | Right, and and specifically mystery too. So that’s that’s great. I also love that. |
| Sarah | Brook, in your introduction, you talked about some of the spinoffs from Murder, She Wrote, which is always a sign that something is really popular. And one of those was the novels. |
| Brook | That’s right, yes. So, Donald Bain wrote 45 novels, ah you know, they’re Murder, She Wrote series, and then all sorts of different stories, very similar to the way we’ve talked about the show being so varied. The novels are very, um you know, wide range of topics. um But Donald Bain was the author, but JB Fletcher is listed as the co-author. So we get this really awesome meta thing happening. |
| Sarah | I love it. |
| Brook | And I know, and I got to thinking that in if this were happening nowadays, I think it could have even been bigger. Like Jessica Fletcher would have had her own Instagram account and she would have been, you know, like interacting with, certainly this wouldn’t be Angela Lansbury doing this, but the the company right could make Jessica Fletcher interact in all sorts of ways online um to get that meta feeling because here she is, she’s a mystery author. right And I just thought that was really clever. |
| Sarah | And are they still publishing the books? Do you know? |
| Brook | I believe so. I I think that the most recent was a Christmas novel, but don’t don’t quote me, but um you know fairly recent. The novels didn’t end when the show ended. They continued on. |
| Sarah | Oh, I think that’s fantastic. |
| Brook | I’m also always struck by how many young people are into Murder, She Wrote, and I think that um you know is credited to the fact that we still have them in syndication. um But if you look online for ah Instagram accounts or websites, you’ll find people that are in their 20s and 30s who just really love Jessica Fletcher. There’s merch and shirts. and really cute ah you know graphic design, like “What Would Jessica Do? And I just think that’s just so great. |
| Sarah | That is fantastic. And I think just speaks to the kind of um warmth of the character. |
| Brook | I do too. And she’s somebody that really is, uh, someone you look up to. And, and I mean, the idea of what would Jessica do in a lot of different ways. Like we talked about, she stayed excited about life and she was spunky and she ah took great care of herself and was, uh, you know, sophisticated and sharp all through her years. So, um, not only in the mystery sphere, but in, you know, life in general, we could all be a little bit more Jessica. |
| Sarah | I love it. |
| Sarah | Well, Brook, it has been so much fun discussing Murder, She Wrote. And I think this conversation has just reignited my love for this show. And I might have to just order all the DVDs. |
| Brook | Put it on your Christmas list, Sarah. |
| Sarah | Maybe. |
| Brook | Yeah, this has been great. This is like such a iconic mystery show and we just want to celebrate, you know, it’s 40th anniversary. And thank you all for joining us to do the same. I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah, and we both love mystery. |
