For our Season 3 premiere of TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we are enjoying a lovely time at the traveling circus: full of stompy elephants, tightrope falls, missing persons, and heavy enunciation.

Carol Bannister (a pre-FRIENDS and SCREAM Courtney Cox) asks Aunt Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) to go on a quest to see if her presumed-dead grandfather really sent her a leprechaun for a wedding gift (it'll sort of make sense in context). We are soon headed to the three rings in Arkansas. The cavalcade of clowns, carnies, and animal trainers is vast; among them are the ringmaster Preston (Alex Cord), the pretty showgirl Maylene (Lee Purcell), single mom rope walker Katie (Pamela Shoop), and handsome roustabout Brad (Greg Evigan).  Soon, as these things tend to go, someone awful ends up dead, and we have to figure out whodunnit.

Jessica matches wits with an ambitious (and total dick) Mayor Powers (Ronny Cox), with a sympathetic sheriff in tow (Gregg Henry), to clear the name of the now-certainly-alive grandfather, Carl (Jackie Cooper), who is implicated because of course he is.  

Is the circus truly financially solvent, or is this an inside job? Will Jessica manage to spare her not-dead brother-in-law in time to make it to the wedding?  Gosh, we hope so, but a whole lot of obstacles stand in her way: lions, tigers, and Florence Henderson.

This is DEATH STALKS THE BIG TOP, and the greasepaint is smelling strong as the crowd roars on.