TONIGHT on Murder, She Wrote

TONIGHT ON MURDER SHE WROTE, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) returns to visit her season 1 niece Victoria and her now-husband Howard (Genie Francis and Jeff Conaway) as they each stand at professional crosswords. 

While Howard is struggling for recognition as an actor, Victoria is routinely demeaned and harassed at her job at the boys' club advertising agency as she handles the big deal fast food chain contract. 

When the scumbag boss (Richard Kline) ends up dead, Victoria is a prime suspect--as is the lecherous king of corned beef (Ken Swofford), the pretty lady competition (Susan Anton), and whoever may have delivered the last sandwich he ever saw. 

CORNED BEEF AND CARNAGE gives Jessica plenty to work with, from investigating suspects and potential witnesses, bothering busy deli workers, and bantering with our cop of the week, James Sloyan, over the likelihood of our righteous bludgeoner. 

Marcia Wallace, David Ogden Stiers, Warren Berlinger, and William Macy all provide excellent performances in this glimpse of the cutthroat world of marketing in the era of shoulder pads.  

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, it's as good a time as any that Petra and Viktor discuss eastern German politics of 1987. And it just so happens, ONE WHITE ROSE FOR DEATH is all about that!

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is reunited with the charming scoundrel Michael Hagarty (Len Cariou) just in time for an assassination centered around two German sibling musicians (John Glover and Maria Mayenzet). This brother/sister team isn't quite on the same level of political passion, and their parents are soon in danger due to their attempted defection.   

Soon, the suspicions heighten within this closed circuit mystery set in a British embassy when an agent winds up dead, and Jessica and Michael survey the potential perpetrators: Tony Bonner, Jenny Agutter, Michael Anderson Jr., and Bernard Fox.

Settle in for an evening of sophisticated intrigue and taut diplomatic nightmares, with questionable German accents, discrete stabbing instruments, and evidentiary flora. 

TONIGHT ON MURDER SHE, WROTE, we enter a chapter of Dr. Seth Hazlitt's past... one he is barely in or has much to do with, it turns out.  Indeed, this is a weird one. UNFINISHED BUSINESS largely focuses on the backstory of one police detective, Barney Kale (Pat Hingle), who seems obsessed with righting a wrong from years back. 

Seth (William Windom) joins our other cast of suspects from a possible murder a decade plus earlier: Dr. Terence Mayhew (Lloyd Bochner), his former secretary and lover Cynthia Tate (Hayley Mills), and gruff fishing resort innkeeper James Sanford (Don DeFore), who welcomes them all as guests again. 

Kale says one of them is responsible for that death that was deemed accidental; and now a fresh faced couple (Erich Anderson and Erin Moran) are pulled into the mix when the reunion is interrupted by another death and Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) has to match wits with another sheriff (J.D. Cannon) other than Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley) who's not quite as easy to push over.  

It all comes together as a somewhat bizarre edit of a closed-circle mystery, full (and we mean stuffed) of characters about whom we learn bit by bit by bit, and a series of odd motivations that Viktor and Petra try to deconstruct and explain.  

Wish us luck. 

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.  

BONUS! TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE: In celebration of Petra and Viktor closing out the second season of our favorite cozy mystery, we are upping the cozy and adding some froth, saccharine, and a full Jerry Herman (LA CAGE, MAME, HELLO DOLLY) score of songs we think may have been in a drawer for a while.  It's MRS. SANTA CLAUS, the post-Murder She Wrote television movie also starring Charles Durning, Michael Jeter, and Terrence Mann.  If you've not yet experienced this overstuffed spectacle, you don't even have to whistle: we're here to get you through it.

In this musical that depicts early 20th century New York as a rich, clean, patchwork quilt of races that get along, on the cusp of women's liberation, and one that still sort of glorifies child labor as long as they're well-heated, Angela Lansbury takes on the the titular role as only she can: fully committed, utterly delightful, and surrounded by actors who can only try to keep up. 

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, it's a full-season review with Viktor and Petra to share the highs and lows of our second year with Jessica Fletcher and friends.  We've visited tropical islands, college campuses, archaeological digs, mansions filled with secret passages, and even prison. 

In this special edition of the pod, revisit the femme fatales, studs, bonkers scenarios, a cast of old Hollywood, and those soon to be discovered, and (so much) more. 

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we enter a tangled web of country club snobs and social climbers via indomitable busybody and mystery writer Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury). 

Jessica is visiting friends in high places, and we soon learn they're all just as dysfunctional and terrible as the rest of us, but with money. Her bud is Lloyd Marcus (Norman Lloyd), who is trying to pitch Jessica his first novel... uh, a FRIEND's first novel.  During the course of the visit, we meet his terrible daughter (Anne Scheedon), her adulterous husband (Christopher Allport), his jealous other daughter (Andra Millian), and the husband's mistress (Ellen Davis). We wouldn't really miss any of them, and in fact, soon one of them is dead--the victim, it appears, of the town's cat burglar who's been nicking precious paintings for the last year. 

Broken clocks, orphaned suit buttons, and Italian-American kitchen utensils are all part of the crime scene, where Jessica meets this week's detective, Police Chief Cooper (Cliff Gorman). They round up the suspects, from the delightful dandy Binky (John de Lancie) to the clueless mayor and his sharp-tongued wife (Gordon Jump and Audrey Meadows), and, of course, the butler (Aubrey Morris). 

As this sordid burg is further exposed for its secrets, IF THE FRAME FITS shows that even after a full second season of shocks and thrills from MSW, they were saving up for this truly lurid gem of a finale. 

TONIGHT ON MURDER, WROTE, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is heading to New Orleans, so naturally, we're in the midst of Mardi Gras. Viktor and Petra watch and encounter masked religious figures, ambitious Shakespearean wives, and a hot shirtless executioner we'd all give (our) head to. 

Just as the debaucherous party is coming to a frenzied climax, a mob boss (George DiCenzo) ends up dead, and a distant cousin (Peter Bonerz) of Jessica's is in need of her help to clear his name. Jessica must contend with a skeptical investigator (Cesare Danova) with a grudge, a political power couple (Barbara Babcock and Granville Van Dusen), and a staff full of suspects (the bodyguard, Robert Forster, and the mistreated lover, Lisa Langlois). 

As we determine our actual killer, THE PERFECT FOIL is scattered with IOUs, furnadents, sword fights, and letters left on the carpet made of blood. Watch out for who is left-handed, whose stutter appears natural, and keep an ear out for the one actual clue that leads Jessica to her proper conclusions.

When Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) finds herself at a cutthroat charity tennis tournament, it only stands to reason that someone would get blown up and someone else would get stabbed to death. MENACE, ANYONE?

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we are engaged in a rapid-fire noir mystery this side of Hitchcock, DePalma, and Fincher featuring people we thought were dead, people who actually are dead, and the folks who know them. At the center of it all is Carol McDermott (Linda Hamilton), who is just trying to make it in the business called “sport” while tragedy after tragedy strikes her. 

We meet her boss, Van Johnson—whose daughter (Betsy Russell) wants her job—and her supportive boyfriend (Bryan Cranston), as well as two tennis pros who are depicted as just the worst people ever, played by Kelli Maroney and Doug McKeon. But it's not all office backstabbing and tight shorts on the court; we soon have a murder to contend with, and Jessica has her hands full with the hysterical Carol, who may or may not be harboring multiple deep, dark secrets. 

See, Carol might actually be bonkers and the one behind the murder... make that murders... plus, is she concealing a major medical condition that only an 80s detective drama can depict so sensitively?

Is Carol truly crazy, or is someone else behind the mayhem? We WILL find out, but you need to pay attention because SO MUCH is going to happen; even your pod hosts, Viktor and Petra, aren't sure we caught it all. 

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're leaning into the spoilers because the actual episode title is CHRISTOPHER BUNDY - DIED ON SUNDAY. 

The reason behind that enigmatic half-joke of a reference to a children's nursery rhyme aside, we're dipping into the seedy world of adult men's magazine... publishing. Our title character (Bert Convy is back!) is a smut peddler who somehow got the rights to a JB Fletcher short story, and our heroine (Angela Lansbury) isn't taking the matter lying down. 

With her nephew Grady (Michael Horton) in tow, she heads the the mogul's estate where we see him and his desperately unhappy family: a bratty niece (Michelle Nicastro), a sullen nephew (Bobby Di Cicco), and a superglam sister (Carol Lawrence) ready to take the reins of his empire because... well, he dies on Sunday. 

We're further entrenched in suspects on the property: a spurned businessman (Robert Stack, being his most Robert Stack), an assumed faithful bodyguard (Alex Rocco), a suspicious butler (Robert Hooks), and a rising star in girlie-mag pictorials (Katherine Moffat). Whether it was family, foe, or the IRS (jeepers, ANOTHER subplot?), it's up to Jessica and the cop of the week (Robert Costanzo) to solve the killing of the pervy publisher!

Get the drapes, would you?