It isn’t every five-time Tony winner and multiple Oscar nominee who is most famous for starring in a CBS mystery procedural. But as the many appreciations that marked her death on Tuesday made clear, Angela Lansbury was in a class by herself, and “Murder, She Wrote” was, all that quaintness notwithstanding, revolutionary.
When Jessica Fletcher first appeared, jogging the streets of Cabot Cove, tapping away on her manual typewriter and putting two and two together in that clear-headed, unsentimental way of hers, no one knew quite what to make of her. Even with “Police Women,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Cagney & Lacey,” female detectives were thin on the ground, never mind female amateur detectives of a certain age.
“Murder, She Wrote” eschewed car chases, gun fights and gruesome corpses; most of its murderers were as ordinary as its main character and usually went quietly when caught.
Even with Lansbury, beloved star of “Mame” and “Sweeney Todd,” stepping into the role, originally offered to Jean Stapleton, CBS considered “Murder, She Wrote” a long shot, snuggling it into the Sunday night berth following “60 Minutes.”
Who on Earth would watch a show about a small-town, New England-based, middle-aged widow who wrote murder mysteries when she wasn’t solving them?
Many, many people, as it turned out. “Murder, She Wrote” came out swinging and went on to become one of the most successful and longest-running shows in the history of television, averaging 30 million viewers in its prime and burning John Addison’s sprightly theme song, with its twiddly piano intro, jolly horns and jaunty strings, into the brains of several generations.
In hindsight, it isn’t surprising at all. (Nor is it the first time television executives have been wrong.)
Almost from the moment of its invention (by Edgar Allan Poe? Wilkie Collins? Arthur Conan Doyle? Debate among yourselves), the murder mystery has been a workhorse of popular fiction. Over the years, its popularity has cycled through film and television. With the almost back-to-back hits of “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Knives Out” (I will draw a veil over “Death on the Nile”), it is currently very much in star-studded vogue on the big screen. “See How They Run” is a murder mystery involving the production of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” the longest-running play in history, and the “Knives Out” sequel, “The Glass Onion,” is one of the fall’s most anticipated films (especially now, since it includes a cameo by Lansbury, in her final performance).
Television may have moved away from the traditional procedural sleuth series in favor of season-long investigations, but never from its love of a good mystery. “Only Murders in the Building” plays with all the iterations of the genre, including the podcast.
“Murder, She Wrote,” created by Peter S. Fisher, Richard Levinson and William Link, premiered in 1984, when streaming did not exist and cable was still a word mostly associated with telephones (Google it.) The show stepped into a template left by the short-lived “Ellery Queen,” and the vacuum left by the more popular “The NBC Mystery Movie,” a wheel series that rotated weekly episodes of “Columbo,” “McCloud” and “McMillan and Wife,” which ended in 1977.
And it was very, very good. Smart, sensible, a bit sassy, very literate and occasionally open to romance, Jessica Fletcher was not rumpled, haunted or conflicted. She was a woman you might know or even be, if only you had her confidence.
Oh sure, the series opens with her nephew swiping a book she had written for the fun of it and getting it published, leaving Fletcher wondering why anyone would want to read it even after it becomes, of course, a best-seller. But by episode three (the pilot is two hours long, broken into two parts), she’s happy to lend a hand whenever Sheriff Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley) finds himself confronted with a murder — and not at all surprised he asked.
Jessica Fletcher was something that is still rare on television: a woman who understands her own worth.
Not in a diva way; far from it. Even as her fame as a writer grows, Jessica refuses to abandon her beloved Cabot Cove. Sure, it becomes the murder capital of the world, but it’s where she takes her jogs, washes her own windows, teaches at the local school and women’s prison, knows everyone. She gets about, visiting friends and family, while fame naturally gives her access to any crime scene, but she always comes home.
Lansbury makes her kind, but not overly emotional. Like Miss Marple before her, she sees the world for what it is, good and bad. She is pained when confronting the murderer (which she often does alone) but never outraged or disgusted. And though comparisons are inevitable (I just made one), she is no Miss Marple.
Both characters have highly rational minds, with a deep understanding of human nature and a sharp eye for detail, but Miss Marple was a bit of a covert agent, using her age and fluffy appearance to travel incognito and disarm potential suspects. Everyone was always surprised when, after a fair amount of disingenuous dithering, she solved even the most complicated problems, often by drawing parallels to her various experiences of village life.
Lansbury’s Jessica, on the other hand, never dithered. She was a force in any room, and solved her mysteries through the simple process of critical thinking and paying attention — particularly to time.
It was fun to try to figure out whodunit, but mostly it was just a joy to watch Lansbury work, particularly among a panoply of guest stars who ranged from Janet Leigh to a very young Joaquin Phoenix.
Conditioned as we are to the cliffhanging demands of the binge model, “Murder, She Wrote,” which is available on Peacock, can seem a bit drawn out, as well as very, very tame even with all the dead bodies. It is far more cerebral than visceral, but the performances are almost always very good (when playing against Lansbury, I would imagine you would bring your A game). One of the last big shows before television began splintering into a million demographics and targeting the younger end, “Murder, She Wrote” was a series the whole family could, and did, watch together.
When, in 1995, CBS fatally moved it to Thursday night against NBC’s “Friends”-led comedy lineup, it proved to be more than the death of a single show; it was the end of an era. “I’m shattered,” Lansbury told the Los Angeles Times when the move was announced.
And so, eventually, would be the traditional model of television.
After “Murder, She Wrote” ended two years later, Lansbury would go on to reprise “Blithe Spirit,” voice Mrs. Potts in “Beauty and the Beast,” take a pie in the face thrown by Emma Thompson in “Nanny McPhee” (because no one else was brave enough to throw a pie at Angela Lansbury) and win an honorary Oscar.
She never did get an Emmy, though, which is insane. But then who needs an Emmy when you’ve won a revolution?
Mary McNamara is a culture columnist and critic for the Los Angeles Times.
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