I saw one of the first shows and Fletcher confronts the killer alone, at night, beside a swimming pool. The killer caves and virtually surrenders to her. I call bullshit. If I was that killer I would have held her head under water in the pool and gone on my merry way. I never watched another episode after that. Too contrived for my money.
It suffered from the small-town syndrome (which is a real problem on TV, with the weekly-ish episodes). And William Windom was mostly wasted as the doc...
It's less of a problem in books, I think, because you're not writing one a week. I have discovered that when I pick up a series set in a small town, with multiple books in print, I have to avoid the temptation to binge-read them (had to do this with Steven Havill's series, for example). Binge buy them, yes. But I then space out the reading.
I hate like heck to have to bring this up again (as I have in several other places ...):
Many people who worked on Murder, She Wrote in a production capacity (including William Link and Peter S. Fischer) have stated for the record that the show had a firm rule that no more than five (5) episodes in any given season were to be set in Cabot Cove. The rest of the time Jessica was on the road, or visiting her multitudinous relatives, or during the last half of the run, New York City, when she got the teaching gig (if I recall correctly, the Rule Of Five held there as well).
If only the reboot had a different title going in, Ms. Lansbury wouldn't have had anything to complain about publicly which poisoned the waters for the new series. I would have enjoyed seeing Octavia Spencer in such a role.
As far as amateur sleuths go, I think Jean Stapleton would've made a better Hildegarde Withers. Eve Arden played Withers in a '70s TV movie; her casting no doubt influenced by her teaching credentials as Our Miss Brooks.
8 comments:
Strangely absent from the list: the fact that you could identify the villain with ten seconds of his/her first appearance.
I saw one of the first shows and Fletcher confronts the killer alone, at night, beside a swimming pool. The killer caves and virtually surrenders to her. I call bullshit. If I was that killer I would have held her head under water in the pool and gone on my merry way. I never watched another episode after that. Too contrived for my money.
It suffered from the small-town syndrome (which is a real problem on TV, with the weekly-ish episodes). And William Windom was mostly wasted as the doc...
A problem I've often worried about, myself.
It's less of a problem in books, I think, because you're not writing one a week. I have discovered that when I pick up a series set in a small town, with multiple books in print, I have to avoid the temptation to binge-read them (had to do this with Steven Havill's series, for example). Binge buy them, yes. But I then space out the reading.
I hate like heck to have to bring this up again (as I have in several other places ...):
Many people who worked on Murder, She Wrote in a production capacity (including William Link and Peter S. Fischer) have stated for the record that the show had a firm rule that no more than five (5) episodes in any given season were to be set in Cabot Cove. The rest of the time Jessica was on the road, or visiting her multitudinous relatives, or during the last half of the run, New York City, when she got the teaching gig (if I recall correctly, the Rule Of Five held there as well).
If only the reboot had a different title going in, Ms. Lansbury wouldn't have had anything to complain about publicly which poisoned the waters for the new series. I would have enjoyed seeing Octavia Spencer in such a role.
As far as amateur sleuths go, I think Jean Stapleton would've made a better Hildegarde Withers. Eve Arden played Withers in a '70s TV movie; her casting no doubt influenced by her teaching credentials as Our Miss Brooks.
Post a Comment