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), an...

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 wi...

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 (Do...

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...

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 th...

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 Mi...

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 c...

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 trag...

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 wh...

We return to Cabot Cove, and even we're a little surprised there's a coffin so quickly.  But what really shakes things up is when that coffin is opened most indelicately —it contains the wrong corpse!

So much mayhem ensues, with blueberry stains and lead pipes and oddly formative burial sites in tow.  It's IF A BODY MEETS A BODY, a Jessica Fletcher mystery that brings our tenacious investigator (Angela Lansbury) into the business of all her neighbors, with the local doctor (William Windom) and the sheriff (Tom Bosley) looking for the missing dead(?) man and a whole lot...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we enter the sordid setting of... the auction house. 

In a somewhat chilling depiction of our culture's obsession with celebrity, even after (especially after?) death, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is tasked with being the highest bidder for a scandalous smut rag of a diary from a recently deceased starlet. When several more people end up dead, one has to assume it's pretty juicy. 

Harry McGraw (Jerry Orbach) is back with Jessica, seeking out the most likely suspects, which include a neurotic psychiatrist (Karen Black), an opportunistic film producer (Nancy Lee Gr...

TONIGHT, ON MURDER SHE WROTE, we're going to take you to church.

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is mid-visit with her old teacher Carrie McKittrick (Mildred Natwick) when the vultures descend; her opportunistic step-son (Richard Herd) and grandson (Art Hindle) express their outrage that the family money is going to the charismatic Reverend Willie John Fargo (Steve Forrest), who preaches over the airwaves.  Carrie becomes conveniently ill and dies; the family contends the motivation behind her healthcare was more than Christian charity and accuses the Reverend and his hospital staff of foul play.  

Jessica is the on...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we head to Alabama for a cozy mystery full of nooses, hobo fires, multiple stab wounds, pointy bullets, vigilantism, racial bias, and infidelity. 

It's a doozy this week as Viktor and Petra deconstruct one of the least "fun" episodes of the season, but it's not without merit and satisfying performances from multiple guest stars, particularly from Pat Corley and Dorian Harewood. 

When Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) joins a friend (Craig Stevens) to "happenstance" visit an old flame, it quickly becomes apparent that more is going on in this small town th...

This week, we encourage you to KEEP THE HOME FRIES BURNING as you take a little time to gorge on some good old-fashioned cooking... and leave room for MURDER. 

Noted "crisis hound" Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) joins Sheriff  Tupper (Tom Bosley), Dr. Seth Hazlitt (William Windom), and no-nonsense health inspector Margo Perry (Anne Francis) to determine the cause of sickness and death at a local eatery one morning, and the suspects are many. 

Two women traveling together (Sharon Adler and Marcia Ross) visit Cabot Cove's hideous Americana eatery and fall victim to what appears to be...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're going behind the scenes of a murder trial. Join Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) as she incongruously takes the role of jury foreperson and weighs the evidence with her fellow eleven jurors, including Vicki Lawrence (Mama's Family), Allan Miller, Richard Sanders, Arlene Golonka, and more faces that you've seen all over 80s and 90s TV.

Tony Bill is Mark Lee Reynolds, and he is having the worst night ever: accused of killing a one-night stand's husband the same night his own wife dies of car accident injuries.  Did he do it alone?  Wa...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're back in New York for the celebration of Lila Lee Cosmetics' annual gathering, and things aren't going well. 

The no-nonsense Lila Lee Amberson (a particularly great Jayne Meadows Allen) is stressing out about the photographer using the wrong shade of lipstick in his shots, making sure all the Lila Lee Ladies are in uniform and get their choreography correct, and cutting down anyone who stands in her way. 

Her partner and brother Norman (Robert Culp) is distracted by a woman she finds beneath him (and she's... been beneath a fe...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, this MURDER DIGS DEEP!

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is doing research for an upcoming novel set during an archaeological dig, and her bud, Dr. Seth Hazlitt (William Windom), is an amateur dig enthusiast, so she joins him in The Land of Enchantment.  As it happens, this whole affair is a sham, full of opportunistic gold hunters, Indigenous identity fraudsters, possible ghosts, and horny grad students.

Wealthy douchebag Gideon Armstrong (Robert Vaughn) is joined by shifty professor Dr. Stan Garfield (David Groh) and grandiose blowhard Dr. Aubrey Benton (George Grizzard) to u...

Things are getting spicy TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE.  The town of Cabot Cove is flooded with suggestive letters about affairs, fraud, arson, and more, and it's up to Sheriff Harry Pearce (John Astin) to uncover the truth from the lies!

Wait, who?  The real estate guy, Harry Pearce, is the sheriff now?! What is going on? Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley) attempts retirement and hands the badge to Gomez Addams here just in time for chaos to consume the mail slots of every resident. 

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) makes efforts to help solve the flood of...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE: Jessica is getting put in the slammer! 

When murder mystery writer and former English teacher Jessica Fletcher is tapped to fill in for a friend at the local maximum security prison for women, all hell breaks loose when a body is discovered, leading to a lockdown and hostage situation. 

The warden (Psycho's Vera Miles) is the prisoners' main suspect, and well-liked inmate Mary (Linda Kelsey) is the staff's and Jessica needs to figure out if either of them done it or someone else might get killed... well, someone else other th...

And weeeeeeee're off to the races TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE! Place your bets* on the killer of the week or on our favorite dirty nose* Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), persistent meddler and murder mystery writer who this week is at the track to help exonerate yet another family member, this time niece Tracy (Linda Grovenor). 

Detective of the week Misko (Roy Thinnes in a stupid hat) joins Jessica to determine who's behind the murder, centered around Anchors Away, a 20-to-1. The usual jockey, Carlos Gallegos (Bert Rosario), gets replaced by Tracy at the last minute, a m...

TONIGHT ON MURDER SHE, WROTE, we are heading for a restful jaunt to a local lake resort to enjoy the company of new friends, get in some nature walks, and catch up on our sun.  Oh, sorry, no. This one has dead bodies, lascivious affairs with the staff, fugitives, mental abuse between spouses, and naked women running in the woods. Bring your binoculars because things are about to go down. 

Intrepid murder mystery writer Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is persuaded by a friend in real estate (John Astin) to visit this perilous cabin in the woods. We ge...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, are you ready to face your REFLECTIONS OF THE MIND?! The music boxes are going off on their own, ghastly visages of mutilated bodies are in the bathroom, and the canaries are of uncertain vintage. 

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is a noted mystery writer who has scads of friends and family members who find themselves in trouble. This time around, she's visiting the hysterical (the freaking out kind, not funny kind) pal Francesca Lodge (Ann Blyth), who's convinced someone is sneaking around her house, and who's to say she's wrong?

S...

SING A SONG OF MURDER features our most illustrious special guest star yet: Angela Lansbury herself!

We meet Jessica Fletcher's English cousin Emma MacGill, headliner of the Mayhew Music Hall, which is only filling at partial capacity these days. Her co-star, Shakespearean actor turned terrible vaudevillian comic, Oliver Trumbull (Patrick Macnee), is of no help in getting folks in the seats, and his daughter, Kitty (Olivia Hussey), is hoping he sees the light and goes legit. She spends most of the time yelling his name; buckle in.  

Her business partners, the Weems (Sarah Douglas and Ken...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE we're goin' back to school where the teachers are all sluts who are lying to each other, the typewriters are ever so distinctive, and the train station attendant is just out to mess with you. 

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), noted mystery writer and murder solver, has been asked to speak at the commencement for Grenshaw College. She is quickly witness to the extracurricular activities of the faculty, made up of professors who are either sleeping with each other or utterly shocked at the notion that they're sleeping with each other. Things get w...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're gettin' soapy.

Anyone alive in the '80s knows that we were an American culture obsessed with bitchy women in shoulder pads duking it out and saying nasty things to each other in the world of soap operas.  We meet a cast of actors who either want job security or want to be off the series, and no one is getting what they want.  Villainous writer Joyce Holleran (THE Jessica Walter) is making massive changes to the series OUR SECRET LIVES, and TV characters are getting killed off left and right by...

When is it a good idea to lie to the FBI? We may learn TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE! 

This week, we return to Cabot Cove just as a skeleton is unearthed on the construction site of a controversial hotel project. When the body is a likely candidate for either the town's revolutionary hero Joshua Peabody, some rando who liked reenactments, or this week's local good guy with a shameful secret, it's up to local celebrity busybody Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) to lead the case. 

The town is appropriately aghast when the hotel project's opportunistic bu...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, let's go on a vacation... of death!

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is undercover at the resort where a dear friend has been murdered, and she's determined to find the culprit.  Along the way, she finds the dashing Michael Haggarty (Len Cariou) who seems to know more than he's letting on, the suspicious hotel security (Howard Hesseman), the cornfed midwest darling schoolteacher Veronica Harrold (Anne Lockhart), the hotel manager Eric Brahm (Mel Ferrer), and the fabulous Ms. Alva Crane (Mary Wickes), who's after what we're all after: the man in the tight pants wit...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE: We are stretching, candlelit bathing, and taking time for ourselves between jaunts on our bikes and bouts of on-land swimming. That's right, folks, get your peach onesie because we're exploring Angela Lansbury's POSITIVE MOVES.  

This landmark in celebrity lifestyle, wellbeing, and fitness videotape is full of advice for the mah-tour, sexual, and active woman. Viktor and Petra are going to do their best to keep up in this bonus episode as we cap our season 1 of MURDER SHE WROTE. 

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, it's a full-season review with Viktor and Petra to share the highs and lows of our first year of Jessica Fletcher, the denizens of Cabot Cove, and the many people who live and die in and around it. 

In this special edition of the pod, revisit the hot guys, thrilling locales, sizzling action sequences, our favorite one-scene wonders, the most deserving to get bumped off, and more. 

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE hits our first season finale: FUNERAL AT FIFTY-MILE, and we're super excited even if this one is kinda a downer!

We head west with Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) to Wyoming to meet a whole bunch of guys and one lil' lady they're all dead set on protecting within an inch of her agency.  Mary Carver (Kathleen Beller) is mourning the loss of her father and is further blindsided when old town crumb bum Carl Mestin (Clu Gulager) and his sexy broad of a ladyfriend, Sally (Stella Stevens) blow in to let her k...

It's a family affair TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE. 

Acclaimed but total douche Johnny Shannon (Ed Ames) is found dead, and the suspects are mostly all related to him: the sultry ex-wife (Piper Laurie), the sensitive son (Joseph Bottoms), and the promiscuous daughter (Linda Purl) all make good cases as they are used and abused. 

Instead, let's also consider the help: the devoted but goofy guy Friday (Joey Bishop), the hothead goon who doubles as a chauffeur (Jack O'Halloran), or maybe it's the thorn in Johnny's side in the form of opportunist tennis lothario (Joseph Ca...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, nothing can keep Jessica Fletcher from meddling - not even a fractured ankle! JB Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is on the scene in a Texan private hospital where the doctors hate each other, the nurses wear false eyelashes, and the patients are comedy legends. Why, yes, we'd love to spend a weekend. 

Naturally, someone everyone seems to hate is murdered (Stephen Elliot), and the question is, who wouldn't? The suspect list is surprisingly sparse and is largely made up of the staff (Sam Groom and Martin Kove as battling MDs; Kay Lenz and S...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're in the scariest place ever: public transportation. 

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) and Sheriff Tupper (Tom Bosley) are heading to Portland with a busload of criminals and curios in a heavy rainstorm. When a recently released prison inmate (John Davis Chandler) is murdered while on board, they'll need to figure out who had a motive and who is just along for the ride. 

Soon we're off the road and in a coffee shop diner full of intrigue, misdirection, mysterious detective novels, the wrong kind of sailor knots, and ill-timed power ou...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we keep misplacing our umbrellas, eyeglasses, and manuscripts. 

Famed writer who might not have it anymore, Hemsley Post (Kenneth Mars) ends up dead after a posh NYC literary awards gala, and the suspects are multiple. We have, of course:

- The Wife (Diana Muldaur)
- The Guy Whose Book He Stole (Vincent Baggetta)
- The Sexy Opportunistic Editor (Morgan Brittany)
- The Lush of a Poet (Paul Sand)
- The Bitchy Queen Novelist Rival (Rex Reed)
- The Ambitious, Aspiring Amateur (Talia Balsam) 
- an...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're going into SUDDEN DEATH. 

In a bizarre turn of events, mystery novelist and busybody with a high success rate, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), inherits 4% of a football team, and everyone wants her share. 

However, things get complicated when one of the primary shareholders that no one likes (Allan Miller) is found dead in a jacuzzi after a team and staff get-together, and now everyone is once again a suspect. 

Naturally, we have the wife (Elizabeth Savage), the other shareholder and coach (Warren Berlinger), the noble injured player wit...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, the TOUGH GUYS DON'T DIE... until they do. 

Famed mystery novel author Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is researching a tragic crime from years earlier when her private detective researcher (Floyd Levine) turns up dead. She suspects it might be her case that led to him being targeted, but he was also working on two other cases, so the suspects are threefold. 

Was it the ambitious businesswoman Priscilla Daniels (Barbara Babcock) who is thought to be angling for political office with a scandal over her head, or her husband (John McMartin) out...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, Angela Lansbury is coming in via helicopter. 

Distinguished painter Diego (the iconic Cesar Romero) is under siege by one of his Mediterranean island guests during his worst birthday party ever. Among the suspects: it might be his awfully young bride (Cristina Raines), his fabulous but arthritic ex-wife (Capucine), a philanthropic do-gooder (Judy Geeson), his handsome son (Fernando Allende), the art gallery owner (Stewart Granger), or maybe it's Robert Goulet. 

Inspector Henry Kyle (Ron Moody) is on the case, examining discarded cigarettes and determining who pulls matches with which hand. Naturally, Jes...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're feeling very Brian De Palma neo-noir. 

Writer and sleuth Jessica (Angela Lansbury) joins her niece, Pamela (Belinda Montgomery), who is suffering from major PTSD after her husband, Johnny, has died, so they go on a girls' weekend cruise to get her nerves right. 

You see, the husband just couldn't cope with his being... adopted? Really? That's the scandal that led to him taking his life? Ok, well, apparently that was too much for him, and now his birth mother might be back to torment Pamela into joining him in th...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're in New Orleans, everyone!  Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is in town with a few days to kill... and someone's about to!

Legendary clarinet player Ben Coleman (Glynn Turman) collapses during a spirited party where everyone is mad at him. It might be someone in the band, his trusted confidante (Stan Shaw), his manager (Cameron Mitchell), or his jilted lover (the incredible Olivia Cole) who knows his terrible secret... or is it someone else entirely? And what does it have to do with a fired morning chat show host (Clive Revill)?! 
Duration: 01:03:00

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're putting on a show! And it's all very Judy Garland-coded. 

Mystery novelist and always there at the wrong time Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is summoned to Boston by her nephew Grady (Michael Horton), who's part of the team bringing up-and-coming talent Patti Bristol (Lorna Luft), and her mother, legend Rita (Vivian Blaine), in their joint-starring production in rehearsals before it heads to the Great White Way. 

When Patti and her brother Barry (Gregg Henry) are caught off guard in a mugging incident that lands Patti in critical condition and th...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're heading to the illustrious and captivating setting of... Congress?! 

Somehow, some way, JB Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) finds herself as a temporary statesperson for Maine. And no one shall be seated during the thrilling discussion of bureaucratic protocol... but there's also a murder to solve. 

When the eyewitness to an unseemly cover-up involving DC politicians winds up beaten and dead, the suspects are all wearing suits. It might be legislators Mitchell Ryan, Nicholas Pryor, or Stephan Mach, or maybe it's Jessica's spunky secretary (Linda Kelsey) or lobbyist Mark Shera... Get yo...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we head to a Lake Tahoe casino to witness the flabbergasting powers of The Great Calamari... the Great Castellaneta... the Great Caligari... (what?) oh, The Great Cagliostro! This master of hypnosis is our victim for DEATH CASTS A SPELL.

In front of hypnotized witnesses, the Great Cag-- uh, the hypnotist (José Ferrer) in question is found dead in his hotel room after a demonstration for members of the press.  A shattered pane of glass makes one think it could've been a murderer via the balcony.  Professional busybody and mystery writer Jessica Fletcher (Ang...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE we--BAN THE BALLET--excuse us, we're having an interruption from the wings.  Anyway, what we have to see--BAN THE BALLET!--Ok look, we're trying to have a lovely little slice of culture over here. 

We and Jessica (Angela Lansbury) head to Boston to check out some Soviet dancers prance about; and our anti-ballet activist Velma Rodecker (Jessica Nelson) is having none of it, decrying the communist influence brought on by this treasured artform in 1984 counter-revolutionary America. 

Indeed, the Cold War is heating up in this episode, DEATH TAKES A CURTAIN CALL, par...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we try to solve a variation on the classic murder made behind a door, locked from the inside! 

The Worst Person Ever this week comes in the form of theme park owner and total maniac "Horrible" Horatio (James Coco), who tries to strongarm Jessica (Angela Lansbury) into... writing a story for his next attraction? We don't know; it's not important. What's important is now he's dead! And we're not hurting for suspects. 

There's the dreamy but unseemly engineer (Kristoffer Tabori), the gruff Swede (Gene Evans), the former showgirl widow (Christine Be...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, it's Jessica versus... the brake pedal! 

A driverless car creates mayhem at a Cabot Cove picnic, and it takes the combined forces of Sherrif Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley), Captain Ethan Cragg (Claude Akins), and mystery writer Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) to figure it out. 

When the car sends one man into the hospital, another to the morgue, and our heroine careening towards a cliff, the suspect is naturally the town's eccentric gadgeteer, Van Johnson (Hollywood pretty boy and famously closeted icon, with just the darkest eyelash line).

We al...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, Jessica faces one of her toughest antagonists: stairs. Oh, and a pretty boy secretary who may be trying to kill her. You know how it is.

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is tasked with a lecture at a prestigious Washington state university where she also happens to need a typist; she encounters this dreamy-eyed co-ed David Tolliver (Andrew Stevens), already a suspect in the death of a purported older woman lover.  The body's barely cold, and he seems to have set his sights on his new employer, and he has more on his mind...

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, Jessica is investigating the death of the fox-hunting Virginian patriarch of the worst family ever, which she refuses to believe is an accident. 

She might be right, as the greedy children (the deadwood, the kook, the lush) are shocked to learn they've been passed over for his inheritance. The actual beneficiary? The family dog Teddy; and they are all peeved as hell.  Chaos is amplified when an unexpected decapitation(!) in the second act points the finger squarely at Teddy. (It'll make sense when it happens, sort of.) 

Could the darling poo...

Jessica Fletcher is going to Hollywood to try to stop her first novel, The Corpse Danced At Midnight, from being turned into a grotesque, tacky movie set in a roller disco graveyard! And she is super pissed. 

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, someone's killed off the douche movie producer!  Was it his current (somewhat age-inappropriate) lover, the ingenue actress?  Her new secret lover,  the hunky lead of the picture?  His ex-lover, the costume designer, who is giving her best Redgrave impression?  The unscrupulous movie director who looks an awful lot like Gomez Addams? The script writer?  Elinor?! Or, is it...

We are meeting one of Jessica's many relatives, niece Victoria (Genie Francis) in San Francisco TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE. She shares her concerns with Aunt Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) that the groom-to-be Howard (Jeff Conaway of Taxi and Grease) might be seeing another woman. But, surprise! HE is the other woman!  

Yes, naturally the lipstick on his collar is his own, as Howard is a female impersonator at Les Champignons, a cabaret run by Martin Landau.  A surprisingly heterosexual mystery solved only leads to another heterosexual mystery to resolve: who killed the boss if not the fianc...

We are back in Cabot Cove TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, and the weather is stormy! Viktor and Petra take on the recap of a three (four?) sisters' plot this side of King Lear.  Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is feeling some kinda way when she arrives home to a stranger who's taken it upon himself to trim her hedges...in exchange for breakfast!  Find out about the man missing, the one who's washed ashore, and our illustrious guest handyman (and if they're all the same person!).  Will this mystery man be competition for Claude Akins as yet another crusty man...

On our inaugural episode of TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, Viktor and Petra explore the double premiere episode, THE MURDER OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.  This venture will have a long-lasting impact on the rest of the series (and its episode count) as it introduces small-town retired English teacher Jessica Fletcher and follows her meteoric rise to fame as a murder mystery writer.  We meet the enemy that is the press, Jessica's well-meaning but utterly useless nephew Grady, and the underused force that is Agnes Peabody, and attend the most incongruous masquerade party featuring some of the worst guests possible, all un...