{"id":23141,"date":"2019-06-01T00:01:05","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T06:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=23141"},"modified":"2019-05-31T23:30:29","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T05:30:29","slug":"telefilm-review-murder-she-wrote-the-murder-of-sherlock-holmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/telefilm-review-murder-she-wrote-the-murder-of-sherlock-holmes\/","title":{"rendered":"Telefilm Review: Murder She Wrote: &#8220;The Murder of Sherlock Holmes&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=adamsblog03-20&amp;language=en_US&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B07Q6NHKHY&amp;asins=B07Q6NHKHY&amp;linkId=89e8b7340fd79e05429b097d248f1ca5&amp;show_border=false&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=false\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe Murder of Sherlock Holmes\u201d is the premiere double-length episode of <em>Murder She Wrote<\/em> that aired on September 30, 1984 which ran for twelve seasons and was one of the most beloved mystery series&#8217; of all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this first episode, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is a widowed substitute school teacher living in the&nbsp;town of Cabot Cove, Maine. She writes a mystery novel in her spare time that she only shows to family. Her nephew (Michael Horton) takes the unpolished manuscript to a publisher friend in New York and it is published and climbs to #2 on the New York Times Best-Seller list, giving her instant fame. This requires that Lansbury be extra likable in order to win over those of us who have revised countless times and received more rejection letters than we have fingers and toes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However,&nbsp;quick success has its price as she is subjected to the most insipid series of television interviews an author has ever had to endure, including an interview by the worst person in the world, who spoils the ending of Jessica\u2019s book on national television. She\u2019s had about enough of this when her publisher (Arthur Hill) offers her a trip to the country to spend time with his friends. &nbsp;It\u2019s at this party that she begins her streak of finding a body nearly everywhere she shows up as a man in a Sherlock Holmes costume is found murdered in the swimming pool<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What\u2019s Good :<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve seen half a dozen episodes of <em>Murder She Wrote <\/em>at most and these were later episodes where Jessica took every dead body in stride and is used to being a world famous mystery writer. &nbsp;Don\u2019t get me wrong, she was in no way arrogant, but she was quite accustomed to a strange life of finding dead bodies in between writing massively successful mystery books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a different performance by Lansbury as this tells the story of how Jessica was plucked from obscurity to become an overnight mystery-writing sensation. After nearly 60 years on Earth, she finds herself have to deal with New York City, and then she gets thrust into a murder investigation when her nephew is suspected of the crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She has the raw detective skills but begins her career believably out of her element and over her head. However, she pushes ahead with her basic skills and pure grit and determination. At the same time, she\u2019s likable throughout. If you don\u2019t have someone like Jessica Fletcher in your family, then you certainly wish you did. She\u2019s kindly, wise, and caring about people around her.&nbsp; She\u2019s great at building rapport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s also a romance angle to the story, where she and her publisher start to fall for each other. She finds it all way too fast and it\u2019s a believable reaction.&nbsp; The gentle sparks between them&nbsp;is a good example of how romance can work with an older couple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The guest cast is solid and professional including veterans Brian Keith, who is great as the crusty fast seafood king \u201cCaptain\u201d Caleb McCallum and Anne Francis as his alcoholic wife Louise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another aspect of the production I enjoyed was the costumes\nat the costume party. They were perfect for the occasion. The costumes didn\u2019t\nlook like rentals from a costume story or like they were from a new Broadway\nmusical.&nbsp; Rather they\u2019re tasteful and\nclassy costumes that look just like what would be worn at an upper class party.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also loved the final confrontation scene. There\u2019s so much going on and Jessica is in real danger and you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen. It\u2019s also got more emotional stakes than is typically at stake in these sort of stories. You wonder what the killer is going to do right up until the last moment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What Doesn\u2019t Work:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While much of the first twenty-five minutes served to introduce Jessica as a character before she got to the party, I did feel like portions of this dragged and this could have been better paced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ned Beatty plays the Chief of Police of the small town where the murder occurred. Beatty tries to play him as being smarter than he looks or initially acts, even though he\u2019s not at Jessica\u2019s level. The script works against him, so it\u2019s a bit of an uneven performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The execution of some scenes in Jessica\u2019s investigation were a little off. She supposedly was breaking and entering into her nephew\u2019s office to investigate another suspect but it seemed like she walked through an open door along with her nephew, so what was the problem? &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, there was a scene where Jessica was mugged and I noticed they used a stuntman with a wig for the rough part. I was also confused as to the point of the scene. She\u2019s exculpated from the situation by someone who isn\u2019t involved in the mystery and doesn\u2019t become involved in the case. He\u2019s just a random person who read her book. &nbsp;They added to the power of published authors that they get devoted fans who risk their lives fighting off muggers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s a scene in a theater and it\u2019s an incredibly\ncheap-looking set. Its cheapness undermines a key plot point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ending scene where Jessica is leaving and the police want her to stay in New York and investigate a strange murder is excessively silly. And I write that as someone with a high tolerance for silly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Overall:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No good TV series reaches its full potential in its first episode. <em>Murder She Wrote <\/em>is no exception. Parts of this story are a bit rough.&nbsp; The pilot was written in an open-ended way that could allow it to lead to a TV series or, if that failed, it would at least be a good mystery movie of the week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thankfully, <em>Murder She Wrote<\/em> did become a TV series, thanks to Lansbury, whose likable and energetic performance makes this more than a movie of the week with a standard mystery plot and a few minor flaws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By no means, is \u201cThe Murder of Sherlock Holmes\u201d <em>Murder She Wrote <\/em>at its best but its Jessica Fletcher\u2019s origin story and thus its worth viewing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rating : 3.5 out of 5<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>If you enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B004U8SET2\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=adamsblog03-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B004U8SET2\">automatically to your Kindle<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This post contains affiliate links, which means that items \npurchased from these links may result in a commission being paid to the \nauthor of this post at no extra cost to the purchase<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Share this:<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe Murder of Sherlock Holmes\u201d is the premiere double-length episode of Murder She Wrote that aired on September 30, 1984 which ran for twelve seasons and was one of the most beloved mystery series&#8217; of all time. In this first episode, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is a widowed substitute school teacher living in the&nbsp;town of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-golden-age-article","category-telefilm-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-61f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23141"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23179,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23141\/revisions\/23179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}