Customer Reviews

Murder, She Wrote - The Complete Sixth Season

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I adore Murder She Wrote. Unfortunately, in the 6th season there are so many episodes that do not have Jessica involved. She begins each episode she's not in by talking to the audience and sharing a story of a friend but the plot does not include her at all. I'm not sure why (was she ill? did she need a longer break? did she have other commitments?) but without her solving the crime, I'm not interested. If you don't mind episodes without her then you'll enjoy this season. I would return it if I didn't take so long to watch it.

Now here's a surprise. A season of a popular TV show that actually improves on the previous season. It's not that often that this happens, but in the case of "Murder, She Wrote" it did. Season five was a good (though not great) season that didn't have as many great episodes as the previous four seasons. So you can imagine how surprised I was when after viewing all 22 episodes of the sixth season of "Murder, She Wrote", I found it to be one of its best seasons yet.

Angela Lansbury once again does double duty as veteran mystery writer and crime solver Jessica Fletcher, who finds herself caught up in more murder mysteries where after the murders are committed she steps in to find out whodunit. And in the episodes that take place in Mrs. Fletcher's home town of Cabot Cove, William Windom and Ron Masak return as Dr. Seth Hazlitt and Sheriff Mort Metzger, respectively. Windom as always done a fine job on the show, but Masak as turned out to be a delightful surprise. I've always admired the great job that Tom Bosley did throughout the first four seasons of the show as Amos Tupper, the Cabot Cove sheriff during that time. But Masak has been an absolute hoot as Tupper's successor. He's very funny when he reacts to Mrs. Fletcher's observations after a murder is committed, at the point where he thinks he has the case solved, then gets frustrated by Mrs. Fletcher's additional ideas of what she thinks might have happened just so that the case keeps on going ("Mrs. Fletcher, I have a headache!" he says to her in the second episode). Masak was a welcome edition to this show.

There were a lot of terrific guest stars throughout season six. There's a long list of veteran TV and movie stars that show up here so here it goes: Len Cariou ("The Four Seasons"), Bonnie Bartlett ("St. Elsewhere"), John Karlen ("Cagney & Lacey"), Robert Vaughn ("Hustle"), Susan Blakely ("Rich Man, Poor Man"), Ken Howard ("Crossing Jordan"), John Rhys-Davies ("Shogun", "Raiders of the Lost Ark"), Jerry Stiller ("King of Queens"), Gene Barry ("War of the Worlds"), Keir Dullea ("2001: A Space Odyssey"), Holland Taylor ("Two and a Half Men", "The Practice"), Bryan Cranston ("Malcolm in the Middle"), Faith Ford ("Hope and Faith", "Murphy Brown"), Bill Maher ("Politically Incorrect"), Jonathan Brandis ("SeaQuest DSV"), Barry Van Dyke ("Diagnosis Murder"), Genie Francis ("General Hospital"), Brenda Vaccaro ("Midnight Cowboy"), Gavin MacLeod ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show", "The Love Boat"), Donald O'Connor ("Singin' in the Rain"), Diana Canova ("Soap"), Pat Hingle ("Batman"), Shirley Knight ("As Good As It Gets"), Shirley Jones ("The Partridge Family"), Doris Roberts ("Everybody Loves Raymond"), David Warner ("Titanic", "The Omen"), and Diedre Hall ("Days of Our Lives").

Out of the 22 episodes from the sixth season of "Murder, She Wrote", 14 of them I found to be either excellent or outstanding. That's pretty amazing. These 14 episodes are: #1 - Appointment in Athens, #2 - Seal of the Confessional, #4 - The Error of Her Ways, #5 - Jack and Bill, #6 - Dead Letter, #7 - Night of the Tarantula, #8 - When the Fat Lady Sings, #10 - Class Act, #13 - If the Shoe Fits, #16 - The Big Show of 1965, #17 - Murder - According to Maggie, #19 - Always a Thief, #20 - Shear Madness, and #21 - The Szechuan Dragon. I was totally intrigued and entertained by all 14 of these episodes which are some of the best "Murder, She Wrote" episodes ever. If there was one quibble that I had with the sixth season of "Murder, She Wrote", it was the episodes where Jessica Fletcher played the role of storyteller instead of detective. There were eight episodes where Mrs. Fletcher would look straight into the camera and talk about some people that she knew who were involved in bizarre murder investigations themselves, or tell us a story that she wrote. Only four of these episodes were any good ("Jack and Bill", "Class Act", "Murder - According to Maggie", and "Always a Thief"). I'd rather see Jessica Fletcher solving the murders instead of telling us stories. But I imagine the writers wanted to try something different. They first tried this approach with an episode back in season three which worked. But to do this eight times in one season is a bit too much.

Still, "Murder, She Wrote" - season six is one of the best seasons of the show's 12 year run. Now I've seen all the episodes for the entire first half of the show's run, and I've been happy with what I've seen so far. I'm looking forward to viewing season seven and beyond.

It seems inevitable that every TV show, even the great ones, must eventually take a turn for the worse and start going down hill. Season Six appears to point when this happened to "Murder She Wrote". I wouldn't say that "Murder She Wrote" jumped the shark with this season. However, it is just not as good as the previous seasons, largely due to the fact that Jessica (Angela Lansbury) is missing from a substantial number of the episodes.

Although Angela Lansbury technically appears in every episode in this season, in nine of the 22 episodes Lansbury only makes a cameo appearance (usually at the beginning of the episode, as an introduction). Considering the fact that my main reason for watching "Murder She Wrote" is because I like the character of Jessica Fletcher, I found these episodes to be inferior to the point where I started skipping them towards the end of the season. The detectives were never up to the same standard as Jessica.

I am not sure whether the disappearance of Lansbury was due to a temporary illness during the making of this season (a similar thing happened in one season of "Hercules") or because by this point Lansbury was getting too old to keep up with the filming schedule. However, I hope that it was just a temporary thing, since it would be awful if this continued on into the later seasons of this otherwise enjoyable show.

About half of the episodes are pathetic experiments with unknown detectives (no Jessica), where the producers tried out new show formats.

***Don't buy this season!!!!***

I'm a big fan of Murder, She Wrote. However, this season was a real let down. Usually, Jessica is the sleuth but in this season, she either tells us a story, reads a letter and in one case was out of town and she called home periodically. I don't like this and I didn't even finish the last episode. Enough is enough. I really hope this isn't some new trend because I'll stop shelling out $40 bucks a season.

Plan on buying the whole 12 seasons as it is nice to have such
a good wholesome show to watch....the DVDs are very clear, making
it very enjoyable to watch....thank you for making them available.

After Lansbury's initial five-year contract with CBS-TV, she was ready to pack it in and walk away from a hit show and the character that had made her a TV star. The problem: the workload was, at times, too much to bear. As evidence, one episode took the cast and crew seven days to complete, which, for Lansbury, amounted to eighteen hour workdays on set; sometimes even longer.

In fact, it has been said by Lansbury herself that at the beginning of the show (season one), she wasn't sure that she could work in the allotted time that was given to film an episode. She fought for eight work days in which to complete an episode, which, by CBS standards, was not permitted. Lansbury won out the offer, however, and the star continued with the show.

Now, with a reprieve in sight, Lansbury would only star in fourteen of the twenty-two episodes comprised in season sixth. Fans of the show sounded off: they felt cheated that Jessica Fletcher would only narrate the beginning and ending of a handful of episodes. However, Lansbury's absence from the show would allow her to work on other TV projects ("Mrs. Santa Claus").

Keith Michell would play jewelry thief/detective Dennis Stanton in most of the non-Jessica Fletcher capers. And they were fun to watch. Michell is a wonderful actor and a great addition to the cast of the sixth season.

Episodes include:

1)"Appointment in Athens" (Athens Greece; Paris France)
2)"Seal of the Confession" (Cabot Cove, Maine)
3)"The Grand Old Lady"--non-Jessica Fletcher episode (New York City)
4)"The Error of Her Ways" (Palm Springs, California)
5)"Jack and Bill" --non-Jessica Fletcher episode (Los Angeles, California)
6)"Dead Letter" (Cabot Cove, Maine)
7)"Night of the Tarantula (Jamaica in the Caribbean)
8)"When the Fat Lady Sings" --non-Jessica Fletcher episode (San Francisco, California)
9)"Test of Wills" (Mount Tyler, a private island)
10)"Class Act" --non-Jessica Fletcher episode (Los Angeles, California; Sacramento, California)
11)"Town Father" (Cabot Cove, Maine)
12)"Good bye Charlie" --non-Jessica Fletcher episode (Hollywood, California; Huckabee, Nevada)
13)"If the Shoe Fits" (Cabot Cove, Maine)
14)"How to Make a Killing Without Really Trying" (New York City)
15)"The Fixer-Upper" (Los Angeles, California)
16)"The Big Show of 1965" (New York City)
17)"Murder--According to Maggie" --non-Jessica Fletcher episode (Los Angeles, California)
18)"O' Mallery's Luck" --non-Jessica Fletcher episode (New York City)
19)"Always a Thief" --non-Jessica Fletcher episode (San Francisco, California)
20)"Shear Madness" (Fairville, Texas)
21)"The Szechuan Dragon" (Cabot Cove, Maine; New York City)
22)"The Sicilian Encounter" --non-Jessica Fletcher episode (Geneva, Switzerland; Palermo, Sicily)

T.B. Grant
8/1/10

It's wonderful to have this available. I used to watch the shows on TV like clockwork, even set my time by them. Now I just insert the DVD and there they are. Wonderful!

I was really excited to buy this season, but it did not really met my expectations. Many of the episodes were "introduced" by Jessica. The third disc has reruns of other episods. I was really disapointed.

I love this series and Angela Lansbury as BJ Fletcher is a great actor. However, now I remember from the original showing that in the later years she did not appear in about one third of the season's shows. Once again on the DVD about one third of the series does not have her in them and they tend to be weak without this great presence. The ones with her in it are 5 star.