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Murder, She Wrote
1984 · TV series · 45 min episodes · 12 seasons
Created by Richard Levinson, William Link, Peter S. Fischer
An unassuming mystery writer turned sleuth uses her professional insight to help solve real-life homicide cases.
3 positive7 neutralfrom 10 commenters
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13 comments on Hacker News
Don't forget the Murder, She Wrote episode "A Virtual Murder" (from 1993):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0653453/
Very, very little of YouTube infringes copyright. The content that you think is infringing copyright has in fact been licensed and monetized by the copyright holders. YouTube will often permit uploaders to keep their copyrighted content; the automated fingerprinting systems recognize it and notify the copyright holders, and ask, "what do you wanna do?" and often, the answer is to keep it, and give us the proceeds.
Likewise, there is plenty of fair use content. I've watched tons of "film and TV critic" type channels, where your gracious hostess will sit through, say, an entire half-hour episode of "Murder, She Wrote" and she adds her commentary and snarky jokes to the soundtrack. But the copyrighted episode itself is reproduced nearly in its entirety. There is an entire industry built on this fair use content. They need to carefully observe the guidelines or they'll get strikes, but it's definitely a doable thing, and they can indeed monetize those videos for themselves.
The top 5 scripted TV shows in 1992 were Roseanne, Home Improvement, Murphy Brown, Murder She Wrote, and Coach. The only show in top 30 that I would say was any good is Seinfeld.
Today, broadcast TV seems to be mostly procedurals and cable TV is mostly reality. If you like sitcoms, there has definitely been a dropoff since those have lost popularity.
Streaming is where can find the good TV shows. Remember, 1992 is before HBO started making good dramas and those were pretty rare before then. The big advantage of streaming is the variety, there are a bunch of mediocre shows in genres that barely existed before.
I just finished watching Derry Girls on Netflix, a comedy set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. I would rather watch the 18 episodes of that than any amount of 90s sitcoms.
Murder She Wrote was well ahead of the times - I actually remember watching this episode back in the day, and it prompted all sorts of questions back then. Like some people commenting here, I thought back then we'd have fully immersive haptic VR in 10 years or so. Things I didn't think we'd have is nearly HD virtual screens in VR, in my head things would have been still blocky but interesting. I'm not sure if I've become more pessimestic, but I can't see the Metaverse thing coming out in 10 years from now!
Me too, I spent a month in hospital last year and the fact that 4 different channels showed Murder She Wrote at different times during the day definitely helped get me through it.
This was one of the episodes I remember more clearly and I remember it was pretty good although it's fair to say I was on a lot of drugs so my review is probably not entirely trustworthy.
I’ve seen this episode recently. Murder She Wrote is one of my guilty pleasures.
To go a bit on a tangent: I love TV shows where it really is shot where it is set, and the location is a big part of the show.
Examples: Magnum P.I. (Hawaii); Miami Vice (Miami); The Equalizer (NYC). Where re(make)(boot)s exist, I'm talking about the originals.
On the other hand, it can be a little annoying when, e.g. in The Good Wife, NYC is standing in for Chicago.
On a third hand, I love how Murder, She Wrote represents many different places with the same backlot sets, throwing in bits of stock or second unit establishing shots.
I was once home sick from work and watching daytime TV between naps on the sofa. After I'd been watching an episode of Columbo for about three hours I realised it was actually an episode of Columbo, Diagnosis Murder, and Murder She Wrote (I think) consecutively with a few common bit-part actors and I'd nodded off between them :)
Edit: I remember it as being Dick van Dyck in all of them, but it was a long time ago and that seems unlikely!
Of course, in Star Trek different make-up can make it harder to spot. For example, James Sloyan ( https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/James_Sloyan ), who also appears in multiple Murder, She Wrote episodes, both as different characters and as the same recurring character!
There are a lot of long-running TV shows where the same guest actor appears in more than one episode playing different characters. Murder, She Wrote is a good example of this. "Now, where have I seen that actor before? ... Oh, in a previous episode of this same show." Seeing through the illusion often enhances my enjoyment, actually.
I don't know if this is realistic in any way, but I've seen lots of Murder, She Wrote episodes where the criminal only gets caught because they become involved in the investigation some way and accidentally reveal knowledge that only the attacker could possibly know. This strategy necessitates hiding secret information so it can be revealed later by the attacker.
> For example, about 20 million people tuned in to watch the first episode of the latest season of hit show Game of Thrones.
> It was one of the most-watched non-sporting events in TV history.
This is not even close to true.
Nearly 17 million people watched the Murder She Wrote finale in 1996. In the 1970s, each year, the highest rated episodes of All In The Family were consistently over 20 million. Seinfeld had 35 million once. 60 minutes has gone over 20 million many times.
Grace Under Fire, a mediocre sitcom most people here have never heard of, averaged about 20 million viewers for a full season in the mid 1990s.
I love when TV writers act like TV didn’t exist before The Sopranos.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_States
My granny is afraid to watch the Inspector Wexford (like Murder She Wrote without the sex and violence) DVD from the library
A BBC dective (none) drama aimed at little old ladies that shows a "you are a criminal funding terrorists and drug dealers" commercial after each episode. She thinks the DVD player knows about something she has done!
It also slightly confuses me how DVD piracy 'funds' drug dealing - I wouldn't have thought that drug dealing was a cost center?