When the magnificent Angela Lansbury died last week, at the age of 96, I could suddenly relate to the outpourings of grief about the queen of England. For Jessica Fletcher is my queen, and, in my mourning weeds, I settled in to watch an episode of Murder, She Wrote. This aired on TG4 at 1.15am on Monday and not, as befits her stature, throughout the week on all stations instead of the news.
Jessica Fletcher is a child-free, middle-aged writer who is having the time of her life, and she is my role model. Her hair is a golden cloud. Her warm smile can give way to a judgmental frown when appropriate. She wears pastel-shaded leisure suits and smart jackets. She has many hapless friends who get wrongly accused of murder. She faces death, so much death, with a wry twinkle in her eye.
The Irish Times thinks I should file my stories via ‘the internet’, but I deliver mine filed in a leather folder with ‘Murder, She Wrote’ embossed in gold on it
The credits stress what a wonderful time Jessica is having. As the jaunty piano theme plays, we see her on her bike waving happily. We see her returning from a fishing expedition. Out for a stroll. Doing a spot of gardening. Jogging. Working out the trajectory of a bullet. Wandering around in the dark with a torch. Being startled in a doorway. Gazing by candlelight into a creepy vault. Peering through a doorway. Snooping at a desk. She has excellent work-life balance.
Finally, she joyfully finishes typing a story, much like I am joyfully typing this now (this is how writers always write), whisks it from her typewriter and places it in a leather-bound folder with “Murder, She Wrote” written on it, which is also what I do. Yes, The Irish Times thinks I should file my stories via “the internet”, but I deliver mine filed in a leather folder with “Murder, She Wrote” embossed in gold on it. If, like my editors, you have an issue with this, I say to you what I say to them: “The internet is a fad and you people have no class.”
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At no point during the credit sequence does Jessica Fletcher turn to the camera and whisper “Death stalks me”, despite the fact that there were 264 episodes of Murder, She Wrote and, at a conservative estimate, that means Jessica Fletcher has been on hand for at least 264 murders. In the episode I watched this week a policeman asked if she’d seen a corpse before, and she did her best not to utter a hollow laugh. A modern prestige detective show with that sort of death toll would be called something like Gun Bastard and the main detective would be a dysfunctional alcoholic who quotes Nietzsche and self-harms. But Jessica Fletcher is a boss and doesn’t let her regular experience of violent murder spoil her upbeat disposition. She has hobbies!
Elliott Gould is a good actor, but his brief here is to stand beside Jessica Fletcher and look impressed. And, frankly, that’s enough
In most episodes Jessica travels someplace to visit one of her loving nephews or nieces or to promote one of her very successful mystery books. When she arrives, nobody cries, “Agh, the deathbringer! She is among us!” because she is delightful and the murder of a relative is a small price to pay for her company. In some episodes she stays in her charming but crime-ridden hometown, Cabot Cove, and her neighbours are also perfectly happy to have her there, gardening and doing amateur forensics, even though it means the shadow of death is on them. In fact, if she turned up in my neighbourhood, I’d look at my family, friends and neighbours and say, “I will miss whichever of you is leaving us, but this is the Jessica Fletcher.” If Jessica Fletcher was real, I’d probably plot a murder to see if that would summon her.
The episode that aired on TG4 this week is from the sixth season, which is a good vintage of the show. It’s the second half of a two-parter in which Elliott Gould plays a clueless detective in a town which has just been visited by Jessica Fletcher and, hence, death. Gould is a good actor, but his brief here is to stand beside Jessica Fletcher and look impressed. And, frankly, that’s enough. Murder, She Wrote is not copaganda. The policefolk in Murder, She Wrote are numbskulls who instantly fall in line when a mystery writer takes over their investigation.
In this instance, a shady millionaire has been murdered, apparently by an intruder, but by the end of part one Jessica Fletcher had pointed the finger of blame at his highly strung, big-haired wife. The wife’s similarly coiffured sister is affronted. “You’re accusing my sister of murder based on the far-fetched hypothesis of some meddling mystery writer!” she tells Elliott Gould, which is, in fairness, probably a good basis for having it thrown out of court, but I still stand up and shout at the screen, “How dare you, you permed Jezebel! I pray you not refer to Jessica Fletcher in that salty manner.”
Then I settle in for what I expect will be 45 enjoyable minutes of Jessica pottering about the garden, visiting nice restaurants and cycling her bicycle. But no! There are loose ends. The wife of the developer has been released on bail and apparently kills herself. Even worse, new evidence suggests she wasn’t the murderer at all. Elliott Gould gets a bit irritated at Jessica Fletcher at this point, realising his whole case was built upon a whimsical circumstantial scenario dreamed up by someone who has no authority to investigate a murder. I shout, “Do your own stupid job, Elliott Gould! Don’t take it out on Jessica Fletcher, the queen of our hearts!”
Jessica Fletcher employs her main weapons, a disappointed frown and a withering stare, and soon the killer is telling a murderous tale in great detail without a lawyer present
Jessica Fletcher has dinner with her accountant, who notices that she’s a bit distracted. She explains that she’s a bit glum because her busybodying has possibly led to the death of an innocent woman. He tells her to perk up and that it’s not her fault. This isn’t true. It’s totally her fault. But statistically speaking, having put away 264 or so murderers, and knowing the American justice system, it’s probably not the first time she’s sent an innocent person to their death. So she takes her accountant’s advice, cheers up and meddles anew. I mean, there are so many suspicious people who could be murderers, and this fills her with wonder at life’s infinite variety. It’s a lovely attitude, really.
I don’t want to spoil what happens (I assume you’re rewatching the whole series from the beginning), but eventually Jessica deduces the truth. She employs her main weapons, a disappointed frown and a withering stare, and soon the killer is telling a murderous tale in great detail without a lawyer present. Elliott Gould has an expression on his face that says, “Enough already! You had me at ‘I did the murders.’ Save some for your therapist!”
I thought a lot about Jessica Fletcher while watching Gangs of London (Thursday, Sky Atlantic), where the main weapons aren’t disappointed frowns and withering stares but boring old sledgehammers, crowbars and knives. Lots of people die horrible deaths in Gangs of London, but the characters all respond with world-weary sighs, angry grunts and fatalistic outlooks while Jessica Fletcher, who has seen horrors they can only dream of, cheerfully bicycles on.
During a sequence where the chief antihero is acrobatically murdering people in a big laundry, I find myself wishing Jessica Fletcher would turn up with her chirpy sangfroid, to put manners on them all. She’d show these tedious lightweights what was what. I hope we see her like again.
