Murder, She Wrote | |
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Created by |
Peter S. Fischer Richard Levinson William Link |
Starring |
Angela Lansbury William Windom Tom Bosley Ron Masak |
Theme music composer | John Addison |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 12 |
No. of episodes | 264 (+ 4 TV movies) (List of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) |
Angela Lansbury (1992–96) Peter S. Fischer Richard Levinson William Link David Moessinger |
Running time | 48 minutes (excluding commercials) |
Production company(s) |
Universal Television Corymore Productions (1992–96) |
Distributor | NBCUniversal Domestic Television Distribution (current) |
Release | |
Original network | CBS |
Picture format |
35 mm film Original Broadcast: 4:3 480i (SDTV) Remastered: 4:3 1080i (HDTV) |
Original release | September 30, 1984 – May 19, 1996 |
Chronology | |
Related shows |
Magnum, P.I. The Law & Harry McGraw |
Murder, She Wrote is an American crime drama television series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for 12 seasons with 264 episodes from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network. It was followed by four TV films and an unsuccessful spin-off series, which was produced in 1987, The Law & Harry McGraw. It is one of the most successful and longest-running television shows in history, averaging close to 26 million viewers per week in its prime, and was a staple of the CBS Sunday night lineup for a decade. In syndication, the series is still highly successful throughout the world.
Lansbury was nominated for ten Golden Globes and 12 Emmy Awards for her work on Murder, She Wrote. She holds the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Murder, She Wrote, with those nominations netting her four Golden Globe awards. The series received three nominations but no wins in the Outstanding Drama Series category at the Emmys. It was nominated for a Golden Globe in the same category six times and won twice.
After the series finished in 1996, four TV movies were released between 1997 and 2003. In 2009, a point-and-click video game was released for the PC platform, followed in 2012 by a sequel. A spin-off book series, written by Donald Bain, continues publication at present.
Fischer, Levinson and Link thought Lansbury would be perfect for the part of Jessica Fletcher but had not dreamed that she would be interested in a television series. Earlier, she had acted in two film adaptations of Agatha Christie's mystery novels: as Salome Otterbourne in Death on the Nile and as the famous sleuth Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (1980). When the latter film did poorly—despite an all star cast including Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, and Tony Curtis—the offer for Lansbury to reprise Miss Marple in three more films never materialized.