Why you should binge-watch Murder, She Wrote

Murder She Wrote is the perfect show to unwind to.

(Image credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo)

last updated 14 July 2016

Murder, She Wrote is streaming on Netflix. You should watch it.

The show, which ran for 12 years from 1984 through 1996, features Jessica Fletcher, a recently widowed English teacher played by Angela Lansbury. Jessica is from Cabot Cove, Maine, where she starts writing mysteries in retirement and discovers she has a knack for sleuthing as well. In fact, after 12 seasons, four TV movies, a spinoff, two video games, four Golden Globe awards, and 12 Emmy nominations, Jessica Fletcher is one of the most successful detectives to ever appear on TV.

That's mainly because Jessica Fletcher is not just the star of your grandmother's favorite show. She is a phenomenon: a polite maverick, a pleasant genius who goes jogging, cares about her neighbors, and monitors the world with penetrating, vaguely cow-like eyes. She is tall. She is so much taller than I expected that I have compiled a folder of screenshots named Giant Jessica wherein she looks down on tiny male detectives. Here is one:

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Jessica's height is incidental; she doesn't flaunt it. She's a patient and dutiful advocate for a staggering number of nieces and nephews who regularly get arrested for murder. She keeps her appointments. She is also (and this is key) astoundingly functional for a writer, so functional that — despite being a fictional character from a show that aired in the '80s — she's transcended the screen and landed a book deal. Her book series is doing great (the next one — Hook, Line, and Murder — comes out in October).

Jessica Fletcher is not tortured. She is not depressed. She entertains at her house, exercises regularly, and flirts when she wants to. She's silly — a ham, even, when she feels like it — and a fine actor with a decent voice. She solves problems simply and well, and she's just famous enough: not so much that people bother her, but sufficiently well-known that she's respected wherever she goes. (She's invited to teach criminology classes at universities all over the Northeast.) The police welcome her into their investigations. So does the CIA, for that matter.

The dialogue follows this loopily surreal pattern too. When she asks a man about his whereabouts at the time of the murder, he doesn't say, "Leave me alone." He says, "What a generous thought, but you needn't concern yourself with me. At the time of that detective's untimely demise I was seated at the parlor piano delighting my fellow guests with dozens of melodic gems from my incomparable repertoire."

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.

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