I like to watch these shows in the afternoons when I have nothing better to do. I prefer ”Murder, she wrote”. The earlier seasons I think were the best. ”Diagnosis: Murder” is also great. All the actors in these shows are so good and can often be found in many 80’s and 90’s TV shows. Which one of the two shows do you prefer?
I voted for "Murder, She Wrote". Your assessment is correct about the earlier seasons. I gave up on it after awhile when the plots became very simplistic and the star power greatly decreased.
Murder She Wrote started okay but soon dropped off. Diagnosis: Murder started weakly but improved with time. Probably prefer the latter.
Murder, She Wrote had a pedigree, created by Columbo alumni Richard Levinson, William Link, and Peter Fischer. It got more critical acclaim than Diagnosis: Murder, which shared a number of creative team members with Matlock and the 1980s-90s Perry Mason revival. I haven’t seen much of DM, but based on the limited numbers of episodes I saw, I thought MSW was better, at least in its earlier days (it went on for several seasons too long).
I like them both, but find myself watching Murder She Wrote more often. I find the episodes where Dennis Stanton is the main character kind of curious, though. Not that they're necessarily bad episodes, it just seems weird to me to have entire episodes without Jessica. What I really like is when the old shows did crossovers, like the Magnum PI episode that had Jessica Fletcher in it. And then the other night, I caught the last 5 minutes of a Magnum PI where Simon & Simon were on it.
Murder, She Wrote I used to put this on as background noise, but then I started to get into it. The Cobot Cove episodes are the strongest. The one with the driverless car is bat**** crazy.
Yeah, they did that for a couple of seasons because being the sole lead of an hour long drama was really taxing for Angela Lansbury, who appeared in practically every scene. When she got to the end of the fifth season, she wanted to do fewer episodes. Another idea that was explored was moving it to ABC for occasional two hour episodes as part of its Mystery Movie wheel, that also included the Columbo revival But it stayed on CBS and they wound up doing a bunch of episodes during the sixth season where Jessica either appeared at the beginning and told about a friend’s experiences solving a murder, or actually gave an intro to a story or book she had written. I guess they felt the Dennis Stanton episodes played the best, because for the seventh season, he was basically the lead in all the non-Jessica episodes. But the audiences didn’t love those episodes and they stopped doing them after a couple of years.
Last week, I helped my mother cleaning out and I found the entire first season on DVD. I borrowed all 6 discs and now I have watched ”Murder takes the bus” and ”Armed response”. I will watch another episode tonight. Good episodes!
It's amazing how there were, like, 250 murders in that small community in Maine over a dozen years. Rather than one-by-one murders, it might have been more realistic if they'd changed the premise to Mass Murder, She Wrote.
I didn't know "Diagnoses: Murder" was a real show. That sounds like a spoof title, or the name of an episode of "Psych".
I never watched either, but I will always remember when Pat Summerall was broadcasting the NFL on CBS. In the fourth quarter, the graphic would come up for what's on after the game. He would say, "60 Minutes, followed by Murder -- takes a long pause -- She Wrote."
I want to see Diagnosis: Murder She Wrote, about a woman who writes crime stories involving a doctor who solves murder mysteries with his son at a hospital.
How are you judging them, by the quality of the entertainment? I look at both these CBS "geezer dramas", and see an ecological attempt to recycle SAG/AFTRA members. Character actors by the dozen would be cast in these, just so they could get work that year and keep their SAG/AFTRA insurance benefits. NOT that that's a bad thing!
Spy Magazine was the first one to say they look alike. they have similar eyes, but other than that I don't see any resemblance.
I feel like a party poop but I have to go with none of the above. this is the second time today. sorry.
Craig was doing it for a laugh, which the studio audience always did when the pics would be shown. All in fun.