Search - Murder, She Wrote - The Complete Sixth Season on DVD

Too many episodes without Jessica

B. Wiseman | SoCal | 07/07/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I adore Murder She Wrote. Unfortunately, in the 6th season there are so many episodes that do not have Jessica involved. She begins each episode she's not in by talking to the audience and sharing a story of a friend but the plot does not include her at all. I'm not sure why (was she ill? did she need a longer break? did she have other commitments?) but without her solving the crime, I'm not interested. If you don't mind episodes without her then you'll enjoy this season. I would return it if I didn't take so long to watch it."

Murder, She Wrote - Season Six

Joseph Haggard Jr. | 09/15/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Now here's a surprise. A season of a popular TV show that actually improves on the previous season. It's not that often that this happens, but in the case of "Murder, She Wrote" it did. Season five was a good (though not great) season that didn't have as many great episodes as the previous four seasons. So you can imagine how surprised I was when after viewing all 22 episodes of the sixth season of "Murder, She Wrote", I found it to be one of its best seasons yet.

Angela Lansbury once again does double duty as veteran mystery writer and crime solver Jessica Fletcher, who finds herself caught up in more murder mysteries where after the murders are committed she steps in to find out whodunit. And in the episodes that take place in Mrs. Fletcher's home town of Cabot Cove, William Windom and Ron Masak return as Dr. Seth Hazlitt and Sheriff Mort Metzger, respectively. Windom as always done a fine job on the show, but Masak as turned out to be a delightful surprise. I've always admired the great job that Tom Bosley did throughout the first four seasons of the show as Amos Tupper, the Cabot Cove sheriff during that time. But Masak has been an absolute hoot as Tupper's successor. He's very funny when he reacts to Mrs. Fletcher's observations after a murder is committed, at the point where he thinks he has the case solved, then gets frustrated by Mrs. Fletcher's additional ideas of what she thinks might have happened just so that the case keeps on going ("Mrs. Fletcher, I have a headache!" he says to her in the second episode). Masak was a welcome edition to this show.

There were a lot of terrific guest stars throughout season six. There's a long list of veteran TV and movie stars that show up here so here it goes: Len Cariou ("The Four Seasons"), Bonnie Bartlett ("St. Elsewhere"), John Karlen ("Cagney & Lacey"), Robert Vaughn ("Hustle"), Susan Blakely ("Rich Man, Poor Man"), Ken Howard ("Crossing Jordan"), John Rhys-Davies ("Shogun", "Raiders of the Lost Ark"), Jerry Stiller ("King of Queens"), Gene Barry ("War of the Worlds"), Keir Dullea ("2001: A Space Odyssey"), Holland Taylor ("Two and a Half Men", "The Practice"), Bryan Cranston ("Malcolm in the Middle"), Faith Ford ("Hope and Faith", "Murphy Brown"), Bill Maher ("Politically Incorrect"), Jonathan Brandis ("SeaQuest DSV"), Barry Van Dyke ("Diagnosis Murder"), Genie Francis ("General Hospital"), Brenda Vaccaro ("Midnight Cowboy"), Gavin MacLeod ("The Mary Tyler Moore Show", "The Love Boat"), Donald O'Connor ("Singin' in the Rain"), Diana Canova ("Soap"), Pat Hingle ("Batman"), Shirley Knight ("As Good As It Gets"), Shirley Jones ("The Partridge Family"), Doris Roberts ("Everybody Loves Raymond"), David Warner ("Titanic", "The Omen"), and Diedre Hall ("Days of Our Lives").

Out of the 22 episodes from the sixth season of "Murder, She Wrote", 14 of them I found to be either excellent or outstanding. That's pretty amazing. These 14 episodes are: #1 - Appointment in Athens, #2 - Seal of the Confessional, #4 - The Error of Her Ways, #5 - Jack and Bill, #6 - Dead Letter, #7 - Night of the Tarantula, #8 - When the Fat Lady Sings, #10 - Class Act, #13 - If the Shoe Fits, #16 - The Big Show of 1965, #17 - Murder - According to Maggie, #19 - Always a Thief, #20 - Shear Madness, and #21 - The Szechuan Dragon. I was totally intrigued and entertained by all 14 of these episodes which are some of the best "Murder, She Wrote" episodes ever. If there was one quibble that I had with the sixth season of "Murder, She Wrote", it was the episodes where Jessica Fletcher played the role of storyteller instead of detective. There were eight episodes where Mrs. Fletcher would look straight into the camera and talk about some people that she knew who were involved in bizarre murder investigations themselves, or tell us a story that she wrote. Only four of these episodes were any good ("Jack and Bill", "Class Act", "Murder - According to Maggie", and "Always a Thief"). I'd rather see Jessica Fletcher solving the murders instead of telling us stories. But I imagine the writers wanted to try something different. They first tried this approach with an episode back in season three which worked. But to do this eight times in one season is a bit too much.

Still, "Murder, She Wrote" - season six is one of the best seasons of the show's 12 year run. Now I've seen all the episodes for the entire first half of the show's run, and I've been happy with what I've seen so far. I'm looking forward to viewing season seven and beyond.

"

The series takes a turn for the worse

Genevieve Hayes | Australia | 01/06/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"It seems inevitable that every TV show, even the great ones, must eventually take a turn for the worse and start going down hill. Season Six appears to point when this happened to "Murder She Wrote". I wouldn't say that "Murder She Wrote" jumped the shark with this season. However, it is just not as good as the previous seasons, largely due to the fact that Jessica (Angela Lansbury) is missing from a substantial number of the episodes.

Although Angela Lansbury technically appears in every episode in this season, in nine of the 22 episodes Lansbury only makes a cameo appearance (usually at the beginning of the episode, as an introduction). Considering the fact that my main reason for watching "Murder She Wrote" is because I like the character of Jessica Fletcher, I found these episodes to be inferior to the point where I started skipping them towards the end of the season. The detectives were never up to the same standard as Jessica.

I am not sure whether the disappearance of Lansbury was due to a temporary illness during the making of this season (a similar thing happened in one season of "Hercules") or because by this point Lansbury was getting too old to keep up with the filming schedule. However, I hope that it was just a temporary thing, since it would be awful if this continued on into the later seasons of this otherwise enjoyable show.
"

Hideous season

Xtreme | Boston, MA | 06/04/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"About half of the episodes are pathetic experiments with unknown detectives (no Jessica), where the producers tried out new show formats.

***Don't buy this season!!!!***"