Jessica narrates a story from 40 years ago when another female mystery writer helped to solve a mysterious murder aboard the Queen Mary.Jessica narrates a story from 40 years ago when another female mystery writer helped to solve a mysterious murder aboard the Queen Mary.Jessica narrates a story from 40 years ago when another female mystery writer helped to solve a mysterious murder aboard the Queen Mary.
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFilmed on board the Long Beach docked "Queen Mary" with the episode intended as a television series pilot. The interior corridors and state rooms, medical office, Captain's quarters were filmed at Universal Studios. The pilot was specifically filmed as a period 1947 scenario, with the "star cast" featured for the TV series pilot premise. Murder, She Wrote (1984) producer Peter S. Fischer first offered the pilot to CBS, which rejected the project. Peter Fisher then was rejected by ABC TV, and finally by NBC Programing.
- Quotes
[first lines]
Jessica Fletcher: Oh, the weather's so beautiful. It should be a wonderful day. But it isn't. It was in the paper this morning. A wonderful person died a couple of days ago. She was very dear to me, even though I never actually met her. The paper said she was 101, though she could have been a lot older. Lady Austin was like that, an enigma shrouded in mystery, very much like the books that she wrote. Abigail Austin. When it came to mysteries, she was very simply the best. Her books will live on long after mine are gone and forgotten. You know, the obituary reminded me of something that I'd forgotten. Years ago, she was involved in a real-life mystery. Oh, yes. As you know, that's something that I'm familiar with. But for Lady Abigail, I think it was, well, a somewhat disconcerting situation. It was two years after the war, and she had sailed aboard the Queen Mary, which was one night out of New York City when the trouble started.
- SoundtracksMurder She Wrote Theme
Written by John Addison
Strange formatting aside, judged on its own merits the story is a mixed bag. It tries too hard, and ultimately fails, to come up with an honest American take on that quintessentially British genre of the good ol' 1940s whodunit. There are too many characters, too many plot lines and too many complications, sending the director scrambling towards the end to untie them while there is still time. But the most boring and damaging of all is the character of Christy the up-and-coming sleuth, affecting a phony 'old days' demeanor that just isn't believable as either funny or bumbling.
On the plus side, some clichés are skillfully avoided. As such, we end up with more than one semi-plausible explanation of what happened, and discover that the legendary female crime writer may be more at home in the realm of fiction after all, rather than in solving real crime.
- martin-intercultural
- Nov 28, 2016