Murder She Wrote: The Complete Second Season

The phenomenal success of this pleasantly old-fashioned whodunit series reportedly took CBS executives by surprise, and they asked for a second group of 22 episodes to be aired during the 1985-86 season, with Angela Lansbury reprising her role as Jessica Fletcher, the matronly mystery writer from the quaint village of Cabot Cove. The second season took Jessica to a wide variety of locations, but wherever she went, murder followed. The season opener, “Widow, Weep for Me,” found her at a posh Caribbean resort, while “Sing a Song of Murder”—one of the year's best—took Jessica to London and dumped a large estate in her lap following the disappearance of her cousin Emma, whose life had been threatened (like many installments, this one had a terrific supporting ensemble, with guest stars including Patrick Macnee, Olivia Hussey, and Glynis Johns). “Lady in the Lake” bears the title of a Philip Marlowe novel by Raymond Chandler, but the plot is borrowed from a 1945 thriller written by Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint: while visiting a lakeside vacation spot, Jessica thinks she sees a woman fall out of a boat into the water—but was a crime committed or is her imagination playing tricks on her? Another nice touch in the second season is the casting of guest stars that previously played detectives on earlier TV series or in feature films: veteran character actor Lloyd Nolan, the silver screen's original Michael Shayne: Private Detective (1940) turns up in “Murder in the Afternoon”; Craig Stevens, who played the title role in TV's Peter Gunn, tops the supporting cast in “Powder Keg”; and Robert Stack—G-man Eliot Ness on TV's The Untouchables—heads the suspect list in “Christopher Bundy Died on Sunday.” Presented in an extra-less boxed set, the second year season episodes maintain the same high standard in scripting as the first, serving up some unusually knotty mysteries with ingenious solutions. Highly recommended. (E. Hulse)