Murder, She Wrote: 4 Movie Collection

Photo of DVD cover take by Kate Dorsey

    

    I have now officially watched every Murder, She Wrote episode ever made.  The only one I have doubts about is the crossover episode with Magnum, P.I., but I’m pretty sure I watched that one too.  With so many episodes from twelve seasons, it’s hard to remember what I have all seen until I start to watch again.  Then often it takes me only a few minutes and I remember the entire episode.  Since I watched much of the show during the original run and in reruns, that happened a lot as I watched all twelve seasons on DVD.  That didn’t, however, happen when I watched the Murder, She Wrote: 4 Movie Collection.  The movies were made after the original series ended.  I know I looked forward to them when they were on TV at the time, but only once in awhile did I recognize anything familiar.  So either I did not end up watching them when they first aired, or I only saw them that once and have a hard time remembering what happened.  Either way, not knowing for sure which way the stories were going to go made these four movies a real treat for me.

    The first movie I watched was South by Southwest.  In it, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) has dinner with a woman on a train.  They are getting along perfectly fine until the woman spills wine on herself.  She goes back to her cabin to change, but never returns.  Concerned, Jessica searches the train for the woman.  Instead of finding her, Jessica gets her life threatened and a man is killed.  More worried than ever, Jessica follows her instincts to a small town where she thinks the woman might be hiding.  This does not sit well with the FBI who wants Jessica to go about her business and leave the investigating to them.  Once the FBI realizes Jessica has not listened to them, they go in search of her.  Jessica darts around, doing her best to hide from them, but they find her.  The FBI also finds Jessica has uncovered secrets from another government agency that most would rather have remained hidden.

    In A Story to Die For, Jessica is attending a writers’ conference when one of the other featured writers is killed.  The man, a former member of the KGB, was not a well-liked man.  His attitude towards things disturbed the other writers, including Jessica.  That’s why it probably did not come as a complete surprise when the man ended up dead.  The question is, though, why exactly was the man killed?  There are a lot of possible reasons, including his missing manuscript, which detailed his time in the KGB.  As usual Jessica is willing to do whatever she can to help, but those in charge of the investigation won’t hear of it.  They want Jessica to stay out of the way, which she does, for the most part.  Then people she knows start to become suspects, and Jessica steps in to prove their innocence before it’s too late.

    The Last Free Man is a historical mystery.  Jessica is looking into an ancestor of hers when she meets Cassandra Hawkins (Phylicia Rashad) who is looking into an ancestor of her own.  They quickly discover that their ancestors are connected.  Cassandra’s many times great-grandfather worked for Jessica’s long-ago aunt in the years leading up to the Civil War.  Jessica is not thrilled to discover her aunt Sarah (Angela Lansbury) was a slave owner, but she is even more unhappy to learn that Cassandra believes her grandfather, Sam (Michael Jace), was falsely accused of murder.  With everything happening so long ago, the only way to find the truth of the story is through Sarah’s letters and journals.  Unfortunately they are not all in one place, forcing Jessica and Cassandra to track them down, all while facing a resistance to the truth that was never expected. 

    Lastly there is The Celtic Riddle.  Unexpectedly inheriting from a man she knew many years ago, Jessica is in Ireland to attend the reading of the will.  Not having any idea what to expect, Jessica is surprised to learn she has been given a cottage.  This news does not go over well with the man’s family (not that anything does), especially since they do now know what Jessica’s past with the man exactly is.  The loss of the cottage to Jessica, however, is not the worst of their news.  As an added bit of fun, the man has created a game.  Select people are given different clues, and only if everyone works together will they be able to find a treasure he has hidden.  This really does not go over well, and some of the people given clues refuse to cooperate.  It isn’t until some of the clue-holders start to get murdered that everyone realizes they have to come together to solve the puzzle before it is too late. 

    As much as I enjoyed all the movies, my favorite by far was The Last Free Man.  So many important things were dealt with in this movie.  Slavery and the different beliefs and behaviors of the slave owners were some of the most important.  There were some slave owners who relished being cruel to those under their control, while others turned against their families and their communities to help slaves escape to freedom. 

    Another important subject was the power of friendship and loyalty.  There was also the importance of standing up for the truth and what is right, not only for what is convenient. 

    Something else the movie covered was that history can be changed, and not only to suit someone’s agenda.  It can be changed because new facts are found that prove existing beliefs otherwise.  These facts can show that what was once thought of as truth was actually a lie.  That sometimes history has been altered to fit one’s own needs.  It’s up to the rest of us to find the truth and stand with it, even if at first it falls on deaf ears.

    Now that I have watched all the episodes of Murder, She Wrote, I feel a little funny. It is a show I have always loved, and I thought it would take me forever to get through all twelve seasons of discs. Now I have reached “forever” and I have to figure out what show to replace this one with. I don’t exactly have a shortage to choose from, but it sure is going to be tough to decide.

Edited 9/21/21 for clarity.

Picture added 9/21/21.