Product Description

Get ready for another chapter in this collection of clever, entertaining mysteries as all 22 episodes of Murder, She Wrote: The Complete Sixth Season arrive on DVD! Rejoin Angela Lansbury in the season that won her the Golden Globe for Best Actress as writer/detective Jessica Fletcher, who's always uncovering crime whether she's nestled in the charming town of Cabot Cove or traveling the world. On the case with her is an impressive lineup of guest stars, including Megan Mullally, Erin Gray and Bill Maher. Featuring exclusive interviews with Angela Lansbury and members of the cast and crew, this 5-disc set includes the beloved sleuth's thrilling involvements with international espionage, high society crime, and low-life mercenaries. The sixth season of Murder, She Wrote earned 4 Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations and thrilled fans and critics alike. Return to the scene of the crime!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14290 in DVD
• Brand: UNI DIST CORP. (MCA)
• Released on: 2007-04-17
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 5
• Dimensions: .85 pounds
• Running time: 1043 minutes

Amazon.com
As Murder, She Wrote saunters through its sixth (of an eventual 12) season, star Angela Lansbury maintains her eternally buoyant and inquisitive air as Jessica Fletcher, professional writer and amateur sleuth. Though Jessica continued to investigate murders in her home town of Cabot Cove and elsewhere (in the worlds of high finance, opera, and voodoo, among other settings), this season began the practice of guest detective episodes, introduced by Jessica as either a story she wrote or a tale told by a friend, but starring a variety of quirky investigators: An ex-football player (Ken Howard, The White Shadow) paired with a clever poodle; a television crime-show producer who solved crime in real life (Diana Canova, Soap); a stout Irish detective (longtime character actor Pat Hingle); an abrasive homicide cop (Barry Newman, Vanishing Point); as well as recurring Murder, She Wrote characters like former jewel thief Dennis Stanton (Keith Michell) and British secret agent Michael Haggerty (Len Cariou). The producers were obviously hoping to use Murder, She Wrote's popularity to spin-off new series, but nothing from this season took off and viewer resistance soon brought the practice to an end. Executives must have been surprised to discover that, though murder mysteries are plot-driven, this show's success depends heavily on the undeniable charm of star Lansbury. Still, these one-off episodes are of a consistent quality with Lansbury's, and viewers open to variety will enjoy them just as much. The rest of the season features the usual astonishing array of guests, including movie stars old (Donald O'Connor, Singin' in the Rain) and recent (Elliott Gould, The Long Goodbye), television stalwarts (Shirley Jones, The Partridge Family; Jerry Stiller, The King of Queens; Doris Roberts, Everyone Loves Raymond; Kevin Tighe, Battlestar Galactica; and Gavin McLeod, The Love Boat), and D-list celebrities to die for (Dack Rambo, Morgan Brittany, Susan Anton, and more). --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Too many episodes without Jessica
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
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
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.