Almost a year ago I started doing deep dive posts on Murder, She Wrote episodes. As I’ve recently put up the tenth, it seems like as good a time as any to do a recap post for anyone who may have missed them.

I should probably say a few words about what they actually are. These deep dives serve several purposes. The main purpose is to analyze the story in depth, to look at its structure and storytelling, to see what was done well and what was not, what worked and what didn’t. A secondary purpose is to analyze the thing as it what it was—a Hollywood production in the 1980s and 1990s—and to understand its cultural significance as well as the factors that shaped it. And along the way I will poke fun at parts that are funny, because there certainly were plenty of those, too.

I should note that I do this from a place of love and also from a place of retrospection. I was a child when Murder, She Wrote first aired and it was a household institution as I was growing up. I doubt that my parents and I ever missed an episode, and certainly we never missed one without our trusty VCR taping it for us. (I can’t swear that there was never a power outage which happened at just the wrong time, but at least I don’t remember one.) That said, looking at it thirty years later, no longer a child and now with children of my own, I have to be honest about its flaws as well as its virtues. So it is with all artistic works in a fallen world—we must take from them the good that they have to offer and leave behind the mistakes that went into them. And it’s always nice to laugh while doing it.

My Murder, She Wrote deep dives, as of January 14, 2021, in the order they were published:

• Murder She Wrote: A Lady in The Lake
• Murder She Wrote: Night Of The Headless Horseman
• Murder She Wrote: One White Rose For Death
• Murder She Wrote: When Thieves Fall Out
• Murder She Wrote: The Bottom Line is Murder
• Murder She Wrote: Murder in a Minor Key
• Murder, She Wrote: It Runs in the Family
• Murder, She Wrote: Obituary for a Dead Anchor
• Murder She Wrote: If The Frame Fits
• Murder She Wrote: The Days Dwindle Down