ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 16, 1996 TAG: 9605160124
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
As almost\ anybody could have predicted, Angela Lansbury and ``Murder, She Wrote,'' are going out with class. But with a bit of sass, too.
The final episode airs Sunday night at 8 on CBS, and it really tells more than one story. ``Death by Demographics'' is on the surface about a murder that occurs at a San Francisco radio station changing its format from classical to rock, but it's also a poke at TV networks who cater slavishly to young viewers at the expense of all others.
At the start of the current TV season, CBS moved ``Murder, She Wrote'' from the prized Sunday night timeslot in which it had thrived since 1984 and dropped it into the perilous straits of Thursdays opposite the NBC powerhouse ``Friends.'' CBS executives filled the old ``Murder'' spot with two mediocre sitcoms that they hoped would attract younger viewers.
Lansbury, who plays mystery writer Jessica Fletcher and is executive producer of the series, is 71, and her program is 12 years old. But it had earned consistently high ratings through most of its reign. ``Murder's'' ratings plummeted when it was moved, and the CBS Sunday night lineup, once fairly indomitable, tottered.
You don't have to read between the lines of the last episode to sense the displeasure of Lansbury and company. It's right there in the lines. A sleazy young producer who instigates the radio station's change in format is told by the son of the station owner, who opposes the move, ``You realize we're going to lose our entire audience!''
To which the producer replies, ``Yes, and replace it with 12-to-18-year-olds, the ones who spend serious money on new products and new ideas and the ones that advertisers pay big bucks to reach.''
It's spoiling nothing to say the episode ends happily, since all the episodes have, and that this gives an aging classical deejay, briefly displaced by the format switch, the chance to say, ``The advertisers seem finally to have discovered the idea that people like us are an invaluable segment of the market.''
All those 12-to-18-year-olds are entitled to their fun, but ``Murder, She Wrote'' wonders if all of pop culture must be geared to them. They're immature by definition and have the attention spans of hummingbirds.
``Murder, She Wrote'' didn't attract only older viewers, however, and each week's guest cast included young actors. What the demise of ``Murder, She Wrote'' represents is another blow to civility and sophistication, two of the scarcest commodities in television. ``Murder, She Wrote'' wasn't an assault on the senses, it wasn't vulgar and it wasn't boorish. It was polite, it was clever, it was smart.
It had good manners.
The final episode was written by Donald Ross and directed by Anthony Shaw. It's hard to remember another TV series that ended its run with something of a protest over the way it met its fate. But like most everything on ``Murder, She Wrote,'' this is done tastefully and with style. There's also plenty of sardonic humor, as when the aging deejay is asked where he was when a certain murder was committed.
``I was lying flat on my back staring at the ceiling, contemplating the evaporation of the rest of my life,'' he says. Earlier, he bids farewell to his listeners with these words: ``I want to thank you all for a long and rewarding ... friendship.'' That appears to be Lansbury's sentiment, too. Loyal viewers are unlikely to miss the point.
There's a very good possibility that Jessica Fletcher and Lansbury will return next year in three or four TV movies under the ``Murder, She Wrote'' banner (as ``Perry Mason'' did in the '80s), but its days as a first-run weekly series are over.
In a bylined article for TV Guide, Lansbury says she'd like Jessica to be remembered as ``an active, mature woman, possessed of courage, independence and wit, broad-minded and young at heart, a champion of the wrongfully accused.'' Exactly. We miss her already.
(c) 1996, Washington Post Writers Group
AP-NY-05-14-96 1212E
LENGTH: Medium: 81 linesby CNB