THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605170099
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LARRY BONKO
LENGTH: Long : 112 lines
AFTER 12 SEASONS and 264 episodes of ``Murder, She Wrote,'' Angela Lansbury tonight at 8 helps solve one last murder as the lovable snoop Jessica Fletcher and then disappears from CBS' weekly schedule.
But not before she needles the network bosses who took away her Sunday night time slot last fall in the hopes of bringing younger viewers to CBS.
In tonight's finale, ``Death by Demographics,'' Fletcher is on the scene in San Francisco as a friend who works in radio playing classical music is replaced by a young hot-shot jock with a load of rock CDs.
The disc jockey's manager makes a little speech to the station owner in which he says his client will replace the fuddy-duddy listeners with 12- to 18-year-olds ``who spend serious money on new products and new ideas and who advertisers pay big dollars to reach.''
That could have been the CBS brass talking last fall when they decided to move ``Murder, She Wrote'' to Thursday night and replace the one-hour mysteries with the sitcoms ``Cybill'' and ``Almost Perfect.'' The move ended in ashes for CBS as ABC, with ``Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,'' and NBC, with ``Mad About You,'' swept past CBS at the 8'clock hour.
``Murder, She Wrote'' was squashed flat by the NBC ``must-see TV'' steamroller on Thursday night, ending up 63rd in the overall ratings. A few weeks ago, CBS said it was canceling ``Murder, She Wrote'' as a weekly series, which left Lansbury devastated.
It looks like Lansbury will never win an Emmy now. She's 0-for-11 nominations.
``When the end came, and it was time to tape the last show, I was totally incapable of talking about it. I couldn't even speak to the crew,'' Lansbury said. ``I couldn't make a speech. Instead, I wrote to the crew and encapsulated my pride in what we had achieved together. The last few weeks have been very, very tough. I felt like someone had cut off my arm.''
In tonight's ``Murder, She Wrote,'' there is no grand finale, as was the case with ``L.A. Law''; no surprise ending, as when ``Newhart'' was canceled; and no drawn-out farewell, as we saw when ``Northern Exposure'' was dropped by CBS. That's because CBS is not closing the door on this franchise.
Nobody is tossing Jessica down an elevator shaft.
Expect to see her meet up with murder victim No. 287 in a made-for-TV movie next season. Lansbury will probably do two or three of them a year.
As it turned out, Lansbury was not on the set at Universal's studios when ``Murder, She Wrote'' wrapped up its final day of filming.
``I didn't want to work on the last day. The emotion was too much,'' she said. ``I couldn't have said my lines. I dreaded it so much that I asked not to work on the last day.''
Lansbury's final work day was 48 hours before her son, Anthony, directed the 264th episode's closing scenes. She was called in to do a simple shot - another actor slipping a key into Jessica's pocket.
``The audience will never see it, but I wept all through the final scene,'' she said.
Wrapping up a show like ``Murder, She Wrote'' is worth a good cry.
It made millions for Lansbury, first as the show's star and more recently as supervising producer. When the show's creators - the same people who gave TV the Columbo character - chose Lansbury over Jean Stapleton to play Fletcher, they revived her career and made her a household name.
Who remembers Lansbury as a luminous young actress in such classic films as ``The Picture of Dorian Gray'' and ``Gaslight''? More know her for starring in ``Mame'' and ``Sweeney Todd'' on Broadway. But everybody knows she's played Jessica Fletcher, the American Miss Marple.
``I was absolutely amazed when I learned from CBS Research that more than 10 billion people have watched `Murder,' '' she said. ``My mind could hardly encompass that number of people having seen it.''
Lansbury was crushed when CBS gave her Sunday night time slot to ``Cybill'' and ``Almost Perfect'' because she believed that ``Murder, She Wrote'' had been revitalized in its eighth season, after the Lansbury family took control.
``The show may have been last year's cold mashed potatoes to some, but it was this year's linguine Positano to me,'' she said. ``I have been absolutely steamed up and ready to roll and as enthusiastic about the series as I have ever been.''
Jessica turned hip. She gave up her manual typewriter for a word processor. In real life, Fletcher felt invigorated after having a hip replaced late in 1994.
That 1990s thinking and personal enthusiasm was not enough to save the show about a novelist who wrote under the name J.B. Fletcher, the series which gave more work to long-forgotten actors than ``Love Boat.'' Where else could you catch a glimpse of Janet Leigh, Margaret O'Brien, Van Johnson and Cyd Charisse in their golden years?
``Murder, She Wrote,'' which in 11 previous seasons had turned back 43 challengers on the other networks, could not beat back the gang that hangs out at Central Perk on NBC. Its ratings fell off by nearly 12 points; its share of viewers was halved.
CBS willed it a slow death on Thursday night and then finished it off with a cancellation notice in April - but not before Lansbury spoofed its Thursday night rival, ``Friends.'' It was an episode about a series called ``Buds'' in which a group of twentysomethings sit around a coffee house discussing their sexuality.
Lansbury does not go quietly as ``Murder, She Wrote'' fades from a network whose bosses once called the show the cornerstone of the schedule. As the last new episode of ``Murder, She Wrote'' wraps up tonight and the hot-shot rock jock is replaced, actor David Ogden Stiers is heard to say to Jessica, ``Advertisers have finally discovered that older people like us are not an insignificant segment of the market.''
But is that really so? ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CBS
Graphic
A ``MURDER SHE WROTE'' QUIZ
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB