Mon 21 Oct 2013
Archived Made-for-TV Movie Review: MYSTERY WOMAN (2003).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[22] Comments
MYSTERY WOMAN. Made for TV: The Hallmark Channel. First telecast: 31 August 2003. Kellie Martin, Robert Wagner, J. E. Freeman, William R. Moses, Constance Zimmer. Written by Michael Sloan. Director: Walter Klenhard.
I missed this when it was first shown, and since I try to keep an eye out for good, solid detective movies, even though I’m not always able to watch them at the time, I’m not sure how that might have happened. After all, if the basic premise is someone inheriting a musty old mystery bookstore and using that as a basis to solving murders, how could I resist?
That someone is Samantha Kinsey (Kellie Miller), and Jack Stelling (Robert Wagner) is the true-crime writer whose death by hanging in a locked room is the suicide that Samantha does not think is, um, a suicide.
Assisting her are a grizzled old geezer named Ian Philby (J. E. Freeman) who is a carryover employee of Samantha’s uncle in the bookshop, and Cassie Tilman (Constance Zimmer), who as an Assistant DA is good at assisting (and seems to have no other regular working hours, other than being on hand when Samantha is out searching for clues).
Convinced that the death is indeed a suicide is police lieutenant Robert Hawk (William Moses), conveniently ignoring all of growing evidence otherwise, but on the other hand, it is equally hard to ignore the door that is solidly bolted on the inside.
There are a lot of the other vintage bits and pieces of the vintage detective story, a la MURDER, SHE WROTE, combined with the Carolyn Hart stories in which Annie Darling runs a mystery bookstore as well as solves mysteries in the “Death on Demand†series. There is also a bit of what – I hate to use the term – is called “woo woo†when psychic impressions of a murder committed 10 or 15 years earlier are needed to understand why an author of true crime books might need to be silenced today.
As a mystery buff, Samantha also has the skills needed to pick locks when the time is needed. This almost goes without saying. I thought Kellie Martin was too young for the part – she looks and acts in this movie as though she were 18 – but I am afraid that it is I who am (is?) getting old. She is 29 and has been in a host of various other TV series and dramas that I have never seen, including being nominated for an Emmy for her role as Becca Thatcher in LIFE GOES ON, ABC, 1989-1993.
The character I enjoyed the most was the relatively aged Philby, a man of the gutter who continued to surprise Samantha with his knowledge and abilities – definitely a man of some mystery beneath that weather-beaten and faded facade. (I don’t suppose I identified with him, or anything.)
No mystery film with references to Ed McBain, Anthony Boucher and John Dickson Carr can be all bad, but neither does it rise to more than knee-high to any of them. Extremely derivative in nature, in other words, but other than the “woo woo,†is a well-natured, pleasant to the palate sort of way. Sloan, the screenwriter, started his career with McCLOUD (1970) and HARRY O (1974), so it isn’t as though he’s never been around the block before.
And, I have discovered – since it was so obviously left open that way – that if not a weekly series, there is another Hallmark movie with (many of) the same characters coming, starting in production as of Fall 2004. Robert Wagner won’t be in it, for example, but other than that, and reading through the lines of what I said and what I didn’t say, I’d say that you should be on the lookout for it.
[UPDATE] 10-21-13. Advice, that for better or worse, I did not take myself. I may have purchased some of the later MYSTERY WOMAN movies when they came out on DVD (it did indeed become a series), but I never watched them. I believe the reason to be this. When I learned that J. E. Freeman was replaced by Clarence Williams III in the ten later episodes, I discovered that I wasn’t interested any more, or certainly at least not as much.
October 21st, 2013 at 11:21 pm
MYSTERY WOMAN was, I thought, the best of the Hallmark version of NBC’s MYSTERY MOVIE. It still (now in reruns) pop up on occasional weekends alternating randomly with JANE DOE, MURDER 101, and MCBRIDE.
Clarence Williams III character would be revealed as an ex-spy and a character I enjoyed along with Kellie Miller’s as Samantha. Aimed at the female audience that enjoys the woo woo scenes, but that should not surprise since it was on Hallmark and not Spike.
October 22nd, 2013 at 8:51 am
Moses also appeared many times on MURDER, SHE WROTE and at least one series of the later PERRY MASON movies.
October 22nd, 2013 at 1:52 pm
You can’t recreate the seventies and eighties and the TV fare of that period and should not try. Do something new, no matter how derivative.
October 22nd, 2013 at 2:49 pm
Nicely said. You have put your finger on another reason why this is the only one of the series I have ever read.
October 22nd, 2013 at 3:07 pm
3. David, I wish it was true, but the number one series on TV is NCIS, something that could have easily fit in the 70s-80s. MURDER SHE WROTE was hardly original.
The key to success in entertainment is to do something new but not different.
October 22nd, 2013 at 5:16 pm
Actually NCIS was relatively innovative when it debuted, but it has been copied so much it no longer seems that way, and I wonder if in the seventies we would have accepted a protagonist Mark Harmon’s age who isn’t a canny old goat like Barnaby Jones, but a sex symbol?
Of course Hollywood turns to older material — most of which tanks — because it has a track record, but this series seems to be recreating an era of entertainment that is gone. You couldn’t recreate the style or impact of Dragnet and Chips either — though the former managed the transition into the seventies.
I don’t know how it is doing in the ratings, but I didn’t last ten minutes with the new Ironside, a premise that hasn’t aged well, and it was pretty stupid then.
Something like Elementary that captures our fascination with Sherlock Holmes and gives it a new face is more what is needed. Much as I my like to see an old fashioned classic detective story, I think it would need to be really special and different to work.
And, it’s one thing to recreate a literary character and another a television one. I don’t think any audience wants a new Jessica Fletcher or Jessica Fletcher lite. Jessica Fletcher is Angela Lansbury, but Sherlock Holmes is whoever plays him well because Holmes exists beyond any actor playing the role.
Trying to recreate the format of the movie of the week mystery ala Columbo and company with the same sort of by the numbers programming everything but Columbo used is never going to produce anything really good, just pale imitations of some things that were probably not as good as we remember them in the first place.
This kind of retro refit usually fails because you can’t manufacture nostalgia.
You say Murder She Wrote wasn’t original, but while I’ll grant it swiped the whole Miss Marple concept I can’t think of another series with a past middle aged small town busybody sleuth before it.
This one however sounds as if it was custom fitted to be a seventies mystery movie of the week. Where are Rock Hudson and Susan St. James when you need them.
Anyway, other than Columbo, most of the Mystery Movie of the Week series are virtually unwatchable today. Their hurried production, connect the dots plots, and padded length far to obvious. Bring back something better than that if you have to.
October 22nd, 2013 at 8:43 pm
First, I don’t want to drift off the point too far. MYSTERY WOMAN was done to appeal to the fans of old traditional who-dun-its. It was never meant to set the world of TV afire or appeal to everyone. It was a nice way to kill some time on the weekend afternoon for people who didn’t want to watch sports on the other channel. It fit the Hallmark Channel audience and fit the low rated channels budget. The show continues to have a cult following that still watchs it ten years after it first aired. Is it popular? For Hallmark, yes. For CBS, no.
Personally, I wish more networks tried the Wheel format. NBC MYSTERY MOVIE with COLUMBO was created because THE NAME OF THE GAME rotating stars was a success. Wheel format dates back to early TV such as when Warners rotated CASABLANCA, CHEYENNE and KINGS ROW.
You cited ELEMENTARY, yet it never would have reached the air without the better British/PBS version SHERLOCK. The same but different.
Remember the vast majority of new original series fail too. IRONSIDE and PRIME SUSPECT failed because no one wanted a remake. If Peter Falk or Raymond Burr were alive people would still watch COLUMBO or PERRY MASON (though I doubt even Burr could have saved IRONSIDE).
October 23rd, 2013 at 6:15 am
Calling it IRONSIDE doesn’t make it so. Other than putting a cop in a wheelchair and calling him “Robert Ironside” there is no connection to the original. It’s in New York rather than San Francisco, rather than a Chief of Detectives this Ironside was (apparently) an undercover detective who suddenly – since he was shot – has his own squad, high tech equipment, etc.
Also, to answer a question I doubt any of us wanted answered, they show him in bed with a different woman each week (at least the two we saw before giving up).
It sucks.
October 23rd, 2013 at 9:38 am
Jeff Meyerson:
Right on all counts.
October 23rd, 2013 at 9:45 am
8. Jeff, you hit on my problem with reboots. Why call it STAR TREK if you are going to change everything unless to take advantage of desperate fan base.
Why remake IRONSIDE? Those who remember the show would prefer DVDs of the old series rather than a new version. Those who are too young to remember IRONSIDE see it as their parents TV and are not interested. The show would have had a better chance if it had been called anything else but IRONSIDE.
But reboots and remakes can work. STAR TREK first movie was a hit in every way but with a few of us loyalists. The second movie angered the fan base so much number three better be good. Don’t be surprised to see a new original TV series set in the STAR TREK universe appear sooner or later.
TV executives will continue to search their series libraries for the next remake to equal the success of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.
October 23rd, 2013 at 11:22 am
I was working up a jim-dandy crash-bang diatribe on the “remakes that really aren’t”, so we all owe Jeff Meyerson deep gratitude for beating me to it.
Jeff is absolutely spot on about just using a presold title and then changing everything.
The problem there is obvious: The old fan base usually won’t like all the changes, while younger folks who don’t recall the original will wonder what all the fuss is about.
To that, we can add another factor: the old shows haven’t gone away, thanks to DVDs and channels like MeTV. The original shows may seem like period pieces today, but they did – and do – possess qualities beyond the original work that make them work for a newer audience that’s seeing them for the first time.
It’s a little like when I was a kid in the ’50s, watching twenty-year-old movies on TV: many of the same people, both in front of and behind the camera, who made the old movies were making the new TV of the ’50s/’60s/70s. Being a credit reader from an early age (and with a major assist from the then-informative TV Guide), I was able to make the connections and establish continuity among all that I was watching, to the astonishment (and frequent annoyance) of family and friends.
This is coming across as “old man talk”.
Heaven knows that there are many story properties available in the detective/mystery field, past and present, that have never been done by movies and TV.
Simply dusting off a title isn’t enough; if a show is remembered at all, “reimagining” it will invariably backfire, for the reasons mentioned above.
Why not find a property that hasn’t been done before?
I’m sure that there are many genre writers who’d love an opportunity to bring their story franchise to the wider audience that movies and TV can provide.
For starters, ask Kathy Reichs …
October 23rd, 2013 at 12:50 pm
Series character can be revitalized and have done so. Begin with Perry Mason, a film and radio character that was no match for its literary incarnation but nonetheless existed at least somewhat successfully until Raymond Burr and Company too over and made it all their own. A few years later Gail Patrick Jackson tried it again and maybe even better but came up empty. Still later Burr came back in a series of films for television and they were back in the groove. Well, there was only one Raymond Burr but in addition there was a kind of storytelling and character driven truth. This audiences related to — just as The Maltese Falcon with Ricardo Cortez was successful but not a patch on the 1941 remake. It all goes to truth in storytelling.
October 23rd, 2013 at 1:58 pm
11. Mike, the added benefit of the old stuff is the studio all ready owns the character so the risk is financially less. And for every BONES there are many failures.
October 24th, 2013 at 4:22 pm
I’m not against remakes, but it requires skill and devotion to surpass a good original. Keep in mind The Maltese Falcon is the third remake of that story, and it is almost impossible to erase or recreate something like the Raymond Burr Perry Mason or Ironside — the latter only working because of Burr’s powerful screen presence. Even then, you cannot recreate an entire era and style of something as contemporary by its very nature as television.
Are you saying Hallmark should somehow be congratulated for creating something not quite good enough for other networks that managed to find a small audience? The Tammy Grimes Show had fans. Success isn’t decided because something was okay or just good enough.
If I’m adamant about this it is because you will never get anything better if you settle for just good enough. Hollywood is perfectly happy with just good enough, and frankly I feel no sympathy or compassion for any of them. They chose this business, just as I chose writing, and neither of us has any right to expect to just get by. We owe our audience our best whether it is good or not. No one has ever owed creative mediocrity to anyone, or ever will.
Don’t accept this pablum. You don’t have to. Today you have choices, you are in control.
I understand why Hollywood turns to the past, and sometimes they do so brilliantly, the French certainly used Jean Dejardin to great effect to reboot the sixties OSS 117 movies with Frederick Stafford, John Gavin, and Kerwin Matthews and the 1968 Terence Hill live action film of the long running comic strip and animated Lucky Luke.
They’ve been reinventing James Bond for 50 years, and Sherlock Holmes since 1887. Tarzan, Arsene Lupin, Charlie Chan, and Nero Wolfe all have had multiple reboots, yet the only attempt to reboot Mr. Moto was a miserable failure.
But I’ll argue few television series have the depth of characterization to successfully reboot. Certainly Star Trek and Dark Shadows, but those are exceptions. The new Burke’s Law even had Gene Barry and couldn’t recreate itself. The new Bonanza couldn’t make it either.
And I don’t care if it is on the boob tube, I expect the best a creator can give us given the restraints of money and network programming. I don’t care why it is bad, I care that somethings are not. I feel no need to make apologies for overpaid hacks trying to sell me recycled pablum as filet mignon. I refuse to watch Big Mac television when I have Netflix, Hulu, Cackle, and satellite.
Of that famous Mystery wheel, only three series had legs — Columbo, McMillan and Wife, and McCloud. Everything else tanked, or have we forgotten Cool Millions and Madigan. And honestly I don’t think when young people today see how lame many of those shows were they fail to recognize it and somehow enjoy the mediocre success of tired drama. I think they laugh their tales off that we sat through this junk. We knew then, it was just pre or early cable just before the VCR and we accepted what we could get. If you are doing that today, I can’t imagine why.
To be honest the seventies were a particularly lame era for television drama. Great and innovative comedy, but not so much drama. I spent much of the seventies overseas, but I’ve seen most of it in endless reruns, and can only say that compared to the seventies and eighties the nineties until now have been a new golden age — or at least silver. Television is more creative and innovative than any time since its origins thanks to the desperate need to find an audience. I wish popular literature was half so creative and daring.
That said even of the best of todays crime programs would benefit if someone would explain that when the least likely suspect is always guilty you are just as obvious as they were back when they did the same thing regarding the best known guest star.
October 24th, 2013 at 5:07 pm
This just in (unless someone beats me to it):
NBC has just announced that they will be “reimagining” Murder, She Wrote!
This version casts Olivia Spencer as a hospital administrator/mystery writer who butts into murder cases, etc.
The re-imaginer in chief is the same one who thought that an Americanized Prime Suspect would work by putting Maria Bello in a funny hat.
The story I raed in Dateline: Hollywood notes that Angela Lansbury has some equity in the original series, and that Universal TV is negotiating to get her on board the project in some (unstated) capacity.
As another famous detective used to say – pfui.
I put a comment up at Dateline: Hollywood (you can all go there and read it if you like), which I’ll briefly rehash here:
Don’t call this Murder, She Wrote when it plainly isn’t.
In fact, given Ms. Spencer’s proposed occupation as stated above, another title shouldn’t be all that hard to come up with.
Like, say … Diagnosis Murder?
*Oh, wait a minute …*
October 24th, 2013 at 5:42 pm
I refuse to call the era with HONEY BOO BOO the Golden Age of Television. Today’s TV shows benefits from advances in technology such as HD and that there are nearly fifty US TV networks producing original programs compared to the four plus syndication of the 70s. In interviews with various network programming heads more that one has pointed out the advantage of a schedule that focuses on one or a few programs rather that having to fill an entire prime-time seven days a week (in the 70s they even aired new shows on Saturday night).
You can’t compare eras. Look at the differences in ratings from then to now. The TV set played a different role in our lives in the past than it does now. Mass audience entertainment now means we get excited with a 12 share compared to the 70s when series with a 30 share got cancelled.
I spent enough time in Los Angeles and failing to break into the business that I can tell you one thing for certain, no one has ever tried to do a bad show. You created a show for an audience, an audience that may not be interested in original quality programs, but content to watch the same mindless escapism. Not everything has to meet the demands of the critics.
I am not defending the 70s (I don’t believe in the idea that one era is better than any other), but if this era of TV is so great (I think this is a good time for quality TV) why are the Me-TV and others growing in popularity?
MYSTERY WOMAN is a good program for what it is. It may not enlighten or change the viewers life, but it is a nice way to spend a mindless Saturday afternoon.
October 24th, 2013 at 5:55 pm
15. Mike, there is also a plan to redo REMINGTON STEELE as a thirty-minute comedy with their daughter running the agency.
Guys, it is pilot season. The networks are buying lots of stupid ideas not just remakes. A script will be written. If the network likes the script, a pilot will be made. Then the thirty or so pilots per network that actually get made, a handful will be bought as a series. This year, two series have been cancelled after two episodes (remember LUCKY 7 a remake of a British series or was it Australian?) and one or two have been cancelled before they got on the air.
It is a looong process from bought idea to on the schedule. Is there anyone here that thinks IRONSIDE was the worst idea for a new series on this year’s schedule?
October 24th, 2013 at 6:02 pm
Mike Doran:
Read your comment but it did not go far enough. This thing is already headed to the Ironside reboot graveyard. The producers are as passé as the middle aged guys years ago trying to cash in on Easy Rider. Hard to believe they can keep their jobs. Or, after the firings, get new ones.
October 24th, 2013 at 6:21 pm
OH, and while the above seems at odds with my prior posting, not so. You have to have an idea not steeped in obvious cynicism. And, Michael, of course no one wants to embrace failure, but success in the arts always comes from truth. Possibly not profound but real.
October 25th, 2013 at 5:23 pm
Michael
I’m only arguing that if you settle for good enough, good enough is the best you will get. Re a new golden age, I was speaking of drama and comedy. Reality has always been lame outside of PBS, and always will be.
And I’m not trying to be contentious, but of course you can compare one era to another in general terms. Believe me, the seventies when I was in France were much better than the forties when the Nazi’s were there. Movies are big and glitzy and entertaining today, but classics are rare and Hollywood lost a great deal when the studios went.
If you don’t compare, judge, critique then you have no basis to recognize what is good or even great. And you say no one sets out to make a bad program, but that isn’t completely true. They set out to make a cynical and uninspired rip off of others ideas knowing the product will be second rate. They set out all the time to fill a quota or fulfill a contract with no concern for the final product.
And when we always settle for that, always find excuses for them, we are doing them and ourselves no favors. Still I’d rather see something bad but sincere any day over something cynically rehashed and presold (the way vultures pre digest their chicks food) like Ironside.
October 25th, 2013 at 9:36 pm
David, I enjoy your comments even if I have to work so hard to explain mine (that is a good thing). One of the things I learned as a professional critic is people watch TV for different reasons. MYSTERY WOMAN has been repeated for ten years and I know people who still enjoy watching it. To me that is a successful program.
I used to be the Customer Host for AMC theatre in Century City where my job was to answer questions about the movies playing. One night a group of people (all adults) asked me about NUNS ON THE RUN with Eric Idle. I answered it was a mindless comedy. You should have seen how excited they were. One said that was just what they were looking for and they all went off to buy tickets.
Some viewers want mindless comedy and drama, TV should have programs for them too. I don’t call that settling.
And guess what, CBS announced they may reboot CHARMED. (see comment 17).
October 21st, 2017 at 4:53 am
I realise that I have only caught the original of this ‘series’ very late.
I seem to have experienced the film series differently from you: I actually WAY preferred the second Philby, found the first singularly uncompelling, lacking the dry humour that Williams brought, and impossible to take seriously as a ‘retired spy’. Oddly, I think that I also prefer the original Cassie, though the second one is good, too.
For the rest: yes, usual derivative semi-obvious plot and conclusion – a harmless, but not brilliantly gripping way in which to pass time as one tidies one’s computer desk (yes, mine *is* that cluttered!)