OVER MY DEAD BODY.  CBS, 26 October 1990. Two-hour premiere of TV series. Edward Woodward, Jessica Lundy,  with Ed Winter, Dan Ferro, Gregory Itzin, Brenda Thomson. Created by William Link & David Chisholm. Suggested by the motion picture Lady on a Train (story by Leslie Charteris, who later published a novelization of the film). Director: Bradford May.

   As a TV series, not by any stretch of the imagination should it be compared to The Equalizer, Edward Woodward’s previous venture into TV-making.  Considering its lineage, it should come as no great surprise that it bears far more resemblance to Murder She Wrote, but I think Woodward is more suited to drama than he is to comedy, which is [mostly] what he does here.

   Maybe his character, Maxwell Beckett, famous  mystery writer and (so everybody believes) former inspector of Scotland Yard — maybe, as  I say, he’ll grow on me.  (They couldn’t get Michael Caine?)

   Beckett’s sidekick, his female Watson, if you will, is newspaper obituary writer Nikki Page (Jessica Lundy) who sees a murder committed in an apartment across from hers, but who finds it impossible to find anyone to believe her. This is where the movie Lady on a Train comes in, which is a movie I’ve wanted to see for  a long time, and somehow it’s never been shown on TV on any station I have access to, or if it has, I’ve missed it.

   However, there is not enough plot here to fill two hours (less commercials), so it takes a lot of funny scenes to fill in the gaps (most of which — the funny scenes, not the gaps — it was possible to see ahead of time in all the promos for the show that ran all the week before. On the plus side, I do have to tell you that there were a few individual lines that were quite clever and perhaps even funnier than the anything than those which were available earlier).

   Unfortunately, the killer is easy to spot. I knew who it was as soon as he appeared on the screen. (This is nothing, though, compared with my wife Judy, who knew who did it as soon as his name appeared in the opening credits.)

   Unlike Murder, She Wrote, it does not seem as though detection will be this series’ strong point. Myself, I think the strong point is going to be Jessica Lundy, who besides being young and good-looking, is also perky, loud and perfectly suited to be on television. You can quote me on this one.

   Incidentally, I thought it was interesting that Leslie Charteris was actually given onscreen credit. He must have a good agent.