MURDER, SHE WROTE - FABULOUS, HE SAID

So I've had a few semi busy days and have managed to put an end to the nasty spam comments on my blog. Fuckers have been hawking their wares like Amsterdam hookers in a window on my blog and have the cheek to say "Great blog, I'll bookmark you and tell my friends" Well I guess those mainframe computers must get pretty chatty because I've had a few pointless posts about some political situation etc.

I'm guilty, guilty of trash in the first degree, no I didn't fuck a homeless person but I did buy the First Season of that classic show with the best plotlines and facial lines - Murder, She Wrote.

Angela Lansbury (she of Bedknobs & Broomsticks/Gaslight fame) plays Jessica Fletcher, a New England widow who in her spare time wrote a mystery novel which was published and now wherever she goes, someone dies, Murdered in fact! Jessica lives in the fictional Cabot Cove and she still types on an actual typewriter similar to the one that James Caan lamped Kathy Bates with in Misery and she has endless relatives she visits who nearly always are framed for the murder of a thoroughly disagreeable person - normally powerful and rich with an ex-wife and disgruntled relatives/employees. Jessica uses all her innocent exterior to find clues which sometimes, in fact all the time are discovered by sheer luck to identify the killer. Jessica always gets the killer to confess and we see a fair bit in flashback of how the person was actually killed and the clues left behind. The killer always seems rather happy to confess as Jessica makes the idea of confessing rather sugary and sweet that the guilty party never challenges her or attempts to knock her geriatric head off for unravelling the mystery.

My only gripe is that the past few episodes I've watched, I've guessed whodunnit well before Jessica does just by the shady eyebrows and obvious clues - I don't remember it being that easy on a Sunday night before my bath when I'd watch Jessica in mortal peril in a race to find the killer - but I think a lot of shows from our childhood have that effect. It's great to see every ex bit part soapie actor as a suspect. Jared Martin, Morgan Brittany, Dack Rambo, Genie Francis, Andy Garcia?! and Lynn Redgrave have all popped looking decidely dodgy - however the show is excellent and who can resist Jessica Fletcher in a raincoat with a torch??! I know I can't.

In other news, I managed to download the final episode of The Comeback - the fabulous and rather cute Lubin (trashaddict) recommended this on his recent voyage to America and I watched an episode or two and became hooked. Lisa Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, she was an ex sitcom star in the early 90s with her show "I'm It!" and now plays Aunt Sassy in new comedy "Room & Bored" Val has a camera crew surrounding her all the time for her new reality show "The Comeback" journeying her comeback to primetime TV. It's cringeworthy in a David Brent Office kind of way as the cameras bore into Val's seemingly perfect facade and show her as insecure, desperate, weak but ultimately loving person. She's ridiculed by thr writers of the comedy, is badly edited for her reality show, is caught with lesbian porn by her Hispanola maid Esperanza, is pushed out of the way during photo shoots and finds herself smoking (!) and turning the tables on the sneaky producers when The Comeback finally airs. Val thinks she's done for but after doing a guest spot on Leno, words spreads that the show is hot, Val's comeback is secured as she's renewed for a 2nd season and signs sickbags with her picture on it outside the studio - you have to watch to understand it all really but Kudrow sheds her image as Phoebe in Friends to morph into a more rounded and actually funnier character. She manages to make me wince with embarassment and laugh at her all at the same time, the same way the audition process of Pop Idol does.

The funniest moment for me was seeing Val's pained face when a joke doesn't go down well. Her character Aunt Sassy walks in on another character holding some puppies and has to utter the immortal line "I haven't been licked like that since 1943"