It isn't every five-time Tony winner and multiple Oscar nominee who is most famous for starring in a CBS mystery procedural. But as the many appreciations that marked her death on Tuesday made clear, Angela Lansbury was in a class by herself, and "Murder, She Wrote" was, all that quaintness notwithstanding, revolutionary.
When Jessica Fletcher first appeared, jogging the streets of Cabot Cove, tapping away on her manual typewriter and putting two and two together in that clear-headed, unsentimental way of hers, no one knew quite what to make of her. Even with "Police Women," "Charlie's Angels" and "Cagney & Lacey," female detectives were thin on the ground, never mind female amateur detectives of a certain age.
"Murder, She Wrote" eschewed car chases, gun fights and gruesome corpses; most of its murderers were as ordinary as its main character and usually went quietly when caught.
