Murder, She Wrote: Season 05 (1988)

Having carried virtually the whole weight of Murder, She Wrote during the series' first four seasons, star Angela Lansbury began curtailing her appearances during season five. A handful of episodes are built not around grandmotherly mystery writer Jessica Fletcher (Lansbury, of course), but instead around such fellow sleuths as Keith Michell as reformed jewel thief Dennis Stanton and Len Cariou as secret agent Michael Hagarty. Nonetheless, Jessica is given ample screen time to poke her nose into other people's business and calmly solve baffling murders in the process. With Tom Bosley having exited the role of Cabot Cove's sheriff Amos Tupper, Jessica finds herself with a new friendly adversary, Sheriff Mort Metzger, played by Ron Masak. Like Tupper, Metzger is none too keen on having Jessica accompany him on his various murder investigations, but he is invariably grateful for her assistance when she helps him collar the guilty party. Among the many guest stars dotting the series' landscape during its fifth season are former movie ingenues Teresa Wright and Joan Leslie, wonderfully cast as a pair of dotty Arsenic and Old Lace-like spinster sisters; Jean Peters, former wife of Howard Hughes, in a rare latter-day acting performance; Jane Greer, one of the foremost film noir heroines of the 1940s; and onetime Man From U.N.C.L.E. co-star David McCallum, in an espionage escapade set in Moscow. The season ends with the two-part "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall," which pits the likable Jessica against her unlikable literary rival Eudora McVeigh Shipton (Jean Simmons). ~ Rovi