MR. MONK’S LAST CASE (2023)

February 6, 2024

Content Warning

This post discusses suicidal ideation.

Spoiler Warning

This post mentions several early plot points regarding MR. MONK’S LAST CASE. It also details the ending of Agatha Christie’s CURTAIN.

MONK was a USA network TV procedural featuring the very nuanced Tony Shalhoub as Adrian Monk. Monk is a brilliant, married San Francisco detective who struggles with obsessive–compulsive disorder.

In the opening episode Trudy, an accomplished journalist and Monk’s wife, is murdered via a car bomb and Monk finds himself confronting what he sees as an unsolvable case which flares his OCD to unsociable levels. He leaves the force and holes himself up in his apartment, fastidiously dusting and wiping and fussing over his living space, attempting to enact order, at least until SFPD comes knocking at his door and pull him back into the real world.

“It’s a jungle out there.

Disorder and confusion everywhere.”

MONK certainly falls in the realm of cozy, non-threatening murder mysteries. There is no omnipresent sense of dread and little in the way of heightened emotions. However, unlike many other cozy murder mysteries, the heart of the show is its melancholy. Adrian Monk is haunted by his wife’s death for years and burdened by his many compulsions and fears. Shalhoub never plays Monk overly serious or nihilistic but instead portrays him as a petulant man-youth with a bit of hurt behind his eyes.

“No one seems to care; well I do! Hey who’s in charge here?”

The series finale let Monk solve Trudy’s murder, allowing him to move on with his life, to live with answers instead of questions. At least, that was the goal.

14 Years Later…

From out of nowhere — and at no one’s request — we have MR. MONK’S LAST CASE. Monk is no longer a consultant for the SFPD. He’s been working on a memoir of his cases which is deemed uncommercial thanks to being overly verbose and concerned with anything but his cases. He’s off of — and stockpiling — his meds, flaring up his OCD.

I will not spoil anything about the case apart from stating that why it pulls a reluctant Monk back into detective mode is surprisingly cruel, especially for a show like MONK but, as it’s a full-blown made-for-TV film, stakes are expected to be raised, and MR. MONK’S LAST CASE certainly raises them.

If you noted the stockpiled pills and immediately thought: ‘Oh, Monk is contemplating suicide.’ then give yourself a pat on your back. There’s also a scene very early out of the gate where Monk longingly stares out of a high-rise window at the sidewalk below, and his fingers inch close to the window clasp. Also, he’s literally counting down the days on his paper calendar to a day with the name ‘Trudy’.

Solving Trudy’s murder didn’t bring Adrian the solace he had hoped for. Instead, coming out the other side he felt unmoored, unnecessary, a ship without a sail, and in his mind the only solution is to join Trudy in his idea of the afterlife. Dark? Sure. Too dark for MONK? Not at all as it feels organic to the character. Post-Trudy, Monk is a man who is never content, driven to placate himself but never finding peace.

“Poison in the very air we breathe.

Do you know what’s in the water we drink? Well, I do and it’s amazing.”

While Adrian Monk certainly shares DNA with a number of other murder mystery/detective fiction protagonists — MR. MONK’S LAST CASE has a number of blatant riffs, especially a very not-so-subtle insertion of an adoptable dog named ‘Watson’ — he mirrors Agatha Christie’s fastidious and fussy Belgian ex-policeman-turned-private-detective Poirot more than others.

Putting aside recent adaptations of Poirot mysteries, Hercules Poirot is an overly neat and tidy man, a man who is very proud of his perfectly coiffed mustache, of his immaculately shined shoes, of the fabric that lines his coat. Like Monk, Poirot becomes very agitated when anything disrupts his sense of order, be it mussing his attire or imperfectly sized eggs.

Also, like Monk, Poirot has an bit of an ego, is very aware of his talents and — as he himself puts it — his ‘little grey cells’, and is steadfastly stuck in his own ways. However, Monk and Poirot couldn’t differ more about their deduction techniques:

Monk’s technique is in the Holmes-ian mould in that he pieces together the murders utilizing precision knowledge of items and dates and scuffs and cigarette ash which inevitably result in comedic moments where Monk is disgusted by having to get down and dirty and then he throws a childish fit.

Nonetheless, Poirot is in every which way a Christie protagonist. While she was a relentless researcher and certainly knew of many ways to physically enable someone to kill someone, she was always more interested in the circumstances, the emotions and motivations and flawed humanity that drove one to commit such an act. While, yes, Poirot does ask suspects to detail their time and place around the murder, it’s not just the time and place he’s making note of, but the words and body language in-between those bullet points.

Like Arthur Conan Doyle’s frustration with how wildly popular his Sherlock Holmes creation had become, after having published far more Poirot novels than she thought she ever would she found herself tiring of the character. However, like Doyle, she came to the realization that for as long as she lived, Poirot would live alongside her.

To cope with this, she did the next best thing. In the midst of WWII she penned Poirot’s final novel, CURTAIN: POIROT’S LAST CASE. While it starts like so many other Poirot novels — countryside inn, an ensemble of suspects, unexplained deaths — the circumstances are different this time around. Poirot and his affable sidekick Hastings are older. Times are changing. The world is different. The old guard is ailing, reduced to a number of medications to keep the heart beating. Tried-and-true techniques no longer guarantee the same results.

Part of Christie’s impetus was to ensure readers would receive proper closure regarding Poirot’s life and contributions, as it was also written with bombs falling around her and she was very unsure about the future.

Upon completion of CURTAIN, Christie locked the manuscript in a bank vault and continued to pen Poirot adventures, the last of which was ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER, published in 1972.

After penning the Tommy and Tuppence mystery POSTERN OF FATE in 1973, Christie knew that would be her last work so she unfurled CURTAIN and it was published in September of 1975. She lived to see the world react to Poirot’s literal end, but passed shortly after on January 12th, 1976.

It’s on record that Christie was a rather secretive person. Her ‘lost 11 days’ where she just up and vanished from her home and family, leaving behind numerous oddities that were construed as ‘clues’, including three envelopes handed out to staff only to be opened upon her death has the grist of a private joke. She was later found residing at a spa and she claimed to have no memory of the past 11 days.

What occurred between those 11 days, as well as the reasoning for leaving in the first place, has been the source of endless speculation, including several films and a Doctor Who episode.

“People think I’m crazy, ‘cause I worry all the time.

If you paid attention you’d be worried too.”

A brief aside: It’s been widely speculated that Christie was suffering from Alzeimers late in life. If you read her novels as they were published you can see her prose turn, leaning more into terse bouts of dialogue, characters often repeating or even contradicting themselves in non-writerly ways. Certain narrative twists don’t land or even make much sense. Hell, even the title of her last Poirot novel — ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER — seems to underscore that she was aware of her ailments.

The upside of this is that CURTAIN, a novel Christie wrote thirty years prior, a novel so rich and complex, a novel that reckons with one’s worth and ability and aging and expectations, reads thirty years later like nothing she has published in decades, but also reads like everything she’s wanted to put into words for so, so very long.

(I swear this is Eddie Campbell’s work! I wish I would have asked him when I met him!)

CURTAIN closes with Poirot murdering his suspect, despite the fact that he has no tangible evidence to link him to the five murders he’s investigating. Then, before bed, Poirot intentionally neglects his heart pills and he passes away in his sleep due to a heart attack. He dies torn between his actions to dole out justice, but also with the knowledge that he has enacted justice but can no longer be trusted to do so. He is tired; so tired.

He pens all of this to his sidekick Hastings, who receives Poirot’s scribed ‘drawing room speech’ several months after Poirot has been buried. Envelopes beget envelopes.

“And last of all, the pistol shot. My one weakness. I should, I am aware, have shot him through the temple. I could not bring myself to produce an effect so lopsided, so haphazard. No, I shot him symmetrically, in the exact center of the forehead…”
Poirot, CURTAIN, in a letter he penned for Hastings. [pg. 222]

MR. MONK’S LAST CASE leans heavily on all of the above, from the formal queasiness of asymmetry to feeling adrift from modern society, seeing one’s self as abnormal, the desire to kill one’s self to quell the madness around you, to be the sole person who can instill order no matter the cost, to hope for some kind of peace and solace that you’ve known in the past, to put a name and a date on it, to send envelopes containing words hedging around what all of this means, why one needed to see this through to the very bitter end…

“You better pay attention or else this world we love so much might just kill you.

(I could be wrong now, but I don’t think so!)”

I can’t say for sure that MR. MONK’S LAST CASE used Christie’s CURTAIN as an influence, a template, and — or — a springboard, but the pieces fit in a way that suits both protagonists, as well as for the viewers who are mystery nerds.

Despite having penned hundreds of words above about how MONK pays tribute to the detective fiction of the past, the show itself never calls attention to it or makes it the centerpiece of a scene. In other words, you don’t have to have read every Christie mystery or every Hammett potboiler in order to enjoy MONK. It’s a series that stands on its own two legs, while also acknowledging works that have inspired those willing the show into existence.

I should know. I started watching MONK a few seasons into its run and was smitten, despite having never glommed onto detective fiction in the past. I had barely read any of Doyle’s Sherlock tales, the only Christie works I saw were adaptations aired on MASTERPIECE THEATRE, which I mostly watched for the Edward Gorey animated opening sequence. I was into noir, but mostly for the moral ambiguity and the misfit characters and the grime and nihilism.

“‘Cause there’s a jungle out there.

It’s a jungle out there.”

Was MONK cozy? Sure. However, that general sense of melancholy, of feeling like you were a burr on society but also that society was a personal burr for you resonated deeply. Monk, the character, the persona, was one of a damaged individual just trying to get by. While he thought highly of himself, the world around him literally suffocated him. It may sound like a minor character tweak, but for the time — hell, even now — it’s far headier than the usual ‘oh I’m just a drunk with mommy/daddy issues but I’m also brilliant’.

MR. MONK’S LAST CASE is not just a shadow of CURTAIN. After all, this is a proper film — albeit made-for-streaming and all of the baggage that entails — and fills up two hours (with commercial breaks, naturally). Every facet of the show is dialed up to 11, including explosions, manner of deaths, almost all of the gang is back together and hell, even the number of exterior shots instead of bland offices and over-utilized Warner Bros. lot buildings have increased! They’re playing with a far larger budget than pretty much any TV-centric detective fiction fan is familiar with.

Also, simply because of Adrian’s germaphobic nature, the show handles COVID and the collective lockdown and repercussions far better than just about any other mainstream media work I can think of. Fittingly, the populace’s embrace of safety and awareness of infectious issues only serves to depress Monk further.

MR. MONK’S LAST CASE looks great: it no longer has its odd vaseline-ish patina, drones have been deployed, and the editing pushes and pulls where and when it should. The suspect? Well, let’s just say I wish the real-life counterpart faced the same sort of justice.

MONK was a certain type of show that is sadly going extinct; a crowd-pleaser of a collective effort that knew how to entertain, but also indulged itself in substantial and thoughtful riffs. It was show the whole family could watch, but each member would delight in vastly different facets of an episode.

MR. MONK’S LAST CASE manages to return to that form, to toe that line: it’s funny, it’s quippy, it’s smart, it pays homage to the past, it has a lot of spectacle, it explores the interiority of its namesake, it has a great villain, it’s not copaganda — I could go on and on.

Yes, MR. MONK’S LAST CASE is more open-ended than CURTAIN. However, I do hope it is how we leave him: in a better state than when we first met him.

“Eh bien.”
Hercule Poirot

“It’s a gift… and a curse.”
Adrian Monk

Addendum

Yes, I know. MONK has so many quotable moments, so why, why?! did I choose to only quote the Randy Newman song that serves as the title sequence, and wasn’t even part of MONK’s first season? ‘It’s a Jungle Out There’ is that succinct and, despite the fact that it was a song that pre-dates MONK, it perfectly encapsulates the show. That’s why. Best of luck getting that earworm outta your head now!

VIRGINIA (2017)

June 26, 2023

(macOS/PC/PS4/PS5) VIRGINIA was the first game from Variable State, and it made quite the mark. Not only is it 100% dialogue-less but it frequently quits scenes, leaping forward in time and to different locations, even if you aren’t done interacting with them.

I’ll note that Variable State was inspired by the experimental indie game 30 FLIGHTS OF LOVING — they even included a special note in the credits to underscore what they owed to 30 FLIGHTS — which also jumps around in time and locations a lot.

While 30 FLIGHTS OF LOVING felt thrillingly chaotic, VIRGINIA is the other side of the coin.

VIRGINIA is a slow burn of a thriller. You play as Anne Tarver, a wet-behind-the-ears FBI agent whose partner is seasoned special agent Maria Halperin. The two of you are in Kingdom, Virginia, investigating the disappearance of a young boy named Lucas. Tarver then gets drawn deeper into FBI schemes, and matters escalate in a dreamline way.

(Unsurprisingly, the game also takes a few notes from TWIN PEAKS, as one location practically recreates the Roadhouse, even down to a Julee Cruise-ish backing band.)

I’ll note: this is essentially an experimental point-and-click adventure game, albeit first-person. While it is a ramshackle indie game, Terry Kenny’s simple but evocative art styling does a lot to imbue the spirit of the game, but the silence is what I find most intriguing. Occasionally, the game even lacks room tone — it’s dead silent. Everyone speaks with gestures and motions and physicality. It’s a glorious limitation to place on a modern narrative-forward game, one that makes VIRGINIA so memorable.

And when the game isn’t silent? When the score swells? It resonates volumes.

This isn’t a game for everyone. If you’re impatient, if you expect proper answers, if you want fire off a gun, this is not the game for you. However, if you’re looking for a surreal, atmospheric, story-driven mystery that isn’t the most interactive game ever, but looks and sounds great and can hit where it hurts, it’s a great Sunday experience.

TWIN MIRROR (2020)

May 11, 2023

(PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox) TWIN MIRROR is the most recent game from LIFE IS STRANGE developer Don’t Nod, and it certainly feels like one. It’s yet another narrative-forward interactive adventure game focused on character interactions, dialogue branches, story-changing decisions, escapism and fantasy via superhero elements, and traumatic deaths.

In fact, it eeriely mirrors the first LIFE IS STRANGE game in a number of narrative and mechanical ways, even down to the protagonist having ghosted their best friend for years, then returning to their hometown, and it essentially recreates the ‘high school dream sequence’ Max endures where you’re endlessly walking through hallways and doors.

While it doesn’t take place in the Pacific Northwest, it does take place in rural West Virginia, and even features similar sequences from LIFE IS STRANGE 2 such as road and forest exploration, as well as looking after a plucky but rebellious youth.

So, you could say Don’t Nod have more than a house style; they have a house template.

Let me rewind a bit.

TWIN MIRROR features middle-aged ex-investigative journalist washout Sam Higgs who, after being rebuffed by a marriage proposal to his co-worker Anna, abandoned his hometown after penning an expose of the town’s central mining industry, causing them to shutter and forcing many folks out of work.

He returns two years later to attend the funeral of his prior best friend and co-journalist Nick, who appears to have died in a car crash. Matters escalate, and dramatic intrigue sets in, and Sam only has Anna and a mysterious other to help him sort matters out.

What results is something that feels like an odd fusion of LIFE IS STRANGE, recent SILENT HILL games, and the Frogware Sherlock Holmes games. As mentioned earlier, it borrows a lot from LIFE IS STRANGE, but the bland, middle-aged protagonist, mining town, and guilt-obsession and illusionary characters feels very SILENT HILL, and the deduction puzzles are very Frogware. (Hell, they even include ‘Mind Palaces’.)

So, yeah, it’s an amalgamation that is perfect for me as I love all of those games, but perhaps not for everyone else.

Sadly, if you’re expecting the quirky, queer characters as seen in LIFE IS STRANGE, you should look elsewhere. These characters are straight archetypes; all older angst and repression. However, if you enjoy murder mysteries and adventure games, it’s a well-developed work.

MURDER, SHE WROTE – The Days Dwindle Down (1987)

October 11, 2022

The Strange Bargain of Murder, She Wrote’s The Days Dwindle Down

(This is a repost of a previously penned look at this singular MURDER, SHE WROTE episode from my old tumblr.)

(Freevee/peacock) Please note: this article contains major spoilers for both the film STRANGE BARGAIN as well as the MURDER, SHE WROTE episode The Days Dwindle Down (Season Three, Episode 21).

A killer confronts the person they’ve framed, confesses their crimes, then threatens to take down the wronged man or woman. The police, waiting in the wings, swoop in and safely apprehend the killer. The wronged person sighs with relief and ‘The End’ appears on the screen.

This is the closing sequence of many movies, including the little known 1949 RKO noir film STRANGE BARGAIN. The audience assumes that the ex-suspect can move on and return to a normal, humdrum domestic life. What if they were wrong?

The Days Dwindle Down, the 21st MURDER, SHE WROTE episode of the show’s third season, asks that very question but it does so through the lens of the film STRANGE BARGAIN. By utilizing footage from the movie and casting the major players in the same roles, it tasks writer/amateur detective Jessica Fletcher with solving a crime that, for thirty years, was considered a closed case. It’s a particularly interesting concept — one that I haven’t seen attempted in any TV shows prior or since — and it elevated the normally conservative MURDER, SHE WROTE to a TV event that likely won’t be repeated any time soon.

The episode opens with Georgia Wilson (Martha Scott) overhearing Jessica Fletcher discuss her “real-life sleuthing” with her agent. Georgia pulls Jessica aside to ask for her help: her husband, Sam (Jeffrey Lynn), was just released from a 30 year stinct in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but they can’t move ahead together without finding out who Sam was doing time for.

Ever the optimist, Jessica offers her help and listens to their tale. The story, told through flashbacks utilizing scenes from Strange Bargain, detail Sam’s struggle: while going through a financially turbulent period, Sam (at the request of his wife) requests a raise from his boss, Malcolm Jarvis. Instead of bargaining with him, Malcolm immediately fires Sam, citing both his, and the investment firm’s, poor fiscal condition. However, Malcolm proposes a solution to both of their ills: Malcolm is so cash-desperate that he had taken out a substantial life insurance policy, and he planned to kill himself and pose the scene so it looks like murder, allowing his wife and son a secure future. What’s in it for Sam? $10,000. All he needs to do is to complete the tableau by firing a few shots inside the Malcolm’s study after the suicide, and then dispose of the weapon.

Sam refuses the offer, but Malcolm won’t take no for an answer. The night of the planned suicide, Malcolm calls Sam and tells him he’s going through with it. Sam rushes over to Malcolm’s home to prevent him, but he’s too late: Malcolm is lying face down in a pool of blood, gun by his head. On his desk is a personalized note to Sam, along with an envelope containing $10,000 dollars. Sam decides to follow through with the plan, partially out of guilt, and partially because of the money. He takes the note, the gun, and the cash, goes outside and fires two shots through the office window, then disposes of the gun at a nearby pier. He cleans the remaining blood off of himself and the car, but it’s to no avail; he ultimately ends up becoming the prime suspect for murdering Malcolm, chased by Lieutenant Richard Webb (played by a pre-Dragnet Harry Morgan), a war-wounded cop with a bum leg, a hooked cane, and a record for always getting his man.

Jessica takes all of this in and immediately concludes that there’s no way Sam could be the murderer, and she agrees to investigate further.

This is where certain facts from the film are conveniently — and permanently — excised from The Days Dwindle Down: Strange Bargain actually had a happy ending, an ending that didn’t involve Sam going to jail. The closing scene sees Sam return to Malcolm’s home where he confesses to Edna Jarvis, Malcolm’s wife, that he didn’t kill Malcolm; instead it was an act of suicide. Consequently, there would be no insurance money. He hands over the $10,000, hoping to wash his hands of the whole affair, when Edna informs him that she knew of Malcolm’s plans to kill himself, that she approved, and even coordinated alibis for herself and her son to ensure that they would avoid suspicion.

Edna explains to Sam that she had her doubts that Malcolm would follow through, so she returned to the house to listen for the gunshot and, when she failed to hear one she enters, only to see Malcolm standing, gun reluctantly hanging by his side. He simply didn’t have the wherewithal to go through with it. “Malcolm was a weakling. I had the courage to do what he couldn’t do. […] It really was suicide, in a way,” she explains. “He just needed someone else to pull the trigger.” And so she did.

She points a gun at Sam, noting that the police will find him dead — another suicide — and she’ll be in the clear. She pulls the trigger, misses, merely grazes his arm. A cane stretches into the frame, hooks her arm, and Lieutenant Webb bursts into the scene, knocks Edna’s gun to the ground, and the police drag her away. Webb explains been following Sam for days, that they heard everything, and Sam is now absolved of any blame. Georgia rushes in, holds him tight, as he recants: “Darling, I made a terrible mistake but I’ll never make another one.”

“Oh yes you will,” she warmly retorts. “You’ll make lots of them. Not like this, but you’re a man and men are always making mistakes. Even women make them sometimes.” The End. Credits roll. *

Lacking this information, Jessica hits the trail alongside Sam’s son Rod (The Brood’s Art Hindle) – a cop, determined to prove his father innocent. They start off by interrogating all living offspring, including Richard Beymer as Sydney Jarvis (presciently acting very much like a proto-Benjamin Horne). From there, Jessica slyly tracks down Malcolm’s old secretary Thelma Vantay (played by June Havoc instead of Betty Underwood) and asks her if Edna, Malcolm’s wife, could have shot him.

“Mrs. Jarvis couldn’t have murdered anybody,” Thelma plainly states.

Jessica shoots her a quizzical look. “You mean, she was …too nice?”

“She didn’t have the guts!”

After discussing the case with the Wilson family over a nice home-cooked dinner, Jessica heads back to her hotel room for a fitful rest, only to awoken by a gunshot that found its way into her hotel room chair. The next morning, the cops procure the bullet and note that it belongs to a .38 revolver: the same type of gun that killed Malcolm. Unfortunately all of the prior Jarvis case records are missing, thwarting any attempts to match ballistics.

Jessica, undeterred, tracks down Edna Jarvis (played by Gloria Stuart, as Katherine Emery had passed away), and finds her in a nursing home, barely aware of her surroundings but zealously guarded by Sydney.

Conveniently, Jessica receives a phone call from a stranger purporting to have something that may help her investigation. Jessica taxi’s over to meet the man and is greeted by now-retired Lieutenant Richard Webb (still played by Harry Morgan, whose performance has loosened up over the years). He reveals that he has had the case record the entire time (“My Lindbergh baby,” he quips) and they confirm that the bullet fired into her chair was from the same gun. On the subject of Thelma, Malcolm’s secretary, Webb remarks that “I figured she was playing bedsheet bingo with the boss.”

Jessica enlists Rod, and the two scurry back to Ms. Vantay and, after a few rounds of good cop/bad cop, manage to squeeze out the admission that she deduced Malcolm hadn’t killed himself, and figured Sydney was covering it up. Sydney had been perfectly willing to pay her hush money but recently had fought back, knowing she couldn’t go to the cops without being brought up on blackmail charges.

Jessica and Rod gather Sam and Georgina to see Sydney in his drawing room, setting the stage for the big reveal. After quite a bit of verbal sparring with Jessica, Sydney eventually confesses, claiming that he killed his father, and he breaks down the events via more Strange Bargain flashbacks:

Sydney states that he saw Sam when he discovered Malcolm’s body in the study. He followed Sam to the pier (indicated in the flashback by black-and-white loafers) where he fished the gun from the water, just in case any prints were still left.

Jessica listens intently, then clucks at him. “You didn’t really kill your father at all, did you? Aren’t you really covering up for your mother?”

Sydney paces between two portraits of his parents while trying to explain away Jessica’s conjecture, but it’s no use. He sinks into a nearby chair, defeated, and reveals that, yes, his mother did kill Malcolm. Through another flashback, we see that it was an accident: Edna happened to enter the study when she saw Malcolm, poised with a gun to his head. She struggled with him, attempting to wrest the gun from him, but it went off and Malcolm was no more.

Considering the narrative dissonance, it’s not surprising that there was no mention of the film’s closing scene now. In fact, all of Sydney’s flashbacks are markedly different from the source footage. His shoes are inserted in the flashback footage, as is Edna’s tussle with her husband (they don’t even try to hide Edna’s casting change). It’s tough (but not impossible) to explain these discrepancies away as unreliable narration on Edna’s behalf, that she shot Sam in self-defense, that she was lying to protect Malcolm’s legacy and therefore Sydney’s, but the fact that it’s never even mentioned 30 years later is glaring.

At the end, everyone’s happy (or, at least as happy as they can be). Knowing Edna’s state, Sam doesn’t want to press charges, and they feel they can move on with their lives. The resolution fits the MURDER, SHE WROTE formula of exonerating any female suspects, and defangs Edna in particular. In short, the murder and the resulting events have been whitewashed. Thanks to the lack of morally ambiguous characters, STRANGE BARGAIN was hardly noir before The Days Dwindle Down, but Jessica’s deductions turn it into something else entirely.

I wasn’t familiar with STRANGE BARGAIN when I first saw The Days Dwindle Down, and I sought it out simply to see how the MURDER, SHE WROTE writers incorporated the source material. I assumed that The Days Dwindle Down had reversed whatever had been decided at the end of the film, that the events in the film were reshuffled or re-contextualized to put a different spin on the source material, or that the episode would at least would play with point-of-views and unreliable narration. While the concept and Jessica’s sleuthing was intriguing and well-executed, the reveal was far weaker, and far less interesting, than the tepid source material. Ideally MURDER, SHE WROTE would have been tweaked to accommodate the film and the characters’ needs; not the other way around.

The Days Dwindle Down aired almost exactly 28 years ago, the same span of years between the episode and STRANGE BARGAIN’s release. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before (if anyone else has — note that I’m not counting franchises or TV reunions — please chime in) and it may be another 28 years before see something like it again. I do believe The Days Dwindle Down to be the most experimental, noteworthy episode of MURDER, SHE WROTE but, while I still bemoan the end result, I heartily recommend it to anyone that will listen. Just make sure to watch it first, and STRANGE BARGAIN second.

STRANGE BARGAIN is currently unavailable to stream, and is only available as a Region 2 DVD.

For a more comprehensive look at STRANGE BARGAIN, click here.

SEE HOW THEY RUN (2022)

September 27, 2022

I am an unabashed Agatha Christie fan. I’ve read every Christie-penned Poirot novel. I’ve seen a live rendition of THE MOUSETRAP, albeit, not in London’s West End (although, not for want of trying). I’ve spent many hours watching adaptations of hers, partially because I’m simply fascinated with how folks adapt her works.

Folks nitpick her, saying she’s a sloppy storyteller, which due to possible Alzheimers, that’s fair concerning some of her later works, but when she was at the top of her game she was endlessly inventive, and constantly challenging herself and her readers.

I can’t say that SEE HOW THEY RUN is as ambitious as Christie’s best works, such as THE A.B.C. MURDERS or THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD or AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. However, it is slightly more ambitious than the Christie work it’s riffing on, THE MOUSETRAP, which is a very thin, very perfunctory murder mystery radio play — originally named THREE BLIND MICE, as Christie loves utilizing nursery rhymes and schoolyard songs — that Christie adapted into a short story. It then became the longest running theatrical play in history; perfect for dinner theatre, but not much else.

Famously, Christie sold off the film rights with the caveat that production could start shortly after the West End play closed. It’s still playing there to this day.

Instead of creating an adaptation of THE MOUSETRAP, SEE HOW THEY RUN is a meta-version of THE MOUSETRAP, where the murder mystery takes place during a production of THE MOUSETRAP. Not the cleverest conceit, but it’s serviceable enough to bring in a game — albeit underutilized — cast, which includes short-lived Adrian Brody, Sam Rockwell as the inspector, and the highlight of the film, Saoirse Ronan as the delightfully winsome Constable Stalker.

Frankly, I just want an entire series about Constable Stalker, and Saoirse’s endless enthusiasm practically sells the film in-and-of-itself.

That said, SEE HOW THEY RUN also has some stellar production design and camera work, and comes together far better than, say, Branagh’s tragedy of DEATH ON THE NILE, although it is a bit too tidy.

I can’t say this film will please everyone, but if you’re into Christie, it fits the playbill.

THE NINE TAILORS (1934)

June 16, 2022

The moment I realized Dorothy L. Sayers’ THE NINE TAILORS was a special sort of murder mystery novel was when I encountered one passage and thought: “Wow, she’s really leaning hard on the details of this old church’s bells.” Ten pages later: “Cripes, I never knew that I wanted to know this much about bell-ringing!”

Sayers is best-known for her murder mysteries, specifically her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, featuring a rich, compassionate, gregarious but astute man who often finds himself surrounded by death. GAUDY NIGHT (the tenth Wimsey story, published in 1935, one a year after THE NINE TAILORS) is perhaps her best-known, but sadly, nowadays unless you’re attending an Edgar Awards afterparty, you’re probably unlikely to hear her name or accidentally stumble over a visual adaptation of any of her novels.

This is a shame — and something The Dorothy L. Sayers Society is trying to rectify — because, as THE NINE TAILORS exemplifies, she’s exceptional at weaving a engaging world, one dense with intriguing and idiosyncratic individuals, where actions are richly detailed, and each work is ornately penned to soothe even the most high-minded snob. In her hands, the murder contained in THE NINE TAILORS almost fades away as we’re drawn into this small town and its denizens.

In other words: THE NINE TAILORS is the complete package. It’s thrilling, it has depth, it goes unfathomably deep into the world of bell-ringing in ways that manage to be highly entertaining, and it sticks the landing in an amazingly satisfying way. It’s an absolute classic, one that should certainly not be overlooked by any mystery fan.

Read here: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.512291

SEARCH PARTY (2016-2021)

February 22, 2022

(HBO MAX/hoopla) SEARCH PARTY would have been a memorable cult TV show even if it were a one season-and-done and, while I was a bit gobsmacked to see that it was renewed not twice, not three times, but four! — I had no idea how this show could sustain itself for a second season, much less five — it’s always had a very singular dry, but confident and clever, comedic voice.

The first season introduces us to a group of self-centered, off-putting millennials tearing themselves away from their guac-and-toast brunch to solve the mystery of a missing acquaintance they barely know, and matters go amazingly awry.

I can’t quite describe the following seasons without diving into spoilers regarding the end of the first season, but each season tackles a different sort of genre: the second turns into a crime thriller, the third a legal procedural, the fourth centers around a kidnapping, and the fifth jumps into the a cultish future before going full horror.

If you’re having a hard time wrapping your mind as to how all that works without it becoming some sort of Ryan Murphy-ish anthology series, I don’t blame you. On paper, it sounds absolutely bonkers and, in reality, it’s a high-wire balancing act without a net that they manage to walk without barely a wobble.

It’s the rare show that gets to have its cake and eat it too: the actors (including Alia Shawkat as Dory, the propulsive element of the group) imbue the characters with a certain quizzical ennui that is irrestable, so you both love and hate them. You get to see them reckon with their selfish attitudes, but also empathize with them. Add to that some whipsmart dialogue, vibrant cinematography, a haunting electro score, and a litany of fantastic cameos from actors you’d never expect to see on a TBS show* (including Michaela Watkins, Ann Dowd, and one of Louie Anderson’s final performances which, unsurprisingly, is amazing), and you have an idiosyncratic show for the ages (or at least for ages 25-40).

For those brave enough to endure a trailer for the first two seasons (and the second season spoilers are very vague):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZQ8wJXPZvI

It’s worth noting that the last two seasons were HBO MAX-exclusives.

THE MIRROR CRACK’D FROM SIDE TO SIDE (1962)

December 29, 2021

As noted in my ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER post, in 2021 I completed a seven-year-long endeavor to read every Poirot novel. Why? I wanted to scrutinize how Christie adjusted Poirot and his scenarios to adapt to the passage of time, given that the initial Poirot novel — THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES — was first published in 1920, and the last-penned novel — ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER — was published in 1972. A single author continuing the journey of a character explicitly created to examine human nature, over the span of fifty years, is a curious thing indeed.

However, THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES was not my first Christie book; that would be the second Miss Marple book THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY, which I picked up on a whim while in London, several months prior to reading my first Poirot novel.

While I haven’t found the need to burn through all of Christie’s Marple novels, I became intensely curious about THE MIRROR CRACK’D FROM SIDE TO SIDE (CRACK’D from here on out), as it features Marple diving into the world of Hollywood, specifically the world of acting, when the acclaimed-but-aging actress Marina Gregg moves into Gossington Hall*. While throwing a lavish introductory party, one of the locals ends up being poisoned, and Scotland Yard presumes that the murder was misplaced, that Marina was the actual target, and the mystery is then investigated.

While CRACK’D takes place in the early sixties, its reliance on the Hollywood of old, and Christie’s demeanor and approach makes it feel more like a post WWII mystery novel, even down to the scandal trades that she notes (CONFIDENTIAL and the like) makes the tale feel aged and artificial, as if it’s something Marple is regaling a relative with as opposed to living in the moment. In other words, it’s not one of Christie’s finest moments.

There’s also the fact that the mystery is nakedly cribbed from real-life events. Spoilers follow, so reader beware.

CRACK’D is essentially the story of Gene Tierney, perhaps best known for the enigmatic film noir adaptation of LAURA. Tierney was quite the starlet during the 40s, was the model for Mariana Gregg, and whose child was afflicted due to being in close proximity to someone inflicted with German Measles. If you know that fact going in, the mystery is quite straight-forward. Whether it was common knowledge in the early 60s is questionable, but given the fact that I knew it going in, it cast a bit of a pall over the story, especially since Marple barely bookends the story, leaving the heavy-lifting to Detective-Inspector Craddock.

Nonetheless, it’s an eminently brisk read, one worth your time if you’re interested in the inside baseball of 40s Hollywood, but if you aren’t, and aren’t a fan of Miss Marple? Feel free to return to the library.

Gossington Hall was where the titular body in the library was found in THE BODY IN THE LIBRARY, bringing my Christie journey full-circle.

ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING (2021+)

December 3, 2021

What could have been a lazy riff on the self-absorption of modern true crime podcasts became something far more interesting, bolstered by some of the best performances by Steve Martin and Martin Short in years. Also, as someone who constantly extolls the use of silence in visual works, I was gobsmacked by the seventh ep of season one, ‘The Boy from 6B’. Additionally, Selena Gomez is a triumph who constantly overshadows both Martins.

It’s a legitimately thrillingly suspenseful tale that, honestly? Didn’t need to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V1rQdXXXyI

COLUMBO: The Most Crucial Game (1972, S02E03)

November 9, 2021

(peacock/tubi/VOD) Gutted to hear that the world has lost Dean Stockwell. While he was in two COLUMBO episodes, my favorite of his is THE MOST CRUCIAL GAME. Dean Stockwell plays Eric Wagner, a hedonistic playboy who owns a Los Angeles football team who is murdered by the team’s manager Paul Hanlon (classic COLUMBO villain Robert Culp).

For the roughly ten minutes Stockwell is on-screen, he’s hilariously languid, lazy, high and hungover, and it’s the highlight of the episode — which is saying a lot considering how brilliant the interplay between Culp and Peter Falk always is. It’s not quite what I’d label as a classic episode of COLUMBO, but it’s an extremely enjoyable 75 minutes and, thanks to director Jeremy Kagan — perhaps best known for helming THE CHOSEN (1981) — features some of the surprisingly experimental camerawork and editing that the early COLUMBO eps are known for. You’ll be missed, Dean.