“Murder, She Wrote” started on CBS in 1984, starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The show ran for 12 seasons and 264 episodes, becoming one of the most successful TV shows in history. The series was syndicated around the world. Episodes are available for streaming on Netflix.
“Murder, She Wrote” also led to four TV movies, two video games and a short-lived spinoff in 1987 (”The Law & Harry McGraw”).
The series’ first season is good, but it doesn’t reach the heights of later years. The first sign that this show had a shot at really being something special came in this riff on The Thing From Another World, which strands Mulder and Scully in an Arctic research station with scientists and an alien worm that infects people and causes them to erupt in homicidal rage.
Writer Darin Morgan was responsible for only four X-Files scripts, but his erudite, witty writing both invented a new, comedic mode for the series and gained him the acclimation and adoration of TV writers throughout the industry. This episode is his most immediately accessible accomplishment: a melancholic, funny story of an old psychic who can see without fail when and how every person alive will die.
The X-Files has always been slightly overrated as TV horror. It primarily provided “shock” scares, with monsters lunging out of the dark, rather than the building unease more typical of series like Twin Peaks. Yet this episode is as scary an hour as TV has produced. The conceit? A small town is haunted by three grotesque brothers, the products of incest, and Mulder and Scully are trapped in their haunted house, Texas Chainsaw Massacre style.
My Third Parent 