Murder, She Wrote 6.1 “Appointment in Athens”

Jessica is in Paris on a book tour when she runs into her old pal Michael Hagarty, who convinces her to go with him to Athens before continuing on to Cairo. It turns out this was just a ploy get Jessica to help him on his latest mission by pretending to be his wife. Michael and Jessica pretend to be Mr. and Mrs. Riordan while Michael tries to negotiate the release of some kidnapped MI6 agents.

Just the facts:

Click on the text below to reveal spoilers.

Click to reveal the victim

It was Pamela, the woman who was originally going to pretend to be Michael Hagarty’s wife!

Click to reveal the killer

It was Harold Baines, another MI6 agent!

Click to reveal the location

It was in Michael and Jessica’s hotel suite!

Click to reveal the motive

Baines was in cahoots with the kidnappers because he was angry that he hadn’t been promoted! Pamela caught him rifling through Michael’s stuff at his hotel suite.

Cast of characters:

As it is a Michael Hagarty episode, we have him plus other MI6 agents:

• Len Cariou plays MI6 agent Michael Hagarty. (This is Cariou’s fourth out of seven total appearances on MSW as Hagarty.)
• June Chadwick plays Pamela Drake, a woman (actress?) who was initially tasked with pretending to be Michael’s wife.
• Ian Ogilvy plays Harold Baines, another MI6 agent. (This is Ogilvy’s first of five total appearances on MSW.)
• John McCafferty plays kidnapped MI6 agent, Laddie Fairchild.

• Richard Todd plays Col. Alec Scofield, station chief.
• Sybil Lines plays the colonel’s wife Madge Scofield.

There are also a few characters who are either locals or locally stationed.

• Thom Christopher plays Dimitri Popadopalous (local shady buisenessman?). (This is Christopher’s second and final appearance on MSW. He previously appeared in “Trouble in Eden“.)
• Steve Inwood plays Sgt. Petrakas, local law enforcement. (This is Inwood’s second of three total appearances on MSW. He previously appeared in “Simon Says, Color Me Dead“.)
• Peter Van Norden plays Henryk Stuyvesant, local spy-for-hire. (This is Norden’s second of three total appearances on MSW. He previously appeared in “Smooth Operators“.)

There are also several minor/background characters. Of these, the most notable are Thom Keane as a hotel clerk since this is his first of two appearances on MSW, and Anthony Gordon as M. Le Bon as this is also his first of two appearances on MSW. Bob Harks (a prolific stand-in) is also seen playing a policeman. This is Harks’ fifth of at least 11 appearances on MSW.

Final thoughts and other trivia:

In this episode, we see the back of a book jacket with Jessica’s name in Greek. In real life, on Greek television, her name is transliterated as Τζέσικα Φλέτσερ (Tzesika Fletser). However, in this episode we see J. B. Fletcher transliterated as Ξ B Φλέζσερ (X. B. Flezser), which would imply that Greeks read Jessica’s first name as Xesika or Ksesika.