Jessica Fletcher’s contemporaries (Season 1, 1984-1985)

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As we are approaching the 40th anniversary of Murder, She Wrote (which will be celebrated in September 2024), I can’t help but reflect on the enduring appeal of the show. At the time that the show ended, it held the record for being the longest-running detective show (after 12 seasons on air). And, notably, few detective shows from that era are still being watched by today’s audiences.

Therefore, I wanted to take some time over the next 12 months to look back on the detective shows that aired at the same time as each of the 12 seasons of Murder, She Wrote. The purpose being to (1) document the trends in television at the time, (2) to shed a light on Murder, She Wrote‘s unique appeal, and (3) perhaps revive some interest in other shows of the same era.

In this first post in a series looking at Jessica Fletcher’s contemporaries, I focus on the shows that aired during Murder, She Wrote‘s first season — paying particular attention to those shows that either ended their run or also premiered that same year.

The shows that continued through the season

The 1980s was still very much an era of detective, crime and adventure shows, so there were many series that started before Murder, She Wrote and which continued beyond the 1984-1985 TV season. Briefly, these include:

• The A-Team (1983-1987)
• Airwolf (1984-1987)
• Cagney & Lacey (1982-1988)
• The Fall Guy (1981-1986)
• Hardcastle and McCormick (1983-1986)
• Hill Street Blues (1981-1987)
• Knight Rider (1982-1986)
• Magnum, P.I. (1980-1988)
• Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1984-1987)
• Remington Steele (1982-1987)
• Riptide (1984-1986)
• Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983-1987)
• Simon & Simon (1981-1989)

One thing that I always find notable about this era of detective shows is the overwhelming number of shows focusing on partnerships (which I’ve written about before). And as we can see in the section below, series that featured only a single detective appeared to no longer interest viewers.

The shows that came to an end

Of the three continuing series that had their final season in 1984-1985, two featured only a single detective:

• The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-1985) [stream on Amazon]
• Matt Houston (1982-1985) [purchase on DVD]
• T. J. Hooker (1982-1985) [stream on Amazon] [purchase on DVD]

The third series, The Dukes of Hazzard, had been a top 10 show in its first three seasons, and so it’s understandable that it was cancelled when it stopped performing as well in its last three seasons.

The (less than) one season wonders

Of the shows that premiered in the same season as MSW, very few made it past the first season (and in fact very few made it past the first few episodes). In my look back at the 1984-1985 US TV season, I counted at least 13 new shows that were introduced that year but which were quickly cancelled.

These include: Cover Up; Detective in the House; Double Dare; Eye to Eye; Finder of Lost Loves; Half Nelson; Hawaiian Heat; Hot Pursuit; Jessie; MacGruder and Loud; Me and Mom; Partners in Crime; and Street Hawk.

The sheer number of shows is surprising, especially given that so many of them were featured in TV Guide.

The enduring few that premiered alongside Murder, She Wrote

Thus, Murder, She Wrote was one of only a handful of shows to premiere in 1984 that had any enduring qualities. Only four other shows premiered during the 1984-1985 season and continued into the following year:

• Crazy Like a Fox (1984-1986)
• Hunter (1984-1991) [stream on Amazon] [purchase on DVD]
• Miami Vice (1984-1989) [stream on Amazon] [purchase on DVD]
• Moonlighting (1985-1989)

Of these four shows, only Hunter and Miami Vice are currently still relatively easy to find and watch. (While Moonlighting has been released on DVD, it was never released as a box-set and individual seasons can be prohibitively expensive.) [Update October 10th 2023: Soon after I published this post, it was announced that Moonlighting will be available to stream on Hulu as of today!]

And notably, as I mentioned earlier in this post, notice that the TV Guide preview feature photos for each of these shows focus on the (typical for a 1980s TV show) partnership. This is very different from the feature photo used to introduce the world to Murder, She Wrote. I would speculate that perhaps it’s not that viewers got tired of the single detective, but rather that they got tired of the single male detective.