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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 6, No. 32 |
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'McBRIDE' For the Defense  JOHN LARROQUETTE TOWERS OVER L.A. SKYLINE IN HIS NEW HALLMARK CHANNEL MYSTERY SERIES |
Hallmark's 'McBride'
upholds a TV tradition
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Some mystery fans who grew up on Raymond Burr's "Perry Mason" just won't feel satisfied if there isn't a good old-fashioned courtroom mystery show on TV. The last to really fill that gap was "Matlock" with Andy Griffith, which stopped making original episodes a decade ago.
To be sure, there have been plenty of courtroom shows since then and even some that frequently did episodes that had some kind of mystery at their core. But, by and large, they've been like NBC's "Law and Order" shows, which owe more to the tradition of the police procedural than the mystery because of their strong reliance on realism.
But cable's Hallmark Channel, which has been luring mystery fans with three new series of original mystery movies this year, has included a classic courtroom mystery in that mix--"McBride," a throwback to the "Matlock"/"Perry Mason" shows of the 1980s and early 1990s.
"McBride" stars a popular actor with a high TV profile--John Larroquette, whose long run as Asst. District Attorney Dan Fielding on NBC's "Night Court" (1984-92) made him an Emmy-winning star and put him right into the courtroom setting that now seems to fit him like a glove in his first mystery series.
It should be no surprise if the two-hour "McBride" movies seem to operate a lot like "Matlock" and the series of "Perry Mason" movies that revived the character in the 1980s with Burr reprising his famous role. That's because writer-producer Dean Hargrove comes from those two classic series, bringing with him his immense knowledge of how to make TV mysteries.
Hargrove had great success with "Matlock," using Andy Griffith, a star best remembered for his TV comedy series. He and frequent partner Joyce Burditt also turned to a veteran TV comedy star, Dick Van Dyke, for their other successful TV mystery series, "Diagnosis Murder." Hargrove has always felt audiences really respond positively to comic actors like Griffith, Van Dyke and Larroquette--and are willing to accept them playing serious characters in familiar mystery formats.
All of Hargrove's popular shows have depended on the "puzzle" format, which keeps the hero working to develop clues to the core mystery. They eschew the sort of realism now so prevalent in broadcast network mystery and crime shows like the "Law & Order" and "CSI" franchises on NBC and CBS.
Cable networks like Hallmark can remain profitable by catering to general viewing audiences and don't need to go after young viewers quite so vigorously as the broadcast networks do. That has permitted them to make money showing reruns of classic mystery shows and creating new shows like "McBride," "Mystery Woman" and "Jane Doe," even if older mystery fans make up a large part of their viewership.
Hallmark also is keeping up a steady flow of first-run episodes of "McBride" and the others this summer while the broadcast networks are having their usual summer siesta, relying on reruns. For instance, a new "McBride" episode premieres this Sunday (Aug. 14) at 7 p.m. (6 central time).
The new episode has all the crucial ingredients of a classic old-fashioned TV courtroom mystery. Our hero is Mike McBride, a defense attorney who agrees to defend a Los Angeles talk radio star against a charge of murdering his sharp-tongued on-air partner, theoretically because the victim had just signed a hefty contract with the station to do the show by himself, cutting out the partner accused of killing him.
Jeff Peters, who wrote the script for the episode called "Tune in For Murder," has fun with the whole concept of talk radio. Ron (Frazer Smith) is the obnoxious, abusive star of the radio show and his partner Bob (John Kapelos) is the milder, more reasonable guy. McBride walks into this case with a severe distaste for the whole talk radio milieu.
When client Bob quickly discerns McBride has no idea how "big" he is in the broadcasting world, he says, "You don't listen to talk radio much, do you?"
"Is never not much?" McBride responds. (Ah, he's surely a man of great taste. What's not to like about this hero?)
But talk about your uphill courtroom contests! The prosecution has a 911 call from the murder victim, identifying Bob as his killer. They also have several personal items Bob supposedly left at the scene And, worse yet, they have a motive: Bob's angry outburst when he learned earlier that day that he was being dumped and his partner was going on as the sole star of the show. When his partner told him to calm down, Bob actually said, "I'll calm down when you're dead!"
Uh, oh. Those aren't the kinds of words a defense lawyer wants hovering over his client's head at trial.
But McBride specializes in sifting out the real facts of a case, so you can bet his courtroom presentation will be a lively one.
Do not come to "McBride" looking for originality. It's formula television, but then Agatha Christie pretty much wrote formula mystery fiction and it didn't drive away any of her millions of fans. For devotees of this kind of show, the piling up of clues the detectives missed is where the fun starts.
I'm happy those who love these stylish old shows still have something fresh to watch and not just "Matlock" reruns. They're "feel good" mystery shows and Larroquette plays McBride as if the character was a real comfortable fit. And here's a real plus: At no time during the two hours will anybody show you the inside of a brain after a bullet has plowed through it. That, in itself, now seems rather original, doesn't it?
©2005 by Ron Miller.
The photo is courtesy of The Hallmark Channel. This column first
posted Aug. 8, 2005
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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