When ‘Friends’ Killed Off ‘Murder, She Wrote’

The Big Picture

• In the 1990s, the popularity of sitcoms and dramas revolutionized television, leading to the decline of cozy mystery shows like
  Murder, She Wrote
  .
• Murder, She Wrote
  attempted to parody the popular sitcom
  Friends
  with an episode called “Murder Among Friends,” featuring a similar set, promotional poster, and character to Rachel.
• The declining viewership and a slot switch-up by CBS ultimately led to the end of
  Murder, She Wrote
  , while
  Friends
  continued to thrive and dominate the television landscape.

Television in the 1990s would be a decade that revolutionized sitcoms and dramas. The Simpsons spoofed a typical family comedy, while Twin Peaks descended a soap opera into dark surrealism. Never was that more clear than when a long-running mystery show confronted this new reality with an emerging sitcom. Murder, She Wrote ran from 1984 to 1996, and a major reason it ended was because of the growing popularity of Friends. The cozy mystery formula wasn’t enough anymore. Although the sitcom didn’t set out to end it, by the following year, only one of these shows was left standing.

‘Murder, She Wrote’ Once Included a Spoof of ‘Friends’

Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is a successful mystery writer and amateur detective. Each episode sees her traveling or going about her day in her New England town, always investigating and solving if not one murder, several. In Season 12’s “Murder Among Friends,” there’s a hot new show on TV. While Jessica is trying to keep her PBS program going strong, teaching how Alfred Hitchcock made his thrillers work, all the studio attention is going to Buds, a comedy that is centered around a friend group of 20-somethings. Soon, the domineering creator is killed and Jessica learns everyone had a good enough motive to do the crime. It won’t take you long to see how much of Buds is a rip-off of Friends. Any similarities to characters or episode events are usually purely coincidental — except when it comes to this.

One set is a groovy replica of Central Perk, with a coffee station, a neon sign, and the best sofa to invite big groups to sit down and talk about their problems. Around the production studio, there is a promotional poster that is similar to Friends, where the cast is all posed close together. And actress Dyan Emery (Barbara Alyn Woods) plays a character that is a stand-in for Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), fit with a similar hairstyle to the ’90s iconic “the Rachel.” Someone even makes it a point to tell her, “Girls all over America are copying your hairdo!” A jingle plays that is so obviously in the style of the upbeat transitional score from Friends, it will make you think nonstop: Could this episode be any more of a parody?

This being a murder mystery show, the lighthearted Buds is overcome by plenty of drama. The studio wants show creator Ricki (Cindy Katz) to kill off one of the stars to save money. “They’re not equally funny, you know,” one character tells Ricki. She rules over the cast and crew with an iron fist, but agrees with the studio, promising them, “I’ll give you one body,” a shocking death that will make for great TV. Ricki is the kind of condescending, demanding figure written that way, so she will be easy to kill off. She won’t let anyone take a hiatus from Buds to do other acting jobs, and that’s the deadly motive for one in the cast. The irony to this is that Jennifer Aniston was almost not let go from another sitcom she had a role in so she could stay on Friends.

As explained during Friends: The Reunion, Aniston had requested to leave Muddling Through, to which the producer told her how little success Friends would bring her. As for ripping off Friends, this was done on purpose by the Murder, She Wrote showrunners. They were venting frustrations on CBS, the channel Murder, She Wrote called home, which decided Season 12 should move from its regular Sunday night slot to Thursday night. When CBS did this change, it put Season 12 up against the more popular Friends, then in its second season, and there was no competition.

‘Murder, She Wrote’ Suffered From a Steep Decline in Viewership

In a May 1996 article, the Los Angeles Times stated, “The highest-rated drama series for nine consecutive seasons, ‘Murder’ saw its ranking plunge this year from No. 9 to No. 65.” David Shaw, co-producer on MSW, explained how CBS once gave Lansbury a good amount of control over the coveted Sunday 8 p.m. slot, for MSW and potentially another show she starred in afterward. Factors changed by the time Season 12 was made; there were new people in charge of CBS, plus a decline in ratings for the channel as a whole. In an attempt to ease conflicts, CBS did move MSW back to Sunday nights for its culminating four episodes, but Lansbury had been frustrated. Maddy Horn, head of programming at CBS, talked about the overall decision, saying, “That was to establish a comedy block on Sunday and also to strengthen Thursday night [with] the only viable alternative to the NBC comedies. We actually accomplished both.” It sounds more positive than what happened though. This was 1995-1996 and what didn’t help was the nostalgic coziness to Murder, She Wrote, a polar opposite of the younger, livelier Friends.

The date was February 8, 1996, and what were you going to watch? On the same night “Murder Among Friends” aired, there was “The One Where Ross and Rachel…You Know.” It came after the “Prom Video” episode, one of the show’s most iconic, where Ross and Rachel were on their way to being a couple. It followed a long line of stellar Friends episodes in Season 2, from a lesbian wedding to a Super Bowl two-parter. In this Feb. 8 episode, Monica (Courteney Cox) is a “smitten kitten” when she meets Richard in Tom Selleck’s first appearance, and Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel attempt to have a good first date, but it’s off to a rocky start. Rachel gets a case of the giggles during a kiss and, as a last resort, tries to get Ross to be more physical. He won’t budge as she tells him, “Come on, touch it. Oh, come on, squeeze it. Rub it? Oh, come on, would you just grab my ass!”

The sexiest episode of Murder, She Wrote, if it can be called that, included many extramarital affairs. In “If It’s Thursday, It Must Be Beverly,” Jessica realizes the older women around Cabot Cove have been sleeping with a local police officer, who is accused of his wife’s murder. “It was good clean sex once a week!” the titular “other woman” exclaims in her defense. This was a little different from Monica nearly falling over as she called out the best erogenous zone on a woman’s body: “Seven, seven, seven!” TV was changing in the ’90s. While MSW took pride in its formulaic mystery plots, there was an appetite for something else in 1996.

The One Where ‘Murder, She Wrote’ Said Goodbye

Talking about the night slot switch-up, Lansbury said in The Spokesman-Review, “I don’t think I would have ever agreed to do this 12th season if I knew this was going to happen. I just couldn’t understand. I couldn’t find any logic to their thinking, and neither could anybody else.” Murder, She Wrote, as Lansbury described, was “family-oriented,” and in talking about the show’s fans, she said, “They are all fascinated by this older woman who has it all together and solves these naughty little problems. Nobody ever thinks of Jessica as being a bloodthirsty woman who enjoys the gore and the horror of the murder. The murder is incidental. It sets the stage to solve the crime.” Friends offered a different approach to entertainment by looking into the daily lives of characters who, unlike Jessica, didn’t have it all figured out or could end an episode with a tidy bow and freeze-frame.

Murder, She Wrote had become a family affair for Lansbury, who was an executive producer, with her husband Peter Shaw as a producer and her son David Shaw as a co-producer. It would also bring in older actors for guest spots, like Cesar Romero, Roddy McDowall, and even Tom Selleck, who did a Magnum, P.I. crossover. Courteney Cox also guest-starred, in a very small role, for Season 3. But the guest star lineup in Friends would be much different, with Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts, among more modern and famous actors. There was a difference in the format, too. MSW was episodic, not serialized, and Friends established ongoing storylines in the romances among the friend group.

In “Murder Among Friends,” Jessica tells one of the Buds co-stars, “I mean, who would have thought a group of twenty-something young people sitting around all day long discussing their sexuality would turn out to be a top TV show?” She chuckles as the actor can’t defend the show as being anything but what Jessica described it as. The thing is, no matter how preposterous Angela Lansbury or the showrunners of MSW felt it was, Friends was a massive, beloved hit because of its premise. However, “Murder Among Friends” ends with a typical cheery final scene.

Jessica receives a diploma from the cast with the declaration, “Whereas, Jessica Fletcher has proven herself to be a friend extraordinaire, be it herewith resolved that she is officially designated an honorary bud.” The mystery series took its chance to be creative in taking a jab at the ‘90s sitcom classic, there was no bad blood by the time the credits rolled. While Friends would go into the 2000s, the mystery show ended that year, with CBS releasing four TV movies to make amends with Lansbury. For 12 years, Murder, She Wrote had been busy racking up a colossal body count, and in 1996, Friends would end up zipping its body bag for good.

Murder, She Wrote is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.

Watch on Prime Video