The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV

Agatha Christie AND Ellen Byerrum Television Mysteries…

OK, everyone!!! Don’t forget that PBS will be airing Six by Agatha starting this weekend! Poirot starts out the fun:

June 21….. Cat among the Pigeons

June 28….. Mrs. McGinty’s Dead

followed by Miss Marple:

July 5….. A Pocket Full of Rye

July 12…..  Murder is Easy

July 19….. They Do It with Mirrors

July 26….. Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

On another note: Shirley just wrote to tell me about some Crimes of Fashion which will be taking place on the Lifetime Movie Network (LMN).  (As in Ellen Byerrum‘s Crime of Fashion mysteries…)

Killer Hair (first book in the series)will debut on Sunday, June 21 and Hostile Makeover (third book in the series) will be debuting on Sunday, June 28.

So, dot down the above information for some Cozy Mystery viewing!

Thank you, Alfred and Shirley!

New Cozy Mystery Shows Coming Soon!

Good news, Cozy Mystery lovers! A site reader (Thank you, Alfred!) just told me about some upcoming shows on PBS… So>>> mark your calendars!

PBS is calling this the “Six by Agatha” event. It all kicks off with two new Hercule Poirot episodes (Hercule Poirot Series X) at the end of June. Of course, we wouldn’t want them with any other actor than David Suchet… And, lucky for us, he will be starring in them. Both of these Agatha Christie episodes are ninety minutes long:

June 21….. Cat among the Pigeons

June 28….. Mrs. McGinty’s Dead

And then on to four brand new Miss Marple (Miss Marple, Series IV) shows. This time Julia McKenzie will be starring as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. If you were lucky enough to catch Cranford when it aired on PBS earlier this year, then you already know what an exceptional actress she is. These episodes are also ninety minutes long.

July 5….. A Pocket Full Of Rye

July 12…..  Murder is Easy

July 19….. They Do It with Mirrors

July 26….. Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

Now that the major television stations have all run their two hour season finales, what better way to celebrate the summer than with some brand new Mystery! shows on PBS?

Thanks, again, Alfred!

Sir David Attenborough: Great Nature Shows

If you have yet to see any of Sir David Attenborough’s nature collections, then you have missed some of the rarest glimpses into our world’s environments. There is a very obvious reason that this Natural Sciences academic from Cambridge is world-renowned: He is one of the world’s foremost experts in his field.

Each of Attenborough’s BBC series take place in different kingdoms. Some of the series that my family has been able to enjoy are:  The Life of Birds,  The Life of Mammals,  Life in the Undergrowth,  Life in Cold Blood,  Life in the Freezer (Antarctica).

Attenborough travels the entire planet so that we don’t have to. While “there”  (wherever that might be!) he brings us truly remarkable sights. And, he is not without the youthful heart of a small boy at seeing something truly amazing. Attenborough’s sense of glee when he watches an elephant quite literally going bump in the night is infectious. His obvious enjoyment at watching an orangutan grab a cracked nut from him or his laughter at watching an albatross land is contagious. >>> Even those Grinches among us are not able to resist his enjoyment.

Did I mention the filming? The Attenborough series are simply spectacular. He has hiked through the hot, dry Sahara Dessert or the hot, humid Amazonian jungles so that we can enjoy the sights that he and his production crew have had to wait for… sights that we would most likely never have seen even if we had been in the dessert or jungle… sights that took enormous amounts of patience and time to capture on film.

I’m happy to let Attenborough and his production crews/experts do the work so that my family can enjoy these beautiful pieces of nature’s art work! The footage we see is absolutely incredible.

(As with most things in nature, some of these shows include scenes not suitable for young children.)

If you would like to see more TV and Movies suggestions, click here.

Castle: New Show on Monday Nights, ABC

I just watched a new show called “Castle” and enjoyed it so much that I took a look at my Replay machine to see if they will be re-airing the pilot. The good news is that they are, on Saturday at 9:00 PM (our local Texas time).  So if you are at all interested, you can check it out!

ABC is the network that is carrying this very clever mystery show, and I sure hope there are enough people who tune it so that it remains on the air. I know that it is difficult to start up a show in the middle of the season… By then, people already know their weekly television viewing schedules.  This Monday night show is well-worth “shaking it up” and changing your Tivo/Replay/HD Box/VCR programming.

Anyway… If you have seen my TV & Movie entries, then you should know that I am a big Firefly fan. Castle stars Nathan Fillion (Firefly’s captain) as the main character of the show… a mystery book author who hangs out with “real life” big-name mystery authors over poker. Yes, for those of you who watched the show on Monday, those two men discussing killing off their main characters (Scully and Alex) in their mysteries are Stephen J. Cannell and James Patterson. (I could not get a good view of the woman at the poker table, and I hope that I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes by saying that I don’t know if she is a mystery author or not.)

Stana Katic stars as the police detective who is the basis of the main character of Castle’s new mystery series, which of course means that he has to shadow her for an undetermined amount of time. And, for all of you Falcon Crest fans, Susan Sullivan plays Castle’s mother… a wonderful character who I hope we get to see a lot more!

If you missed Monday’s pilot… you might want to check out Saturday night’s rerun so that you can start enjoying what I hope is a very long-running mystery show!

PS>>> My husband just asked me why he didn’t get to watch Castle… So, I will be taping the rerun this Saturday night!

MENU