American television anthology series
The NBC Mystery Movie
is an American television anthology series produced by
Universal Pictures
, that
NBC
broadcast from 1971 to 1977. Devoted to a rotating series of
mystery
episodes, it was sometimes split into two subsets broadcast on different nights of the week:
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie
and
The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie
.
The NBC Mystery Movie
was a "
wheel series
", or "umbrella program", that rotated several programs within the same period throughout each of its seasons. In its first, 1971?72, it rotated three detective dramas that were broadcast on Wednesday nights from 8:30 to 10:00 p.m. in the
Eastern
and
Pacific
time zones (7:30?9:00 p.m.
Central
and
Mountain
time).
Background
[
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]
The origin of the "wheel" format was a joint programming and creative production agreement between the NBC Television Network and
Universal Studios
Television and Motion Pictures in 1966,
in accord with which NBC ordered a multi-year series of dramatic anthology productions from Universal that NBC would broadcast in the United States (both as originals and re-runs), with Universal retaining exclusive rights to overseas release of these productions as feature-length films, while NBC could not offer them as TV re-runs internationally.
The first series created under this agreement was
The Name of the Game
, a drama with three rotating stars. It was followed by
The Bold Ones
and
Four in One
(the similar
The Men
was produced for ABC and involved series from three studios, although one of them was Universal). While it was a long and profitable collaboration, it finally succumbed to the changes of the commercial broadcast market regarding both structure and content by the end of the decade.
By the late 1970s, the increasing popularity of situation comedies, coupled with their lower production costs and much greater scheduling flexibility and resale opportunities, surpassed that of these feature-length (90?120 minute) drama anthologies. The anthologies could not reasonably be reduced for shorter broadcast times for the re-run market. They were not designed for casual or short-term viewers, who would have little interest in the characters or the story of an individual episode. Each episode and each series were of widely varying quality, making package re-sale difficult. However, by the early 1980s, various movie episodes from the former
Mystery Movie
series were rebroadcast on late night's
The CBS Late Movie
as a package with an earlier half-hour situation comedy series rerun. While they lasted, the best of them employed the finest actors, writers and production standards available.
[
citation needed
]
Production history
[
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]
Inaugural programs
[
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]
The three original 1971?1972 season shows of
The NBC Mystery Movie
were:
The umbrella series was counted a great success in its first season and finished at number 14 in the
Nielsen ratings
for the 1971?1972 season.
Columbo
was nominated for eight
Emmy Awards
and won four categories. This success prompted
NBC
to move the series to the competitive 8:30-10:00 Sunday evening time period for the second season as
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie
. In addition, a fourth show was added to the rotation, lasting two seasons (1972?1974):
The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie
programs
[
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]
Inaugural
[
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]
NBC also launched a clone of the umbrella series,
The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie
, which debuted in the original time period and featured three new programs:
Subsequent
[
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]
During the 1973?1974 season, the programs rotating on Sunday remained the same, while on Wednesday,
Cool Million
and
Madigan
were canceled and
Banacek
rotated with three new series:
Rescheduling to Tuesday nights as
The NBC Tuesday Mystery Movie
during January 1974 was not enough to help boost ratings, and the midweek series was canceled. The Sunday series continued, anchored by the popular trio of
Columbo
,
McCloud
, and
McMillan and Wife
.
Later changes
[
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]
During subsequent years, these rotated with a fourth series, which changed each year (1974?1977), including:
Additionally, the two-hour pilot of another Universal mystery series,
Ellery Queen: Too Many Suspects
, aired in the usual Sunday timeslot of the
Mystery Movie
on March 23, 1975; it was promoted as an
NBC Mystery Movie Special
. (The resulting series began airing that September, but in a Thursday night timeslot, and not under the
NBC Mystery Movie
umbrella.)
Of all the wheel series, only the original three ?
Columbo
,
McCloud
and
McMillan & Wife
? survived for the entire run of the
Mystery Movie
. Most of the others were short-lived, and, with the exception of
Hec Ramsey
and
Banacek
, were all only on the air for one season.
Quincy, M.E.
, which was the next to last new
Mystery Movie
series to premiere, ended up outlasting the parent series itself; midway through the final
Mystery Movie
season,
Quincy
was taken out of the wheel lineup and retooled into a one-hour weekly series that ran for six more seasons, coming to an end in 1983.
Although the
Mystery Movie
series was cancelled at the end of the 1976?1977 season, NBC kept
Columbo
in production and a seventh season consisting of five films premiered on November 21, 1977. After the fifth film aired in May 1978, NBC cancelled
Columbo
as well.
Presentation
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]
The
NBC
Mystery Movie
theme music was composed by
Henry Mancini
.
The opening credits consisted of a shadowed figure carrying a flashlight slowly walking toward the camera in a desert landscape under dramatically lit clouds, as images of the various rotating series appeared sequentially on the screen; at the end, an announcer (
Hank Simms
) presented the night's main actors and series
(example: "tonight, starring Peter Falk as
Columbo
")
. Some
syndicated
episodes of
Columbo
retain this opening credit sequence, though the original title caption which included "NBC" and (after the first season), a day of the week was instead replaced by a similar graphic, simply showing multiple colored filmstrips with "MYSTERY" written within the frames, scrolling upwards within a circle (in the original animation, some of these filmstrips contained the NBC logo, and they scrolled upwards at a faster pace), alternatively, the portion of the introduction featuring Columbo replaced the original NBC-branded end graphic. Some syndicated reruns of other
Mystery Movie
shows retained the intro, but simply faded away before the NBC-branded opening graphic could be shown.
The
NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie
theme was composed by
Quincy Jones
for its first season and had an animated open to show the lineup.
Post-series
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]
In 1989, Universal Television and
ABC
teamed to launch a revival of the mystery wheel, titled the
ABC Monday Mystery Movie
. The network brought back original
Mystery Movie
series
Columbo
to be part of the wheel, with Peter Falk returning in the title role. Two new series joined Columbo in its first year,
Gideon Oliver
, starring
Louis Gossett Jr.
as a crime solving anthropologist, and
B.L. Stryker
, which featured
Burt Reynolds
as a
South Florida
private investigator.
[1]
It was originally meant to be on Saturdays, but moved to Mondays amidst production delays related to
the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike
.
[2]
Columbo
and
B.L. Stryker
continued in the wheel's second season on Saturday (as
ABC Saturday Mystery Movie
) with two other series in August 1989: the new
Christine Cromwell
, a
San Francisco
based mystery starring
Jaclyn Smith
, and a revival of CBS' 1970s crime drama
Kojak
.
[3]
The wheel series ran irregularly from February 1989 until August 1990. After the
ABC Saturday Mystery Movie
ended, ABC kept
Columbo
in production and Falk starred in an additional fourteen episodes before the network discontinued the series in 2003.
Universal brought
McCloud
back for a reunion film in 1989. The film, titled
The Return of Sam McCloud
, featured Dennis Weaver in the role of United States Senator Sam McCloud. However, unlike the television series, the reunion film aired on CBS.
The
ABC Mystery Movie
theme was composed by
Mike Post
.
Friday Night Mystery
[
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]
In the fall of 1993, NBC made an attempt to revive the wheel format, this time called
The NBC Friday Night Mystery
. As originally conceived, this rotation was supposed
[
clarification needed
]
to include:
[4]
- MacShayne
starring
Kenny Rogers
as a gambler turned house detective to pay his debts.
- Hart to Hart
, a revival starring
Robert Wagner
and
Stefanie Powers
.
- Staying Afloat
starring
Larry Hagman
as a former millionaire who becomes a jet-setting government operative.
- Janek
, a revival of the movie series (begun in 1985) starring
Richard Crenna
as New York City Police Lieutenant of Detectives Frank Janek. Intended to air on the lineup, but plans were scrapped due to a feud with CBS, who broadcast the original
Janek
movies amidst a dispute over the Stupidest Pet Tricks segment on
Late Show with David Letterman
.
[5]
[6]
- The Cosby Mysteries
, two telefilms starring
Bill Cosby
with plans to spin off into a regular series for the 1994 season.
- The continuing series of
Perry Mason
telefilms that were already airing on NBC
[4]
- With
Perry Mason
star
Raymond Burr
dying after filming only the first of six scheduled films for the series, NBC filmed a spin off movie starring
Paul Sorvino
as Frank Caruso, a close friend of Mason, with an option for one more.
[7]
- Ray Alexander
was a late addition starring
Louis Gossett Jr.
as Ray Alexander, a detective-restaurateur, with co-stars James Coburn and Ossie Davis. This series' first installment,
A Taste for Justice
, was aired on May 13, 1994 with two more films planned.
[8]
In popular culture
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]
- The cast of
Mystery Science Theater 3000
would often make a recurring joke ("It's
The NBC Mystery Movie
!") whenever a character in a movie shone a flashlight. Eventually, at the beginning of the episode
Teenagers from Outer Space
,
Joel
has the robots in electrical shock therapy to try and break them of the habit.
- A 2008 episode of
The Simpsons
, "
Dial 'N' for Nerder
", ended with a reference to the
NBC Mystery Movie
opening sequence, featuring
Nelson Muntz
as Columbo,
Dr. Hibbert
as Quincy,
Rich Texan
as McCloud and Mr. Burns and Smithers as McMillan and Wife.
- In an episode of the cartoon
King of the Hill
,
Hank Hill
refers to Hec Ramsey as an under-appreciated part of the
NBC Mystery Wheel
.
U.S. television ratings
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]
The NBC Mystery Movie
maintained high ratings finishing in the top 30 of shows for the first four seasons. The show rated as the following:
Television ratings
Show
|
TV season
|
Rank
|
Households
(millions)
|
The NBC Mystery Movie
|
1971?1972
|
#14
[9]
|
14,40
|
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie
|
1972?1973
|
#6
[10]
|
15,68
|
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie
|
1973?1974
|
#14
[11]
|
14,69
|
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie
|
1974?1975
|
#24
[12]
|
14,59
|
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie
|
1975?1976
|
#53
[13]
|
N/A
|
The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie
|
1976?1977
|
#62
[14]
|
12,76
|
ABC Mystery Movie
|
1988?1989
|
#29
[15]
|
13,92
|
See also
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edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Lomartire, Paul (May 21, 1989).
"Television: 'Colombo' aired 4 times this year"
.
TV Post
. p. 6
. Retrieved
August 6,
2022
.
- ^
"Fall's first draft"
(PDF)
.
Broadcasting
. May 30, 1988. p. 21
. Retrieved
November 12,
2023
.
- ^
Brooks, Tim; Marsh, Earle F. (2009).
The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present
. Random House. p. 4.
ISBN
978-0-3074-8320-1
. Retrieved
February 3,
2018
.
- ^
a
b
Lawler, Sylvia (May 23, 1993).
"NBC Aims To Reverse The Trend"
.
The Morning Call
. Allentown, Penn. p. 2
. Retrieved
August 6,
2022
.
- ^
"Feuding networks"
.
Tampa Bay Times
. Retrieved
2023-08-26
.
- ^
"LATE-NIGHT PERSONALITIES TALK UP A STORM"
.
Chicago Tribune
. 1993-08-29
. Retrieved
2023-08-26
.
- ^
"NBC Plans New Perry Mason Movie"
.
Orlando Sentinel
. Washington Post. September 27, 1993. p. D4
. Retrieved
August 6,
2022
.
- ^
King, Susan (May 8, 1994).
"Focus: Gossett, P.I.: NBC Movie Offers a Detective With Charm Around The Edges"
.
Los Angeles Times
. Retrieved
February 2,
2018
.
- ^
"TV Ratings: 1971-1972"
.
Classic TV Hits
. Retrieved
May 14,
2012
.
- ^
"TV Ratings: 1972-1973"
.
Classic TV Hits
. Retrieved
May 14,
2012
.
- ^
"TV Ratings: 1973-1974"
.
Classic TV Hits
. Retrieved
May 14,
2012
.
- ^
"TV Ratings: 1974-1975"
.
Classic TV Hits
. Retrieved
May 14,
2012
.
- ^
"1975-76 Ratings History -- 1,2,3... 1st Times Run Rampant as ABC Reaches 2nd and NBC Sinks to 3rd"
.
The TV Ratings Guide
. Archived from
the original
on 2018-07-21
. Retrieved
August 6,
2022
.
- ^
"1976-77 Ratings History -- New Record As ABC Jiggles Into 1st, CBS Returns to 2nd After Ruling 21 Undisturbed Years"
.
The TV Ratings Guide
. Archived from
the original
on 2018-07-21
. Retrieved
May 2,
2020
.
- ^
"TV Ratings: 1988-1989"
.
Classic TV Hits
. Retrieved
May 14,
2012
.
External links
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]
Motion picture television series on NBC
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Movie umbrella titles
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