Negotiations: notes on Minx, Ipcress File and Inside Man

As the year starts to wind down, spotlighting three series that brightened my 2022.

Minx has flown under the radar; it’s a comedy about a woman determined not to fly under the radar, so there’s some sort of poetic injustice to that. I heard very few people discussing it while it was airing, and when it was ultimately picked up for a second season by HBO Max, there was hardly a murmur. And now that HBO Max is being absorbed into Discovery Plus, and a lot of its scripted shows — even ones that have been renewed — may fall by the wayside, I still don’t hear anyone talking about it, or fretting about its future. But it’s the best new comedy I saw in 2022: not just a vivid evocation of life in America in the early ‘70s, but a resolutely apt analogy for life in America in 2022. Creator Ellen Rapoport doesn’t linger over its relevance to our own era, but she doesn’t need to. All the topics Minx takes on feel timely: issues of privacy, women’s rights, minority rule, political hypocrisy, separation of church and state. And more than any of those, Minx takes aim at those insecure men — both then and now — who find nothing more threatening than an informed woman. That’s its principal target, and here Rapoport hits the bull’s-eye.

The informed woman in this case is one Joyce Prigger, who has channeled her Vassar education and Twenty-something enthusiasm into educating the public; she’s got a magazine idea she’s eager to pitch entitled The Matriarchy Awakens. (It’s Joyce’s antidote to all the frothy fare that’s being peddled to women in rags like Young Miss and Mademoiselle.) Her content is confrontational, and so is Joyce. In the opening scenes, set at the Southern California Magazine Festival, she doesn’t so much pitch her ideas as speechify. Sporting a pant suit with matching vest, she announces to a trio of potential publishers, as if reciting from a script, “This country treats women like second class citizens” — then, taking a step forward for emphasis, as if she were onstage: “We’re overlooked, underpaid and overwhelmed.” She promises her magazine will put the elderly publishers on “the right side of history” (as if they care). Every bit of Joyce’s presentation is misjudged, including the photo she's chosen for the magazine cover: a woman whose self-empowerment makes her look almost demonic, and whom the baffled businessmen are quick to dismiss as “angry.” Joyce is well informed and well intentioned, but she’s so caught up in her cause, she can’t see how her bold ideas need to be cloaked and couched for mass consumption. No one can see Joyce’s potential: no one, that is, except porn publisher Doug Renetti. Doug might be crass and tactless — of The Matriarchy Awakens, he insists, “When I read it, I feel like a fucking teacher’s yelling at me” — but unlike Joyce, he knows how to pitch it. Here’s how he educates potential advertisers: “Women’s liberation. I’ll tell you what it means to me. It means liberating women from the $400,000 of disposable income they spend every year.” That’s all they need to hear.

But for Joyce, the publishing deal comes with a price. How does Doug envision getting eyeballs to this upstart magazine, newly christened Minx? How do you get women interested in articles about birth control and sexual harassment and identity politics? With male centerfolds. “It’s like when you give a pill to a dog,” Doug explains to Joyce, “you have to hide the medicine. You put it in peanut butter. Peanut butter is nude men.” And why not? Cosmo has already unveiled (and sold through) its Burt Reynolds spread, proving that modern women thirst for beefcake. In real life, Playgirl would soon quench that thirst, but in Rapoport’s fictional timeline, Minx gets there first. As Doug puts it, bluntly — which is his style — “we’re going to wet the panties of every woman in America.” And Joyce grudgingly agrees, but wants to make her position crystal clear: “Yes, but our penis is for political purposes, OK? It’s about shifting power dynamics and gender reparations.”

Who talks like that? Well, Joyce does. She seems to come from a world where metaphors are currency, and pretension has power. When she brings home Minx’s first centerfold model (a fireman, and an airhead) to prep him for an interview, she offers him a drink — and he asks if she has a beer. “No, I do not,” she insists (at times, wearing her Vassar degree like a badge of honor, she makes it seem like even contractions are beneath her) — then proudly informs the fireman: “I have a lovely Pouilly Fuisse.” With Joyce around, the jokes practically write themselves. Even when the interview prep unexpectedly turns sexual, Joyce is there tossing out bon mots like they’re aphrodisiacs. Hoisting Joyce over his shoulder, the fireman boasts, “Now in a real fire, I’d be carrying you out of the building and not into the bedroom” — and Joyce can’t resist a witticism practically designed to go over his head: “Lucky for us, the only thing on fire is our libidos.”

In the real world, no one would want to get within five feet of this chick; onscreen, you can’t get enough of her. And that all comes down to Ophelia Lovibond, giving the rare comic turn these days that feels genuinely iconic. There were lots of I Love Lucy clones, but only one Lucille Ball, and therefore only one I Love Lucy. Try to imagine Bewitched without Elizabeth Montgomery, or Maude without Beatrice Arthur. If it sounds like I’m putting Lovibond in some pretty rarefied company, I am. She's that good. Watching her, your thoughts might well go to some of the screen’s great screwball comediennes. She’s got some of the primness that Jean Arthur's characters used to effect, because they'd been taught it was proper. Irene Dunne did that same trick with her upper lip that Lovibond manages here: holding it a touch too high, conveying smugness and unease, yet also an eagerness that's irresistible. And as Joyce evolves, her epiphanies grow euphoric, the way Carole Lombard’s did. Like Lombard, Lovibond is enlivened by the puncturing of her own pretenses.

Joyce could easily come off as too strident, too inflexible, too obtuse. She could digress into a parody of a second-wave feminist who holds so tight to her beliefs that she can’t embrace life. And make no mistake, Joyce has a crushing ignorance of how the world works. It’s like she was raised in a nunnery. But Lovibond sees to it that you’re too caught up in Joyce’s charm and determination — not to mention her intellectual acuity. Joyce is incapable of dumbing herself down for people; part of you desperately wants her to, so she can get her ideas across, but part of you wouldn’t have her any other way. You love how in love she is with her own self-assurance, even when it’s misguided. And occasionally, her pronouncements prove unexpectedly pithy. When Doug expresses surprise that people are actually turning out for the press event, Joyce responds with alacrity and brevity: “Our magazine is a jolt of something new. It’s a whisper and a scream.”

The fun of Minx lies in watching Joyce and Doug find middle ground, at that unlikely point where the feminist movement and the porn industry meet. It’s about all the negotiations and compromises, the frequent setbacks and the ultimate victories, Pyrrhic or otherwise. (In Jake Johnson’s facile hands, Doug is as complex a creation as Joyce: an admitted slime bucket, but also a savvy enough businessman to become a reluctant visionary.) Their differences give the piece its drive. She’s lofty; he’s practical. He’s street smart; she’s book smart. They’re both incredibly proud, but neither is inflexible. Working with Doug prompts Joyce to sharpen her social skills; working with Joyce prompts Doug to cop to a desire for respectability. There’s no sexual tension between the two – thank God Rapoport doesn’t go there. But the two still have plenty of room for growth. Through the course of Season 1, they don’t just nail down potential advertisers; they deal with police raids, with conservative congresswomen intent on “restoring the values of the community,” and with Italian mobsters refusing to deliver the magazine because their wives dislike its stance on birth control. Doug comes to be impressed by Joyce’s knowledge, and she comes to be impressed by his know how. Their only link is a drive to succeed, but that’s enough: it’s a merger made in heaven.

For the final two episodes, Rapoport separates the two lead characters — the familiar “let them see what they’re missing without the other” trope — and although the story-telling remains strong, you realize that so much of the energy derives from the relationship between these two that the series starts to go a little, well, limp. But by then it doesn’t matter. Minx is one of a number of strong series I saw this year that didn’t climax the way I was hoping (cf. What We Do in the Shadows). I used to say that, given the choice, I would rather see a series end strong than start strong — maybe it was so many years of hearing Momma Rose insist, “If you’ve got a good finish, they’ll forgive you for anything.” But I seem to have become much less critical of shows that don’t quite stick the landing. My enthusiasm for Minx is undiminished by its final two episodes not quite soaring to the heights of the previous eight. What Rapoport has forged here is indeed, like the fictional magazine it chronicles, a jolt of something new. It’s at once a whisper and a scream. It’s also a blast.

*****

Like Minx, ITV’s six-part adaptation of Len Deighton's '60s spy novel The Ipcress File (released in the US by AMC+) flew under the radar. Perhaps people figured that the acclaimed 1965 film was the last word on the subject, and there wasn’t much more to say. It turns out there was so much more to say.

It’s 1963, in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, and a nuclear scientist has been kidnapped by enemy agents. Major Dalby — who runs a secret intelligence service not affiliated with MI-5 or MI-6 — inquires of his superior, “Are we calling it an abduction or a defection?” “Unexplained absence,” his boss replies, emphasizing the importance of diplomacy in espionage. (The intelligence officers aren’t even allowed to be honest with themselves, let alone each other.) Their best bet for finding him: Harry Palmer, a former British soldier who’s been locked away in a German prison for selling contraband. (He has history with one of the kidnappers.) The working-class Harry is an unlikely spy, but he has great instincts; his background allows him empathy for — and insight into — the very people he’s investigating. Harry is alert, intuitive and amusingly practical by nature. (Lacking the money and status in which his colleagues bathe, he totals his expenses after every mission and requests reimbursement. The turtlenecked, bespectacled Harry has an Everyman appeal that’s undeniably attractive.) Harry is very much a product of the societal shifts that defined post-war Britain; Dalby quickly grows inured to his manner and impressed by his methods.

Harry is paired with Jean Courtney (a secretary in the novel, but here a full-on spy), a socialite who’s feeling the heat of keeping her job a secret. Women of Jean’s position in British intelligence in the early ‘60s were few and far between; she’s not an anachronism, per se, but she is a rarity. Costume designer Keith Madden dresses her in clothes befitting her station — burgundy red skirts and floral evening dresses and baby-blue rollneck coats — that allow her to dazzle while she deceives. (The whole production design is awash in color, befitting its early ‘60s setting.) She uses her beauty and breeding to her advantage; decked out in her Balenciaga suits, she ensures that the enemy underestimates her. But Jean’s portrayer, Lucy Boynton, is well aware that that approach will only take her so far, and satisfy 21st-century audiences only so much. As appealing and fun as her “pretty young thing” act is, there are times you want to see her as cutthroat as her colleagues. So Boynton walks an impressively fine line. Her Jean is more self-assured and feisty than you might expect her to be, but she’s every bit as self-assured and feisty as you want her to be.

In an early scene, Harry and Jean, who’ve only briefly met, have their first real tête-à-tête, when he returns to his Berlin flat to find her waiting for him. Their ensuing exchange — cross-questioning disguised as polite conversation — sets the tone for everything to come. They’re seated perhaps ten feet apart, facing each other, like an interrogation — but who is interrogating whom? Harry refers back to a necklace Jean was wearing earlier, one that betrayed her station: “That's the trouble with jewelry. Whether we wear it or whether we don't, it sort of tells a story.” Bristling at being so easily pegged, she parries by bringing up his estranged wife, and the baby they lost. They’re sizing each other up, and cutting each other down. They’re revealing their strengths, and searching for weaknesses. They’re wickedly smart, these two — altogether too willing to wound with their words — and their efforts are bolstered by the information gathering that’s been carried out on their behalf. You might say they’re buoyed by both their intelligence and their intelligence.

It’s a set-up for how the rest of The Ipcress File is going to work: every exchange — however slight, however seemingly innocent — is going to play like an interrogation. An interrogation where both sides are on the attack. Information is at a premium, and these agents will do whatever it takes to get it. The formula could get tiresome — we’ve all seen countless spy thrillers — but writer John Hodge is a master at varying the tricks. The moment you start to get too comfortable, he‘ll flip perspective, or fracture the linear nature of the timeline. He’s as cagy as the spies themselves. He’ll show Harry and Jean on a rare night off — each stumbling onto a potentially romantic dalliance — then flash back a day or two, to them getting their directives from Dalby, who’s charged them with surveiling the very people we thought they’d met by chance. He'll introduce a CIA agent who’s willing to help Jean — or is he looking to recruit her? Is he playing her — or does she know he’s playing her, and she’s in fact playing him? Or does he know she knows? Hodge engages in long cons just as cunning as the ones the spies themselves are running — and dares you to see through them.

Hodge expands the Deighton novel into a six-part teleplay by adding a whole lot of plot — but surprise: it’s all good plot. There’s a shrewd backstory for Harry, a solid detour for Dalby, plus the smart expansion of Jean’s role. (And the stakes are raised considerably in the brainwashing plot that consumes the final reel.) But it doesn’t feel like Hodge is piling on incident merely to keep you busy. He’s piling on incident to keep you on your toes, until you’re alert and informed enough to gain the upper hand on his own characters. I don’t think I’ve seen a script so attuned to the viewers’ learning curve. At the top, you have no reason to doubt what you’re told; by the time you’re a few episodes in, you realize you have every reason. Yet Hodge manages to stay one step ahead of you — until he no longer wants to. Until he feels you’ve been sufficiently primed to see through all the ruses — and are ready to take the lead. The Ipcress File is six episodes of viewer indoctrination. You come away a bit wiser and a little less trusting. You come away with a greater attention to detail and a far more evolved bullshit detector. It’s the rare teleplay that dares the viewer to do better — and succeeds. I can't remember the last time a show left me quite so invigorated.

You too can think like a spy, Hodge insists; you might not be able to spot a car bomb 20 feet away, but you can learn to read a room. You can learn to ask the right questions. You can learn to doubt the evidence of your eyes — and to avoid listening to your heart. Hodge’s teleplay requires strict attention — not to absorb the facts (the facts mean nothing), but to turn them into clever and useful deductions. (By episode 5, I’d developed such a healthy suspicion of what I’d seen, and grown so resistant to even the most reliable of narrators, that I spotted a subterfuge half an episode ahead of Dalby. I was quite pleased with myself.)

The three leads — Joe Cole as Harry, Lucy Boynton as Jean, and Tom Hollander as Dalby — are irreproachable. As CIA agent Maddox, London-born actor (and rapper) Ashley Thomas is a more problematic piece of casting. His accent is suspect, and the effort he puts into it blands him out. When he’s smooth, you wish he were slicker; when he's abrasive, you wish he were more intimidating. Whenever he’s silent — weighing his options or studying his prey — his features come to life in a way they rarely do when he's speaking, so I suspect he's a good actor done in by the accent: a plight that afflicts a lot of Brits playing Americans, and vice versa. Thomas is the series’ only weak link, and although it’s not fatal, it’s unfortunate.

On the flip side, Irish-born Nora-Jane Noone turns up in episode 4 as an American psychologist, and her accent is spot on. And she’s terrific. Although her role threatens to succumb to a staple of hard-boiled fiction — “why did a girl like me have to fall for a mug like you?“ — Noone manages to be so earthy yet world-weary that you’re completely smitten. And in episode 5, the venerable Anastacia Hiller — whom you’d mistakenly thought was a mere secretary — bursts into action, and enlivens the proceedings considerably. Hodge’s teleplay is really built. He senses exactly when to add characters, when to shift focus, how much to reveal and how much to withhold — and he understands how to get under your skin. He knows when to fool you, and when to challenge you. He’s like the smoothest of intelligence officers; he gets you on his side.

*****

BBC’s Inside Man (bowing October 31 on Netflix) didn’t fly under anyone’s radar. The critics were crazy about it, and social media was awash in discussion. It’s fascinating to see the difference between how Steven Moffat is treated in the UK and how he’s viewed here in the US. The US critics went after The Time Traveler’s Wife like he was a hack, as if his showrunning credit on Doctor Who made him best suited to children’s programming. In the UK, he’s revered. Any Moffat vehicle is seen as an event, and if anything, the hyperbolic response to Inside Man — not undeserved, but hyperbolic nonetheless — was suggestive of a sort of apology to Moffat from the UK critics, for his less-than-kind reception from their overseas counterparts.

Not that — as noted — the critics were unjustified in their praise. Inside Man was outrageously entertaining. We expect Moffat to engage in puzzles within puzzles. We expect him to play with structure and time. And Moffat knows that, so he keeps it fresh. He flips between two unlikely scenarios: an English vicar who’s become embroiled in a kidnapping and a death-row inmate in the US who solves crimes. (The vicar is Harry Watling, played by David Tennant; the inmate is Jefferson Grieff, played by Stanley Tucci.) On paper, both story-lines sound a little screwy, and it falls to Moffat to make them convincing, which he does. But even as they play out, you can’t imagine how they’re going to intersect — until they do, and then you instantly see the genius of the design. But even then, you can’t quite wrap your head around the tone. What exactly are you watching? Is it a black comedy or a quirky drama? Are the laughs you’re fighting to suppress inappropriate, or is that precisely the response Moffat is hoping for? Moffat keeps you off balance. You’re giggling along with a death-row inmate; you’re chuckling at the obtuseness of a vicar who’s got a woman stuffed in his basement. Moffat is so in command of the material, he knows that for once you won’t be bewildered by his structure or chronology; you’ll be alarmed by your own responses. And you’ll be falling right into his trap.

Grieff may have murdered his wife, but make no mistake: you’re meant to be impressed by him. His own warden is impressed by him; Grieff is given access and perks uncommon for a death-row inmate. This former criminology professor solves murders from prison, and families come to speak to him eagerly but anxiously, as if they were taking an audience with the Pope. (Seated before a giant table in the visitors’ room, he’s a bit like King Arthur.) You come to admire his cleverness at unraveling mysteries that no one else can solve. He engages you in his cat-and-mouse game, just as he does his guests, and you’re swept along — not just by the artfulness of his deductions, but by the way he encourages you to participate. He invites you to appreciate not just the satisfaction of crime solving, but the ease by which people commit to killing. In Tucci’s hands, oiliness has never seemed so appetizing; smugness has never had such allure. He’s properly terrifying, but he’s also the most inviting of hosts. You play by his rules, and if you do, you’re treated with respect. (Lie to him, and he’ll figuratively — or is it literally? — take your head off.)

I saw comparisons to Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs that I didn’t understand. Tucci is someone with whom you’d sit down to tea. Grieff loves the sound of his own voice; he’s terrified of dying, but he’s thoroughly embracing life before that happens. And he’s always ready with a welcome quip. Preparing him for his execution, which is three weeks away, the warden sits him down and cautions him solemnly, “I have to brief you on the exact procedure of the day.” “Why?” Grieff asks: “Don’t I have the easy part?” Oh, he’s without question repulsive; as a reporter interviewing him insists, when he asks if she’s clear on his moral standards, “You disgust me. What you did disgusts me.” But that’s only because she knows what he’s been convicted of, and what he’s capable of. On first meeting, he seems about as menacing as Miss Marple.

And the vicar — disturbing in his own way — is no less entertaining. David Tennant’s artistry has so grown in the last few years, it’s almost staggering. With the goodwill he’s established with audiences, he could’ve easily leveled out at the plateau he hit sometime around 2015 or so, and no one would’ve complained. But instead, he’s journeyed to places no one could’ve expected. He’s left behind that “eager to please” persona that nourished so many of his early performances. He’s learned how to be self effacing on the screen; he’s learned how to hide more, and how to risk more. And he’s let go of his need to be liked. His vicar is a creature without cunning; oh, he thinks he’s clever, as when he tries to trap a pedophile into a confession by taping their conversation, but at heart, Harry is quite an ordinary bloke, stumbling into impossibly bad situations by always being about two steps behind everybody else.

Everyone seems quicker, more cunning, more decisive than the vicar. As Tennant plays him, it’s like all his sharp edges have been ground down. In the first episode, he imprisons his son’s math tutor in his basement, because she’s come to suspect his son is a pedophile (not a spoiler: he’s not). And then he can’t figure out how to negotiate her release. (At heart it’s the craziest of mistaken identity capers, and — if it didn’t concern child pornography — you’d think you were watching a farce.) He doesn’t even seem capable of anticipating her responses. His wily captive cuts herself, then bleeds and urinates everywhere, knowing if anything happens to her, her DNA will be all over the room. Harry stares at her blankly as if it’s a move he never saw coming — like he doesn’t expect people to react to his outrageous behavior, even when he’s imprisoning them in his basement. Does he just expect them to take it all in graciously, as if they were digesting one of his sermons? Harry has no skills or instincts that come in handy here; what he has is a sort of puggish pluck that’s absolutely useless. This vicar is so inept at crisis management that the effect can’t help but come off as comic — but we’re talking about a kidnapping here: a kidnapping that, if the vicar can’t figure out a way of keeping the tutor from talking, might well result in her murder.

After a while, Harry grows so desperate to justify his actions that his disassociation feels like a form of dementia. Visiting the tutor in the basement, he puts on his dog collar “to remind me that I have standards.” He says it without irony, even though he’s just asked her to cuff herself to a pipe. “We’re going to work this out,” he assures her: “We’re reasonable people. We’ve just gotten ourselves into an unreasonable situation.” He drops off blankets and a pillow, stressing, “There’s no reason this can't be civilized” — but when he gets upstairs, his wife has already gone to a decidedly uncivilized place, which she carefully cloaks in supposition: “I’ve been thinking, just theoretically, about how you kill someone. In the movies it’s all about the alibi and getting rid of the body — and fair enough, you know, those things need doing. But how do you kill a person in the first place? What works? What do you use? How do you know when you’re finished?” It’s daft and dysfunctional, but you understand fully how she got there so fast; like her husband, she has no capacity for processing the immensity and intensity of the moment. Her brain carries her straight from “misunderstanding” to “murder.” (Each time this plot reappears, Mike MacLennon’s underscoring defaults to a minor-key galop that makes the whole thing feel like a romp. A murderous romp.)

Inside Man is a thriller of the “bonkers but brilliant” variety. There are also some plot holes and contrivances that are unusual for Moffat. The very premise turns on a misunderstanding that would strain credulity in even the sloppiest of sitcoms. A suicide note has to be oddly worded to propel the plot; the basement has to be soundproof enough to allow for a final-act reversal. And one shocker is badly telegraphed by director Paul McGuigan. (Spoiler, but not really: I think it’s safe to say that in 2022, no viewer watches a character wander backward into a street without expecting them to be hit by a bus or truck.) But the structure is so bold and the playing so confident that, even as you find yourself questioning characters' motives, you’re quite content to let things slide. Moffat’s already developed another three story beats while you were busy debating with yourself, and you scamper to catch up. You’re not about to be left behind, not when the ride is this diverting.

The thesis that's hammered home throughout — we're all capable of murder, under the right circumstances — feels at times like the least interesting part of Inside Man. “No one is safe from the worst that they can do,” Grieff cautions the young woman who’s come to interview him. But wouldn’t it have been better to let us make that discovery on our own, you think, rather than having it spelled out? As a morality play, Inside Man seems a little obvious, and a touch tame. As a black comedy or a quirky drama — take your pick — it’s edge-of-your-seat entertainment. The illogic of it all takes on a kind of hallucinogenic quality. You can’t quite believe what you’re watching, yet you can’t take your eyes off the screen. You can’t even decide whom you’re rooting for, and whom you want to see live or die. By the final reel, your sympathies are so divided — your allegiances so muddied — that you might well become convinced that the most enjoyable ending would be the one where the vicar kills both his son and his son’s tutor. And you don’t feel guilty about that response — but you also don’t realize that that’s the very point of the piece. Inside Man has so warped your sense of decency — as events have grown increasingly provocative and propulsive — that you no longer take time to ponder what’s “morally right.” You just go with your gut. You become just as bad — just as guilty, just as heinous — as the murderer and would-be murderer on the screen. And you have no regrets.

Want more? Check out an essay called "Men in the Middle," highlighting four recent series that owe much of their success to the onscreen personas of their leading men: The Tourist, This Is Going to Hurt, The Responder and Around the World in 80 Days; an essay entitled "Rough Edges," in praise of two addictive comedies that I discovered in 2021, Back to Life and The Other Two; another entitled "Private Faces," highlighting two spectacular series that emerged in the fall of 2020, Roadkill and Life; and a fourth called "Unwilling Victims," taking a look at three recent series by and about women: The Trial of Christine Keeler, Deadwater Fell and Flesh and Blood. I offer up The Five Best TV Shows You Might Not Be Watching, Five Foreign TV Dramas You Shouldn't Miss, and my most personal essay, inspired by the death of my puppy Czerny in June of 2021, The 10 Most Comforting TV Episodes About Death.

If you like in-depth looks at hit shows, I delve into Rhoda Season 3, Maude Season 2, Newhart Season 7, WKRP in Cincinnati Season 4 and Bewitched Season 2; serve up my 10 Best Episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Designing Women, WKRP in Cincinnati and Kate & Allie; pen an appreciation of Mike & Molly; and offer up some thoughts as to why The New Adventures of Old Christine took such a tumble in quality over its five seasons. Or if you prefer dramas, check out my write-ups of of Criminal Minds Season 8, Judging Amy Season 6, Voyager Season 4, Doctor Who Series 8, Cold Case Season 4, Gilmore Girls Season 7 (and the subsequent, ill-judged Netflix miniseries), and fourteen essays devoted to all the seasons of the great nighttime soap Knots Landing, starting here. I also look back at Murder, She Wrote and pick out The 10 Best "Murder She Wrote" Mysteries: not (necessarily) the best episodes, but the best whodunnits.