Kate Loves a Mystery

Detective fiction has a big place in my heart. I love all kinds of mystery stories, tv shows, and comic books. I probably started my "Journey into Mystery" not with the Mighty Thor (terrible comics joke) but with the Hardy Boys. Those inquisitive teen brothers sparked an interest in solving mysteries. From there I discovered Eric Wilson's Tom and Liz Austen mysteries which appealed to more because they were so firmly Canadian despite my not having visited most of the settings at that time in my life though I've been fortunate to travel across much of the Great White North since then. I seem to remember a few "Encyclopedia Brown" books and probably other less memorable mysteries for kids but soon I'd graduated to the grand-daddy of all detectives Sherlock Holmes. I still have the three volume set I purchased (or more accurately my mother purchased for me) where I first worked my way through every single adventure of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous creation.



On television it was a family ritual to sit together and watch Murder, She Wrote for several years. Truth be told JB Fletcher was probably the first detective I ever "met." Eventually a lady with the same hairdo as my grandmother fell out of vogue as an exciting mystery-solving hero to be replaced by a much more interesting protagonist... Matlock! I couldn't make this up if I tried. I don't know why Andy Griffith's down-home country lawyer fascinated me even as I lost interest in another crusading senior citizen. Part of it might have been just that Matlock was on TV following Star Trek: the Next Generation which had a profound effect on young ISMOTU in a different way (and maybe worth a separate post).

I've been trying to write this in a vaguely chronological order but there's plenty of fuzziness when trying to recall specifics of 20 years ago or more. I don't want this to descend to total stream of consciousness nor do I want to turn it into a top ten countdown or "listicle" (a term and a format I despise) so we'll see.

Due South, the tv series that chronicles the adventures of RCMP Constable Benton Fraser (Paul Gross) as he tracks his father's murderer to Chicago and "for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture" he remained attached as liaison to the Canadian consulate. This show is definitely one of my all time favourites. It is one of the few series I have watched in their entirety multiple times. The dynamic between Gross' Constable Fraser and Chicago Detective Ray Vecchio (played by David Marciano in seasons 1-2 and Callum Keith Rennie in seasons 3-4) is just a delight to watch. I love this show and it was really the first police procedural that I got into.

After Due South I can't really recall following any mystery shows all that closely. My nascent science fiction fandom was blooming and sort of took over my attentions.  Fast forward a bunch of years and I think it was during the dark year, after I finished my master's degree but before I got my job in China, when I had too much time on my hands I rekindled my affinity for the genre when I discovered the awesomeness that is Psych.  It wasn't until I was partway through the series that I started to see the similarities between that show and my previous favourite. Psych combined my love of mysteries with my love of the ridiculous and Shawn and Gus (James Roday and Dulé Hill respectively) are suitably clever, hilarious, and geeky all at once. Though I didn't identify as intensely with a lot of their 80's pop culture references there were enough I did get to be in on the joke and also their enthusiasm was infectious. Psych may have gone on a smidgen too long but I wouldn't say it ever really "jumped the shark" and remains another favourite mystery series.

During my years in the remote wilds of Northern Alberta without TV I got the hankering to revisit some older shows I'd seen more sporadically in my youth.  So in about 2 years I have watched every single episode of Columbo, Magnum P.I., and Diagnosis: Murder. Which brings us to the title of this post and further evidence of my extreme nerdiness. As a bonus feature on one of the many, many, discs in the "Columbo: the Complete Series" DVD box set I got from my wife for Christmas, on one of those discs was an episode of a show I'd never heard of: Mrs. Columbo. It starred a very young Kate Mulgrew (Janeway!) as an extremely unlikely version of Peter Falk's bumbling but brilliant detective's previously never seen wife.  The incredible misstep in TV history was quickly cancelled but not before changing names from Mrs. Columbo to Kate Columbo to Kate the Detective to finally Kate Loves a Mystery. That's four titles over only 13 episodes.  What a whacky scenario.

Wow, that seems like a lot of writing to justify a silly reference to an incredibly obscure TV mystery. I think I'll sign off for now but there's definitely a sequel to this post rattling around my brain.

I remain,
Inverse Square, Master of the UNKNOWN!(?)

(read part 2 here)