| The NBC Mystery Movie | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Movie of the week |
| Theme music composer | Henry Mancini |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of episodes | (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 90 minutes (1971–1974, 1976–1977) 120 minutes (1974–1976) |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | 1971 (1971) – 1977 (1977) |
| Related | |
The NBC Mystery Movie is an American television anthology series produced byUniversal Pictures, thatNBC broadcast from 1971 to 1977. Devoted to a rotating series ofmystery episodes, it was sometimes split into two subsets broadcast on different nights of the week:The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie andThe 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 theEastern andPacific time zones (7:30–9:00 p.m.Central andMountain time).
The origin of the "wheel" format was a joint programming and creative production agreement between the NBC Television Network andUniversal 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 wasThe Name of the Game, a drama with three rotating stars. It was followed byThe Bold Ones andFour in One (the similarThe 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 formerMystery Movie series were rebroadcast on late night'sThe 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]
The three original 1971–1972 season shows ofThe NBC Mystery Movie were:
The umbrella series was counted a great success in its first season and finished at number 14 in theNielsen ratings for the 1971–1972 season.Columbo was nominated for eightEmmy Awards and won four categories. This success promptedNBC to move the series to the competitive 8:30-10:00 Sunday evening time period for the second season asThe NBC Sunday Mystery Movie. In addition, a fourth show was added to the rotation, lasting two seasons (1972–1974):
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:
During the 1973–1974 season, the programs rotating on Sunday remained the same, while on Wednesday,Cool Million andMadigan were canceled andBanacek rotated with three new series:
Rescheduling to Tuesday nights asThe 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 ofColumbo,McCloud, andMcMillan and Wife.
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 theMystery Movie on March 23, 1975; it was promoted as anNBC Mystery Movie Special. (The resulting series began airing that September, but in a Thursday night timeslot, and not under theNBC Mystery Movie umbrella.)
Of all the wheel series, only the original three —Columbo,McCloud andMcMillan & Wife — survived for the entire run of theMystery Movie. Most of the others were short-lived, and, with the exception ofHec Ramsey andBanacek, were all only on the air for one season.Quincy, M.E., which was the next to last newMystery Movie series to premiere, ended up outlasting the parent series itself; midway through the finalMystery 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 theMystery Movie series was cancelled at the end of the 1976–1977 season, NBC keptColumbo in production and a seventh season consisting of five films premiered on November 21, 1977. After the fifth film aired in May 1978, NBC cancelledColumbo as well.
TheNBCMystery Movie theme music was composed byHenry 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 asColumbo"). Somesyndicated episodes ofColumbo 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 otherMystery Movie shows retained the intro, but simply faded away before the NBC-branded opening graphic could be shown.
TheNBC Wednesday Mystery Movie theme was composed byQuincy Jones for its first season and had an animated open to show the lineup.
In 1989, Universal Television andABC teamed to launch a revival of the mystery wheel, titled theABC Monday Mystery Movie. The network brought back originalMystery Movie seriesColumbo 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, starringLouis Gossett Jr. as a crime solving anthropologist, andB.L. Stryker, which featuredBurt Reynolds as aSouth Florida private investigator.[1] It was originally meant to be on Saturdays, but moved to Mondays amidst production delays related tothe 1988 Writers Guild of America strike.[2]
Columbo andB.L. Stryker continued in the wheel's second season on Saturday (asABC Saturday Mystery Movie) with two other series in August 1989: the newChristine Cromwell, aSan Francisco based mystery starringJaclyn Smith, and a revival of CBS' 1970s crime dramaKojak.[3] The wheel series ran irregularly from February 1989 until August 1990. After theABC Saturday Mystery Movie ended, ABC keptColumbo in production and Falk starred in an additional fourteen episodes before the network discontinued the series in 2003.
Universal broughtMcCloud back for a reunion film in 1989. The film, titledThe 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.
TheABC Mystery Movie theme was composed byMike Post.
In the fall of 1993, NBC made an attempt to revive the wheel format, this time calledThe NBC Friday Night Mystery. This rotation included:[4]
Promotional materials originally included a revival of the CBS telefilm series,Janek, which debuted in 1985 starringRichard Crenna as New York City Police Lieutenant of Detectives Frank Janek. An alleged feud between the two networks led to CBS demanding that NBC not proceed with production.[9][10]
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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:
| Show | TV season | Rank | Households (millions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| The NBC Mystery Movie | 1971–1972 | #14[11] | 14,40 |
| The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie | 1972–1973 | #6[12] | 15,68 |
| The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie | 1973–1974 | #14[13] | 14,69 |
| The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie | 1974–1975 | #24[14] | 14,59 |
| The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie | 1975–1976 | #53[15] | N/A |
| The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie | 1976–1977 | #62[16] | 12,76 |
| ABC Mystery Movie | 1988–1989 | #29[17] | 13,92 |
