The Women's Murder Club

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Rating 2¾ and getting better


Created for television by Elisabeth Craft and Sarah Fain

Based on characters in the books by James Patterson

Written by Gretchen J Berg (2 episodes), Sherry Carnes (2 episodes), Elisabeth Craft (2 episodes), Sarah Fain (2 episodes), R Scott Gemmill (1 episode), Barbara Hall (1 episode), Aaron Harberts (2 episodes), Melina Hsu-Taylor (2 episodes), Robert Nathan (3 episodes, story only), Tom Postiglione (1 episode), Tom Szentgyorgyi (1 episode), Nichelle D Tramble (2 episodes) and Matt Witten (2 episodes)

Directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá (1 episode), Sarah Pia Anderson (1 episode), Mel Damski (1 episode), Michael Fields (1 episode), Tawnia McKiernan (1 episode), Matthew Penn (1 episode), Michael Schultz (1 episode), Bryan Spicer (1 episode), Skipp Sudduth (1 episode), Brad Turner (1 episode), Rick Wallace (2 episodes) and Greg Yaitanes (1 episode)

Starring Angie Harman, Laura Harris, Paula Newsome, Aubrey Dollar, Tyrees Allen, Rob Estes, Linda Park, Coby Ever Carradine, Ryan McLaughlin, Jonathan Adams, Kyle Secor, Joel Gretsch and Gerald McRaney


Lindsay Boxer (Angie Harman) is a San Francisco homicide detective who devotes herself to her job at the expense of her private life. Her marriage to Tom Hogan (Rob Estes), another police officer who has been promoted to lieutenant and is now her boss, broke down when she became obsessed with the so-called “Kiss-Me-Not” killer, a brutal serial killer who targeted young women, torturing them and sewing their lips together. Jill Bernhardt (Laura Harris) is an assistant district attorney who works out of City Hall, where Boxer’s police division is also based. Dr Claire Washburn (Paula Newsome) is the medical examiner who works alongside Boxer and her partner, the veteran police detective Warren Jacobi (Tyrees Allen). Cindy Thomas (Aubrey Dollar) is a young reporter with the San Francisco Register who is promoted to the crime desk. Together, they solve a series of murders.

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‘The Women’s Murder Club’ is based a series of novels by the celebrated American crime-thriller writer James Patterson, eight so far, published between 2001 and 2009. Patterson was one of the show’s executive producers. It was created for television by Elisabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, who had previously worked on ‘The Shield’ and before that Joss Whedon’s ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ spin-off ‘Angel’. They are now the showrunners for Whedon’s latest television series ‘Dollhouse’. The other executive producers were Joe Simpson, the father of Jessica and Ashlee Simpson; Brett Ratner, the film director responsible for the Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker ‘Rush Hour’ action films; and R Scott Gemmill, who worked on ‘ER’ over a number of years. Gemmill was the showrunner.

The show was affected by the Writers Guide of America strike in 2007-2008 and went off the air at the beginning of January 2008 after ten episodes. When it returned at the end of April 2008 for three final episodes, Craft and Fain were no longer involved. The show had average viewing figures of 8.9 million, with a high of 10.8 million and a low of 7.8 million. It was ranked number one in its timeslot eight times and never lower than number three. It was ranked number one for the night four times, although this dropped off from the sixth episode onwards. In May 2008 it was announced by the ABC network that a second season would not be commissioned.

As a comparison, the fifth season of ‘Cold Case’ on the CBS network, which was broadcast at around the same time (September 2007 to May 2008) averaged 10.8 million viewers. Previous seasons of that show had averaged between 14.2 million and 15.1 million. It should be noted that ‘Cold Case’ is traditionally broadcast on a Sunday night, whereas the first ten episodes of ‘The Women’s Murder Club’ went out on Friday night, which is considered to be a dead night for television by the networks. The final three episodes were broadcast on Tuesday nights.

The series gets off to a somewhat shaky start, but it does improve with each episode as the main characters begin to gel and the individual personalities are brought more into focus. There does seem to be an underlying theme that a woman without a man is only half a person, and a very pale shadow at that, which I found quite irritating, although this was not rammed down our throats quite as forcefully after the first few episodes. It is very generic, which is the nature of American police procedurals, and rarely rises above the clichéd, other than the “novelty” of having its four main protagonists all be strong female characters, something we could do with more of. However, I found it very easy to watch and increasingly looked forward to each episode. I was quite disappointed when I came to the final episode, even though I knew this was all there was, particularly when that episode ended somewhat abruptly on a cliff-hanger.

I think the show deserved to continue. The viewing figures were certainly not fantastic and perhaps the demographic did not meet the requirements of the advertisers, which would seem to be one of the main concerns of American television networks. The show was unlucky to get caught up in the writer’s strike. When it went off air it undoubtedly lost momentum. It would seem that some problems existed behind the scenes – Craft and Fain were apparently fired from the show, explaining their absence from the final episodes. Perhaps the network decided it was going to be too hard to sell a show like this, without a male lead, to its target audience. Having said that, ‘Cold Case’, to use that example again, a police procedural with a female lead, is now in its sixth season. Of course, there is also the classic example of ‘Cagney & Lacey’, one of the great highpoints of this genre, although that was a long time ago and the landscape of American television has changed a lot since then.

Angie Harman was previously in ‘Baywatch Nights’ and 72 episodes of ‘Law & Order’. Laura Harris, who I like very much, played Daisy Adair in ‘Dead Like Me’. Aubrey Dollar, who I first came across in a cheesy but rather enjoyable made-for-television disaster movie called ‘Trapped’, was in the short-lived and much unloved ‘Point Pleasant’, a show I adore. Gerald McRaney, a veteran actor of many American television series, including the recent ‘Jericho’, played Lindsay Boxer’s father, a disgraced former policeman who had been drummed out of the force for corruption. Christopher Wiehl, who was also one of the cast of ‘Jericho’ and several years earlier had appeared in what remains my favourite episode in the first season of one of the most iconic of American television shows of the last twenty years, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, played the role of Tom Hogan in the unaired pilot episode. He was subsequently replaced by Rob Estes, who is now amongst the cast of ‘90210’. Ever Carradine, who played Heather Hogan, the new wife of Lindsay’s former husband Tom, is a member of the famous American acting family, the daughter of actor Robert Carradine.

Barbara Hall, the creator and executive producer of the wonderful ‘Joan of Arcadia’, was a consultant producer and wrote the second episode. Her previous credits include ‘Judging Amy’ and ‘Northern Exposure’.

Review posted 2 April 2009



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Dead Like Me

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Rating 5


Created by Bryan Fuller

Written by Bridget Carpenter (5 episodes), Dan Fesman (3 episodes), Bryan Fuller (2 episodes), Karl Gajdusek (4 episodes), Stephen Godchaux (14 episodes), Paul Lieberstein (1 episodes), Mona Mansour (1 episodes), John Masius (7 episodes), Anna C Miller (1 episodes), Pete Ocko (3 episodes), J J Philbin (2 episodes), Tom Spezialy (1 episode), Ian Thomas (1 episode), Harry Victor (3 episodes), Annie Weismen (4 episodes)

Directed by Sarah Pia Anderson (2 episodes), Steve Beers (2 episodes), Milan Cheyluv (1 episode), Kevin Dowling (2 episodes), Michael Fresco (1 episode), David Grossman (4 episodes), Peter Lauer (4 episodes), James Marshall (1 episode), Robert Duncan McNeill (2 episode), Helen Shaver (1 episode), David Straiton (1 episode), Brad Turner (1 episode), Tony Westman (1 episode), James Whitmore Jr (4 episodes), Scott Winant (1 episode), Jeff Woolnough (1 episode)

Starring Ellen Muth, Mandy Patinkin, Cynthia Stevenson, Jasmine Guy, Callum Blue, Rebecca Gayheart, Laura Harris, Britt McKillip, Christine Willes, Greg Kean and Crystal Dahl


Georgia ‘George’ Lass (Ellen Muth) is a disaffected and cynical 18-year-old who stays on the sidelines, refusing to participate so as to avoid disappointment. When she drops out of college she is forced to look for a job by her mother Joy (brilliantly played by Cynthia Stevenson) and ends up at Happy Time, a temporary employment agency, where she is given a menial office task by Dolores Herbig (Christine Willes). However, when George is killed in a freak accident involving a toilet seat on her first day she becomes a grim reaper, part of a group of five reapers led by Rube Sofer (Mandy Patinkin) responsible for reaping the souls of people killed in accidents and at the hands of others.

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‘Dead Like Me’ was broadcast in the US for two seasons and a total of 29 episodes on the Showtime subscription television channel between 27 June 2003 and 31 October 2004. It was created by Bryan Fuller, who had previously been a writer on ‘Star Trek Deep Space Nine’ and ‘Star Trek Voyager’. He went on to create the short-lived ‘Wonderfalls’ (in collaboration with Todd Holland) and ‘Pushing Daisies’, as well as working as a consulting producer and writer during the first season of ‘Heroes’. Fuller wrote the first two episodes of ‘Dead Like Me’, but left after five episodes due to conflicts with MGM Television, the company that produced the show. He described the period as “the worst experience of my life,” although he continued to receive a credit as a consultant. The creative direction was subsequently dictated by John Masius (the show’s executive producer) and Stephen Godchaux, its most prolific writer.

The show is brilliantly executed, from the memorable opening credits onwards. It takes the simple premise of life explored through death (George does not really begin to live until she is dead) and produces a near-perfect mix of black comedy and poignant drama, set against a supernatural theme. It follows George’s journey as she slowly begins to understand what life really means; both through her reminiscences about her parents and younger sister and through her relationship with the people she meets in death, including the two people who become almost surrogate parents to her, Rube and Dolores. Even in death, George is required to deal with the mundane matters of life and in the guise of “Millie” she once again ends up working at Happy Time.

The standard of writing throughout is extremely high and the cast is superb, bringing life to several memorable characters. Rebecca Gayheart was cast as one of the original reapers, the 1920s flapper Betty Rohmer. However, Betty was written out the show after five episodes and Gayheart was replaced by the actress Laura Harris, playing Daisy Adair, a would-be Hollywood starlet who claims to have died in a fire on the set of ‘Gone With The Wind’ in 1938. I don’t know the reason why Gayheart left the show, although I guess it could have been connected to the departure of Bryan Fuller. She did have, at that time, seemingly, a rather chaotic life and in 2002 had been dropped from the main cast of the television series ‘Firefly’ after just one day of filming. She was replaced on that occasion by Morena Baccarin. Fans of that show would not agree with me, but I think it would have benefited greatly from the presence of Gayheart, who would surely have given us something more spirited than Baccarin’s depressingly bland performance.

I like Rebecca Gayheart a lot and also like the character Betty, so her early departure was initially disappointing. However, Daisy Adair proved to be one of the show’s great characters. I was previously aware of Laura Harris from the Robert Rodriguez film ‘The Faculty’ and from an episode of ‘The X Files’. Her performance here is outstanding, as we slowly learn more about the very sad and poignant nature of her character, which she carefully hides beneath a brazen and self-absorbed exterior.

This is just one of several really outstanding performances. The character I found perhaps most interesting is Joy Lass, George’s mother, played by Cynthia Stevenson, who once again is not what she seems on the surface. Dolores Herbig is also worthy of mention; George’s seemingly annoying manager at work who proves to be very kind-hearted and acts as a mentor/mother figure to her. Dolores is played by Christine Willes, who has subsequently featured in a recurring role in the television series ‘Reaper’. The actor and singer Mandy Patinkin is always very watchable and Rube Sofer is another particularly noteworthy character, his relationship with George and the other reapers being one of the many joys to had watching the series.

The show’s most overtly comic character is the constantly hapless Mason (Callum Blue), a 1960s alcohol and drug addicted drop-out who killed himself drilling a hole in his skull in search of the ultimate high.

There is a notable shift in emphasis between the first and second seasons. Season one is more comedy-attuned and irreverent, whereas season two begins to delve more deeply into the lives of the various characters, for example exploring the relationship between Joy Lass and her daughter Reggie (Britt McKillip), George’s younger sister. As a result, I think, having watched the series in its entirety three times, it’s a more interesting season, as much as I like the first one. It contains several memorable and heartrending moments, such as the scene in the episode ‘Rites of Passage’ when George’s free-spirited grandmother Phyllis (beautifully played by Barbara Barrie) holds a small framed photograph of her grand-daughter up to her chest, tears in her eyes, or in ‘Always’ when Rube sings a lullaby to his daughter Rosie, now a elderly woman, in the final moments of her life. There are also scenes that leave a powerful impression, such as one in the episode ‘Be Still My Heart’ that sees Daisy crouching down, terrified, in a hotel room closet while the young woman whose soul she has come to reap is brutally strangled by her married lover.

The second season is also notable for an appearance in three episodes by Eric McCormack, playing a distinctly unpleasant character quite unlike his signature role in the long-running sitcom ‘Will and Grace’. I should not, of course, forget to mention Ellen Muth, who is perfectly cast in the lead role as George Lass, although I can never quite get over how scarily skinny she is. Muth, who apparently has an unusually high IQ and is a member of both Mensa and Intertel, made her acting debut in the 1995 film ‘Dolores Claiborne’ when she was 14-years-old, receiving many positive reviews for her performance.

My only criticisms of the series are two very minor quibbles. In ‘Reaping Havoc’, the fifth episode of the first season, an Irishman who dies goes into the light when he sees the white cliffs of Dover, which are to be found on the south coast of England and would have no emotional pull whatsoever for someone from Ireland. The storyline required cliffs, but this is cringe-worthy. In ‘A Cook’, the eighth episode of season one, Mandy Patinkin adopts a Scottish accent that is so awful it is embarrassing, worse even than the typically dreadful Irish accents that so many American actors seem to feel the need to adopt at least once in their acting careers.

Accurate data about viewing figures for the show are not available. It has been claimed that it was watched by an audience three times the Showtime primetime average; although there is no evidence I know of to back this up. Whatever the truth, Showtime decided not to commission a third season. However, a direct-to-DVD film version was released in the US in February 2009. It was written by John Masius and Stephen Godchaux and reunited several of the cast from the television series, although Mandy Patinkin, Laura Harris and Greg Kean, who played George’s father, Clancy, are absent. The film was directed by Stephen Herek, whose previous films include ‘Critters’, ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ and the live-action version of ‘101 Dalmatians’.

Review posted 21 March 2009



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The Faculty

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Rating 3¾


Directed by Robert Rodriguez

Written by Kevin Williamson

Starring Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Jordana Brewster, Famke Janssen, Salma Hayek, Bebe Neuwirth and Robert Patrick


I adore this film.

The screenplay was by Kevin Williamson and it was released on the back of the box office successes of the first two ‘Scream’ films and ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’. It was directed by Robert Rodriguez, his follow-up to ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’. It was inspired by ‘Invasion Of The Body Snatchers’, which it specifically references, with one central scene famously taken directly from John Carpenter’s remake of ‘The Thing’.

The ‘students’ include Elijah Wood, who I find a little bit creepy as an adult actor, but is great here, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett and Jordana Brewster. The ‘teachers’ are played by Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick and Jon Stewart (later to become successful as the host of the satirical American fake news programme ‘The Daily Show’). There is also a small role for Summer Phoenix, memorably funny as the ‘Fuck You’ Girl.

It’s a clever film with a script that is typical of Kevin Williamson’s other film work. It’s the only Robert Rodriguez film I’ve seen that I like without at least some qualms. The teenage characters are likeable and the various actors work well together. The only minor complaint I would have is that the coda doesn’t really work for me.

All other considerations to one side, and the presence of Clea DuVall and Laura Harris is enough to make me feel biased in the film’s favour, it is clearly a much better film than some of the reviews suggested (see the example below).

“The latest in a long line of lamentable Gen X horror films is brought to you by the pen of Kevin Williamson, who offers up more hard evidence that the cleverness of the first Scream film was either a fluke or just someone else’s script.”
Widgett Walls, needcoffee.com



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