So much average

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

"Ellery Queen Mysteries" was a Detective television series that had a genuine sense of mystery about it, as the identity of the murderer wasn't revealed until the end. This worked to the shows favour. Wisely, the setting was that of the 1940s as that was when the Ellery Queen character first surfaced. Jim Hutton as the title character and his father played by David Wayne, would investigate various crimes of homicide. A group of suspects and red herrings would be assembled by the end of the episode, so that Queen could give his deliberations. The series only lasted one season which I think is a bit of a shame. There were 22 episodes altogether and whilst they are very good, I feel that more could have been made. Once again, "Universal" was the studio behind this show.

This is the best series to ever be axed in one season. The pilot ran as an episode of the NBC Mystery Movie. Ironically, the first regular season episode ran on September 11, 1975. The mystery of why a show so well produced got the axe so quickly.The producers, Richard Levinson & William Link got an inspiration for this series for a simple reason. They were producing another show, Columbo, where they always told the audience the murderer at the beginning of the show and then amazed the audience entertaining it by showing Columbo doggedly trying to find the person we already knew did it.This shows starts off by challenging the audience on who Kiele the victim. It starts with a teaser dangling the victim & the suspects. Then it goes through the show with Ellery issuing a final challenge near the end of the show, and then reveal the killer in the finale. It is as opposite of Columbo as you can get.The casting for this show is perfect. Jim Hutton is perfect as Ellery Queen. David Wayne is perfect and Inspector Richard Queen, his father. The interplay between these actors has an irresistible chemistry. The guest casts were major league. The stories were good. That leaves us with the mystery, why did the show fail? Did NBC hire a bumbling rating agency that gave this show low numbers to kill it? Did the NBC execs put it in a bad time slot trying to kill it? Did Levinson & Link just develop this as practice before they got Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) hired to take the same format to higher ratings on CBS? Was there somebody else trying to kill it? Did the Love Boat need to borrow the guest casts the show was using? Was it somebody else like Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford? One thing the show does is recreate the 1940's atmosphere very well for a television show. What is left is a show that is great program that could have been more popular. Sadly, we are still looking for the killer.

Ellery Queen, written and produced by the same people who brought us "Murder, She Wrote" nine years later, was ahead of its time with its 1940s atmosphere and mystery plots, older casting and older guest stars. By the time the mid-'80s came around, the demographics had changed enough to make "Murder, She Wrote" a breakout hit -- but in the '70s, that audience wasn't there yet. It's a shame because Ellery Queen was a superior show in every way to the Angela Lansbury series. Hutton and Wayne were perfect as Ellery and the Inspector. John Hillerman, in the beginning episodes, was a radio detective and was preferable to the later budinsky, a newspaper man played by Ken Swofford. The pilot for this series, guest-starring Ray Milland, was one of the best ever made, complete with a radio show that had makeshift sound effects. Guest stars in the series included Tab Hunter, Signe Hasso, Howard Duff, Ida Lupino, Susan Sarandon, Anne Francis, Donald O'Connor, many others. A pity it wasn't a hit - though, done any later, Hutton would not have been alive to play Queen, a role that fit him like a glove.

The show Ellery Queen was not only great to watch, but gave us what would be the format of other mystery programs such as Murder She Wrote. I remember watching Ellery Queen as a child, and it, along with Agatha Christie's books started my enjoyment of a good mystery. I only wish it were on video so I could watch it again! It also exposed me to actors that I would watch either in later tv series (such as Magnum PI) or movies (like Jim Hutton & Cary Grant's "Walk, don't run". An entertaining series, with the knack for making the audience think, the element of surprise and detail make this an act worth following (and in the case of Murder she wrote, a successful one).