Discover the most popular TV show the year you were born

1985: Murder, She Wrote

Murder, She Wrote was a crime drama series on CBS that aired from 1984 until 1996. The series starred Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, a mystery writer and amateur detective. She’s a retired English teacher, widowed and childless, who lives in a small coastal town in Maine. She uses her witty writer’s intuition to carefully piece together clues and often outsmarts actual investigators on the cases she works on.

Murder, She Wrote was immensely popular right off the bat, placing in the top 10 television shows within its first season. The show was at its highest position — third — following the show’s second season in 1985-1986. In its prime, the show scored more than 30 million viewers a week, and was a staple in the Sunday night lineup on CBS. However, after a time slot change to Thursdays later in the series run, it just couldn’t compete with other popular shows, and it lost millions of viewers. The show came to an end after 12 seasons, and finished off with four TV movies between 1997 and 2003.

What’s a show without an amazing actor at its helm? Lansbury was nominated for an impressive 10 Golden Globes and 12 Emmy Awards for her performance as Jessica Fletcher, and holds the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for Best Actress in a Television Drama Series and the most Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She ended up taking home four Golden Globes in total.