NBC Just Killed the Murder, She Wrote Reboot

Looks like NBC decided to give it the *slides on sunglasses* boot. YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHHHH.

Somewhere Angela Lansbury‘s* putting on a cardigan, buying some booze, and prepping for a wild party, because NBC decided not to go ahead with their planned Octavia Spencer-starring Murder, She Wrote reboot. Now you have learned, Octavia. Angela is the Murder, She Wrote star. There can be only one.

You  might recall that shortly after NBC decided to go ahead with their new Murder, She Wrote pilot—a decision that was met with a lot of ?!?!?!? and some !!!!!!!! on the Internet, the latter in part because of NBC’s casting of Spencer, a woman of color, in the lead role—Angela Lansbury laid quite the polite smackdown on it. She (rightly) pointed out that, since the show would have different characters and settings, it wouldn’t exactly be Murder, She Wrote, would it? So they shouldn’t use the name, hmmmmm? (She opined, sipping chamomile and frolicking through the beautiful briny sea.)

Who knows whether it was Lansbury’s divine influence or something else, but NBC is backing out of the show, which would have been a “light, contemporary procedural” starring Spencer as a hospital administrator/amateur sleuth/newbie mystery novelist. It might only be in a coma, though: Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva writes that “the network brass felt they could try approaching it in a different way, possibly with a new concept” at some point down the line.

I must admit that I never really cared about the reboot for itself—”light, contemporary procedural” is so not my thing that it makes me rear back from my computer a little bit—but it was going to be nice to see the roster of TV’s leading ladies get a little less homogenous. There’s still Revenge (my bad, typed Revenge when I meant Scandal), Sleepy Hollow, The Mindy Project, Elementary, and the upcoming Extant and Rosemary’s Baby remake (what else am I missing?), but that’s not a heck of a lot. NBC, if you end up re-rebooting Murder, She Wrote with televison’s twelve billionth white lead, I will side-eye you so hard.

* I kid, I kid. Lansbury has too much class for that. Also, she cares naught for the trials of mere mortals.

(via: Deadline)

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