| The NBC Mystery Movie | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Movie of the week |
| Theme music composer | Henry Mancini |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| Production | |
| Running time | 90 min. (1971-1974, 1976-1977) 120 min. (1974-1976) |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Original run | 1971 – 1977 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Amy Prentiss Banacek Columbo Cool Million Faraday & Company Hec Ramsey Lanigan's Rabbi Madigan McCloud McCoy McMillan & Wife Quincy, M.E. The Snoop Sisters Tenafly |
The NBC Mystery Movie is the general name of an American television series, produced by Universal Studios, that was broadcast by NBC from 1971-77. At times, it was divided into several versions that were broadcast concurrently during different nights of the week and were entitled The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie and The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie.
Mystery Movie was a "wheel show", or "umbrella program". That is, it rotated several programs within the same time period throughout the season. For its initial 1971-72 season, it featured a rotation of three detective dramas that were broadcast during Wednesday nights for 90 minutes, from 8:30-10:00 p.m. in the Eastern Time Zone.
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The origin of the "wheel" format was a joint programming and creative production agreement between the NBC Television Network and Universal Studios Television and Motion Pictures dating from 1966. By that agreement, NBC ordered a multi-year series of dramatic anthology productions from Universal which would be broadcast as NBC series television programming in the United States (both as originals and re-runs), while Universal retained the rights to overseas release of these products as feature length films. Also, NBC would not offer these shows subsequently as TV re-runs for international sales.
The first series created under this agreement was The Name of the Game, an anthology of four programs. It was followed by The Bold Ones, Four in One and The Men. 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 increase in the popularity of situation comedies—coupled with the comedies' lower production costs and much greater scheduling flexibility and resale opportunities—surpassed that of these drama anthologies, whose episodes had typically longer run-times (ranging from one to two hours). The anthologies could not reasonably be reduced for briefer broadcast times for the re-run market. They were not designed for casual or short-term viewers, who would have little interest in the character or the story of an individual episode. Each episode and each series were of widely varying quality, making re-sale in re-runs difficult. While they lasted, the best of them employed the finest actors, writers and production standards available.
The three original 1971-72 shows of The NBC Mystery Movie were:
The umbrella series was counted a great success in its first season and finished at number 14 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1971-1972 season. Columbo was nominated for eight Emmy Awards and won four categories.
The success of Mystery Movie prompted NBC to reschedule the original three shows to the competitive 8:30-10:00 Sunday evening time period for the second season as The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie.
A fourth show was added to the rotation and lasted two seasons (1972–74):
In addition, a clone of the umbrella series, The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie 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 and Madigan were canceled and Banacek rotated with three new series:
Even rescheduling to Tuesday nights as The NBC Tuesday Mystery Movie during January 1974 didn't help ratings, however, and the midweek series was canceled, while the Sunday series continued.
During subsequent years, Columbo, McCloud and McMillan and Wife rotated with a fourth series, which changed each year. These included:
Of all the wheel series, only the original three -- Columbo, McCloud and McMillan & Wife -- survived for the entire run of the Mystery Movie. Most of the others were very short-lived, and with the exception of Hec Ramsey and Banacek were all only on the air for one season. Quincy, M.E. proved to be such a hit that NBC spun it off into its own weekly series midway through the final Mystery Movie season, the only Mystery Movie series to receive this honor, and the spin-off series ran until 1983.
The Mystery Movie theme music was composed by Henry Mancini.
The opening credits consisted of a mysterious figure carrying a flashlight slowly walking towards the camera in a desert landscape under dramatic clouds, as images representing the various rotating series appeared sequentially on the screen; at the end, an announcer (Hank Sims) presented that night's main actors and series (example: "Tonight, starring Peter Falk as Columbo"). Some syndicated episodes of Columbo retain this opening credit sequence, though slowed towards the end to avoid showing the title caption which includes "NBC" and (after the first season), a day of the week.
The Wednesday Mystery Movie theme was composed by Quincy Jones for its first season and had an animated open to show the lineup. The tune was very uptempo and the open did not look at all like that of the Sunday Mystery Movie.
ABC launched a revival of the mystery wheel show idea, appropriately titled the ABC Mystery Movie, which lasted from February 1989 to August 1990. Columbo returned as part of ABC's revival, along with a revival of Kojak and three new series: B.L. Stryker, Gideon Oliver, and Christine Cromwell.
After the ABC Mystery Movie ended its run, a further fourteen Columbo TV movies were broadcast between 1990 and 2003. McCloud was also featured in one further TV movie, The Return of Sam McCloud, during November 1989.
Reruns of some episodes of the Wednesday and Sunday Mystery Movies were previously seen as part of The CBS Late Movie, beginning in January 1975, with Banacek being the first of the series to be repeated.[1]
In addition to Columbo, Banacek, McCloud, and MacMillan and Wife have also been seen in syndication in the past and still do air on various stations from time to time.