Pop Culture Roundup for September 10-23: TV Mystery and History with UNCLE, SNL, SSR, and MORE

by Karen A. Romanko

Time for another roundup of my social media posts about pop culture! I’m focusing on mystery and history this time out, with acronyms aplenty, from UNCLE in the 1960s to SSR in the new millennium. Ride the roundup as it spins through decades of television history...

September 10: If you like your mysteries on the quirky, cross-genre side, then Pushing Daisies (2007-2009, 22 episodes, USA) is the one for you. Ned (Lee Pace) is a pie-maker who learned as a child that his touch could resurrect the dead. Now an adult, Ned works with local private investigator Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) to solve murders with a unique investigative technique—Ned raises the dead, so Emerson can ask who killed them, then touches the victim a second time, laying them to rest forever. Things get complicated, however, when Ned’s childhood sweetheart, Charlotte “Chuck” Charles (Anna Friel), is murdered on a cruise ship. Ned revives her at the local funeral home, but can’t bring himself to let her go permanently. Chuck (or “Dead Girl,” as the grumpy Cod likes to call her) joins the detective team, making the interrogations even more challenging, since they have only one minute to question the murder victims or someone in the vicinity will die (another rule of Ned’s gift). There’s more flaky goodness to this one, including synchronized-swimming aunts (Ellen Greene, Swoosie Kurtz) and a kitschy-noir restaurant called The Pie Hole. Available for free on CW Seed, via subscription on HBO Max, others for a fee.

September 12: What’s everyone watching, old or new, in mystery, detective, spy, and crime TV series? Bob and I have been slowly working through The Man from U.N.C.L.E. DVD set I bought him for Christmas. I never watched it as a kid, so it’s totally new to me. I have started re-watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and Phryne is still a colorful and fun protagonist, who always brings the word “sashay” to mind. What about y’all?

September 13: It’s not often that research for my book in progress, Historical Women on Scripted Television, makes me laugh so much. I hadn’t seen this classic SNL skit in years, but since I’m researching Julia Child, I decided to revisit it. I admit it was more sanguinary than I remembered, so a big trigger warning for BLOOD. Apparently Ms. Child thought it was so funny that she showed it to friends at parties. That’s a good sport! Dan Aykroyd is pitch perfect (and adorable) in this cooking-show-gone-horribly-wrong parody.

September 16: I’m a big fan of period mysteries. Several set in the 1920s bring us female sleuths with plenty of style and sass (apparently a requirement in the 20s). Clockwise from left: Partners in Crime (2015 version), Partners in Crime (1983 version), The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries (1998), Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012–2015), and Frankie Drake Mysteries (2017-2021). Spiffing fun!

September 20: Female TV Crimefighter of the Day! Jane Rizzoli of Rizzoli & Isles (2010-2016, 105 episodes, USA). Angie Harmon stars as Jane Rizzoli, a beautiful, but tough homicide detective for the Boston Police Department. Although “beautiful, but tough” is a female detective cliché, Harmon breathes real life into Jane Rizzoli, who never falls into caricature. Rizzoli works with Dr. Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander), the Commonwealth’s Chief Medical Examiner, and the women have a friendship of opposites, with Jane’s wisecracking impatience played, often comically, against Maura’s pedantic sincerity. But their complementary worldviews are needed to close cases, and they do, for seven seasons, against the backdrop of beautifully filmed Boston (my hometown). Streaming on HBO Max, others for a fee.

September 22: Susan B. Anthony is making me cry! I’m researching Anthony for my book in progress, Historical Women on Scripted Television, and I came across this description of her 1873 trial for illegally voting in a presidential election. “Repeatedly ignoring the judge's order to stop talking and sit down, she protested what she called ‘this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights,’ saying, ‘you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored.’” (Wikipedia) Thank you, Ms. Anthony! She was portrayed by Jayne Meadows on Meeting of Minds (1977–1981), an innovative “talk show” for historical figures. She is on the left below with Steve Allen and James Booth. Back row: Julio Mendina and Alexander Scourby.

September 23: Female TV Crimefighter of the Day! Peggy Carter of Agent Carter (2015–2016, 18 episodes, USA). Hayley Atwell portrays Peggy Carter, an agent with the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) in 1946. She returns after World War II to an office full of men who underestimate her investigative abilities and treat her like an unqualified assistant. It’s the men, however, who are out of their depth, since under their noses Peggy is on a clandestine crusade to clear the name of Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), a Howard Hughes–esque inventor and weapons-maker accused of treason. While Agent Carter’s television stay was short, the series is unforgettable both for its beautiful 40s aesthetic and its skill at portraying strong, smart women without forgetting the limitations they faced during the pre-feminist era. Streaming on Disney+, others for a fee.

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Last, but not least, please check out my books about women and television from McFarland Publishers, available in trade paperback and Kindle editions at Amazon:

Television's Female Spies and Crimefighters and Women of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television
 On sale now!