"It was MURDER, Sam!"

Ah, the nostalgia for University life. Mid-afternoons watching 70's tele-drama Quincy M.E., whose every patient (are they actually patients, when they are dead?) turned out to be murder, an unsolved case for Jack Klugman to crack. How often this happens in real life I couldn't say but Quincy (148 episodes) the medical examiner solved twice as many cases as Columbo (69 episodes). Seriously though, I could never understand the point in making a crime show, that wasn't revolved around a detective. The basic premise of the show was somebody dies by apparantely natural causes, Quincy notices a minute detail and suspects foul play. Quincy suddenly becomes a detective and tries to solve the murder but finds himself blocked by authority (usually his boss or the local cops), he ignores them and gets angry, then solves the case. It was a detective show in every way. So today I hear Angelina Jolie is adding another franchise to her blockbuster heavy bedpost as Fox 2000 are setting her up to play medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta, who has somehow filled 16 popular crime novels from Patricia Cornwell. The idea is not to adapt each book but to adapt the character and situations from the franchise, which they hope will be "Silence of the Lambs meets Se7en". A tiresome claim that every crime movie has made for about 15 years now. Medical examiners or coroners as detectives just lose their credibility after a while. Though at least they do for me... but then again I'm not one who reads Cornwell's novels, I guess that's women aged 32 or over. Is that Jolie's audience? After all Changeling which was aimed at that generation earned only $35 million domestic.