Ed Ranks Mystery! Shows on PBS

I can already hear the theme music playing in my head.

From 1980 until 2006, the U.S. Public Broadcasting System (PBS) ran a show called Mystery!  The basic purpose of it was simply to repackage British-produced murder mystery shows for American audiences, slightly repackaged with the Mystery! branding (even if the shows had no relation to one another during production) and with cryptic introductions by people like Vincent Price (1981 to 1988) and Diana "Emma Peel / Tracy Bond / Olenna Tyrell" Rigg (1989 to 2003). It also had super awesome and creepy introductions with animations of Edward Gorey Victorian murders. Eventually, Mystery! was cancelled as a standalone show, and merged into Masterpiece Theatre, becoming Masterpiece Mystery. Eh.

There were a bajillion shows aired between 1980 and 2006 (I won't count the shows done post-Masterpiece merger), so I can't rank all of them. But here are the top 10, ranked.

And an honorable mention to The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, which won't be ranked here but which starred Dianna Rigg in it. Which was weird because it was Dianna Rigg introducing a show starring Dianna Rigg. Also it had both Peter Davison and young David Tennant in it. Like a little mini Doctor Who part or something, before the latter was married to the former's daughter.

10. Dalgliesh - I never really liked the Dalgliesh show about contemporary Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, but you gotta admit it had some damn staying power more than a lot of the other shows on this bloc. The first season of Dalgliesh premeiered on Mystery! waaaaay back in the 1985-86 season, and it continued on with various series all the way unil 2005, some 20 years later. The most iconic of these were the original 10 or so series, which starred mistachioed Roy Marsden in the lead role. After Martin Shaw took over, it was shit. I'm just saying.

Glasses? What a nerd!

9. Campion - The Campion Mystery! series didn't last long (only two seasons between 89 and 90), but it was memorable for eight episodes featuring the aforementioned Peter Davison as Albert Campion, a young, glasses-wearing, secret British aristocrat using a false name and solving mysteries back in the 1920s/30s era. He also has a manservant named Magersfontein Lugg follow him around, which is pretty awesome and aristocratic. Even Watson was only Sherlock Holmes' buddy/partner, rather than manservant.

8. Maigret - Maigret was like Campion but was even more famous, lasting but two seasons and starring Michael Gambon (an iconic British actor once under consideration to be James Bond, although later mostly famous for the young whippersnappers as Albus Dumbledore) as pipe-smoking French detective Jules Maigret. Each of the 12 episodes covered a single book, but there were like 70+ books about Maigret, so Gambon could have really done a TON of these if he wanted to. French actor Bruno Cremer is probably the most famous player of Maigret, but this ranking isn't about French television, is it?

This old lady. Not the other ones.

7. Agatha Christie's Miss Marple - There have been 3 or 4 Miss Marple mystery shows in my own lifespan (a bit of a problem when the heroine of your story is an elderly woman solving mysteries... you cast an elderly actress and then she goes and dies), so you may be confused as to exactly which Miss Marple TV show this is. Another show about the same character also appeared on Mystery! later (although technically under the title Marple instead of Miss Marple) with Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie playing the character. But I'm not talking about any of them. No, I'm talking about the 1984 to 1992 version of Miss Marple, starring Joan Hickson. That was the best one. Sorry other old white ladies.

6. Rumpole of the Bailey - This show was sort of like the second / court half of Law & Order episodes, only from before there even was a Law & Order. Also, it's British so everyone is wearing wigs like it's ye olde times. Why do they still wear wigs in British courts? It makes no sense. Anyway, the famous British actor Leo McKern  (Thomas Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons, Moriarty in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, One of the only repeat "Number Two"s in The Prisoner). Actually, it's a bit more like Perry Mason than L&O, because he's a defense attorney (or "barrister," I suppose). Unlike Perry Mason, his defendants weren't coincidentally always innocent.

About to out-act everyone else ever.

5. Cadfael - In this show, Sir Derek Fucking Jacobi (hells yeah! If I have to explain his filmography to you, you don't deserve to know who he is) plays Ellis Peters' medieval herbalist monk Brother Cadfael. Cadfael is a Welsh Benedictine monk who gets bored doing normal monk things and goes around solving mysteries in 12th Century England, around the time of "The Anarchy" civil war between throne claimants Stephen and Matilda. This show is great and I'd instantly watch it again if it were still being run. I'd say it should be remade or rebooted, but anyone who isn't Derek Jacobi would ruin it.

4. Inspector Morse - I was never a huge fan of Inspector Morse, but it lasted forever and was pretty damn popular. Rather than being a period piece, it was one of the "set in modern day" mysteries, much more like an American cop show than most of the others on this list. John Thaw stars as Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse (what a name!) and he's basically always accompanied by the modern Watson to his modern Holmes,  Kevin Whately as Sergeant Robbie Lewis. This show was on for a ton of seasons (basically until John Thaw was too old) and even after it's main star left, they milked the basic premise to create the spin-off detective shows Lewis (about Lewis, obviously), and Endeavour (a prequel about a young, handsome Inspector Morse back in the 60's). The show was pretty innovative in that the Inspector was not always right or perfect like other detectives, and he often fucked up and arrested the wrong person. REALISM! 

3. Prime Suspect - Hey! Speaking of modern-set cop shows rather than period pieces, you've probably heard of Prime Suspect, haven't you? It's the show that made me (and most Americans) familiar with the extremely MILF-ey Helen Mirren. Mirren plays Jane Tennison, a female Detective Chief Inspector in London's Metropolitan Police Service, who often has to deal with just as much trouble from her dickish, condescending male colleagues as she does with actual criminals. The show covered some pretty dark themes at times, like child sex crimes. You might also be aware of the show for the American attempt to remake it with with Mario Bello. That was obviously a bad idea.

"Eat yo fish. Get dat grey matter" - Agatha Christie.

2. Agatha Christie's Poirot - Every other decade or so, they remake Murder on the Orient Express, the most famous mystery story about Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The latest to play him has been Kenneth Branagh, but he's also been played by notable names like Charles Laughton, Tony Randall (don't ask, this was obviously the most terrible), Albert Finney, and Peter Ustinov (who played him six times, shockingly none of them an Orient Express adaptation). But have no doubt about it, David Suchet who played Poirot in Agatha Christie's Poirot IS POIROT. This was on from 1989 to 2013 (yes, 2013!), featuring 13 seasons and 70 episodes/movies. The show adapted every single story about Poirot that Agatha Christie wrote, and Suchet owned it.

1. Sherlock Holmes 

CLUES!!!!

Unlike Poirot, filmmakers don't bother to wait a decade to re-tell Sherlock Holmes stories over and over again. They are basically knocking out Sherlock TV and film adaptions all the time. In just the last handfull of years, you've likely been exposed to various versions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr., Jonny Lee Miller, Ian McKellen, and yes, even Will Ferrell. Over the years, he's also been played by guys like Basil Rathbone, Christopher Plummer, Roger Moore, Peter O'Toole, Peter Cushing, Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee, James D'Arcy, Jonathan Pryce, Michael Caine, and so on. But just like David Suchet IS Poirot, Granada TV's Sherlock Holmes's actor Jeremy Brett IS Sherlock Holmes. No question. This show aired from 1984 until 1994, under various different names for the different seasons (including The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and 5 feature-length specials, based on some of the longer Doyle novels instead of the usual Holmes short stories). Brett was joined by David Burke as the initial Watson, who was replaced by Edward Hardwicke after the second season. It also featured Charles Gray (Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever) as Mycroft Holmes. In the end, the Grenada Sherlock Holmes series featured on Mystery! adapted 41 Sherlock Holmes stories, making Brett the most prolific actor. But Brett has more than just quantity going for him - as his depiction is almost universally considered as the quintessential version of the Doyle's character.  Alas, Brett suddenly died in 1995, aged 61, which left 19 of the Doyle stories adapted. If you compare any adaption of a Sherlock story to the Jeremy Brett version of the same story, it's not even close.  Plus unlike the Benedict Cumberbatch version you can actually understand what the fuck is going on because the show isn't being too smugly clever to follow.