The NBC Mystery Movie is the umbrella title of an American television series, produced by Universal Studios, that aired on NBC from 1971 to 1977. At times throughout its run, it split into several versions that ran concurrently on 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 shows within the same time slot throughout the season. In its initial 1971-1972 season, it premiered with a rotation of three detective dramas that ran on Wednesday night from 8:30-10:00 in the Eastern Time Zone.
The origin of the wheel format was as a framework for a joint programming and creative agreement between the NBC Television Network and Universal Studios Television and Motion Pictures dating from 1966. In that agreement, NBC ordered a multi-year series of dramatic anthology productions from Universal Studios which would be aired as NBC broadcast series television programming in the United States (both as originals and re-runs), but Universal would retain the rights to overseas release of these products as feature length films. And NBC would not offer these shows subsequently as TV re-runs for international sales.
The first series created under this agreement was Fame is the Name of the Game, an anthology of four programs. It was followed by The Protectors; Four in One and The Men. While it was a long and fruitful collaboration, it finally succumbed to the changes in the commercial broadcast market in both structure and content by the late 1970s.
By the late 1970s the rise in popularity of situation comedies, coupled with the comedies’ lower production costs and their far greater flexibility in broadcast programming; as well as resale opportunities, overtook the one to two hour episode drama anthologies. These drama anthologies could not be reasonably be cut down to fit shorter running times for the re-run market. They were not designed for the casual or short term viewer, who would have no interest in the nature of the character or the plot’s development in an individual episode. And each episode and each series were of widely varying quality, making re-sale in re-runs difficult. But while they lasted, the best of them employed the finest actors, writers and production standards that could be found in Hollywood.
The three original 1971-72 shows were:
The umbrella series was counted a great success in its first season and finished at number 14 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1971-72 season. Columbo was nominated for eight Emmy Awards and won in four categories.
The success of Mystery Movie prompted NBC to move the original three shows to the competitive 8:30-10:00 Sunday evening for the second season as The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie. A fourth series was added to the rotation and lasted two seasons (1972-1974):
In addition, a clone of the umbrella series, The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie debuted in the original time slot and featured three new shows:
In the 1973-74 season, the shows rotating on Sunday remained the same, while on Wednesday, Cool Million and Madigan were dropped and Banacek rotated with three new series:
Even switching to Tuesday nights as The NBC Tuesday Mystery Movie in January of 1974 didn't help ratings, however, and the midweek series was cancelled, while the Sunday series continued.
In 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 and Wife -- survived for the entire run of the Mystery Movie. Most of the others were short-lived (usually just one season), with the exception of Quincy which became the only Mystery Movie series to outlast its parent program when it was spun-off into its own weekly series in February 1977.
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 as images representing the various rotating series appeared in cameos on the side of the screen; at the end, an announcer (Hank Sims) presents that night's stars and series (example: "Tonight, starring Peter Falk as Columbo"). It was also the same opening used in Ironside for its second season.citation needed Some syndicated episodes of Columbo retain this opening credit sequence, though slowed down towards the end to avoid showing the title caption which includes "NBC" and (after the first season), a day of the week. Columbo returned in 1989 as part of ABC's revival of the Mystery Movie concept, which lasted for two seasons, and then in a further fourteen TV movies between 1990 and 2003. McCloud appeared in one further TV movie, The Return of Sam McCloud, in November 1989.
Pop Culture References
The cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 would often reference the NBC Mystery movie, either through referencing characters, or a subtle running gag; whenever a character in their spoofed movie shone a flashlight, one of the robots would remark, "It's the NBC Mystery Movie!"
A 2008 Simpsons episode, Dial 'N' for Nerder, ended with a reference to the NBC Mystery Movie's opening, featuring Nelson Muntz as Columbo, Dr. Hibbert as Quincy, Rich Texan as McCloud, and Mr. Burns and Smithers as McMillan and Wife.
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