There was an article in the news yesterday about a group of around 100 tourists who were trapped for a few hours inside the British home of the late, great mystery novelist Agatha Christie. It seems the one access road to the house had been blocked by a tree knocked down in a storm while the group was touring the house.

In an Agatha Christie novel, the tourists would have been stranded overnight; the power would have failed, leaving them with only a few candles for illumination; and people would have been killed off, one by one, by a mad cousin of the home’s owner hidden away in the attic. But this was real life, and all ended happily: no one was murdered, the tourists received tea and British hospitality, the road was cleared, and everyone had an interesting story to bring home to their friends and families at the end of the day.

But my train of thought leads me from Ms. Christie’s home to some of my favorite old mystery TV shows, and to some of the amusing gaffes that went undetected and continue to show up in the reruns. A prime example would be the hit series of the 1980s and ‘90s, “Murder, She Wrote,” starring Angela Lansbury as small-town-school-teacher-turned-successful-mystery-writer J.B. (Jessica) Fletcher, in which homage is frequently paid to Ms. Christie and other renowned masters of mystery.

I recall one such blooper that occurred during a conversation between J.B. and a friend in Chicago. J.B. had called this friend from her home in Maine, and was apologizing for phoning so early, saying she had forgotten about the two-hour time difference. Wait . . . what? Has Chicago moved west? Or perhaps Maine has floated one time zone out into the Atlantic. But the last time I checked, there was just one hour’s difference between Eastern time and Central time. That show’s editor appears to have been asleep at the switch.

Possibly my favorite goofs were the ones that took place at a fictitious writer’s convention in Moscow (yes, that Moscow) at which the eminent J.B. Fletcher was an honored speaker. To begin with, while she was out strolling — in mid-winter, no less — in front of the Bolshoi Theatre, she told her Russian host that she’d like to walk over to Novodevichy Monastery, which according to her map was nearby. Fact check: the actual distance from the Bolshoi to Novodevichy is 6.4 km., or just about four miles, and is an estimated walk of around an hour and 20 minutes, not accounting for snow and ice. Of course, if you’re a schoolteacher from Maine, and you’re accustomed to the sub-zero, snowy winters, maybe that’s considered “nearby.” But not in my book, J.B.

In that same episode, a murder inevitably occurs while J.B. Fletcher is in the vicinity (would you invite her to your house?), and she becomes embroiled in the investigation, single-handedly taking on the KGB and solving the crime. Here the writers have her entering the U.S. Embassy directly across the street from the Kremlin — not even close in real life — and later wandering unaccompanied through the Russian Foreign Ministry. No comment on that one! I guess the writers just figured most Americans wouldn’t know the difference, and went bat-shit with literary license.

Those geographical goofs are rampant in TV shows and movies, and can be quite funny if they take place in a city you’re familiar with. I’ve lived most of my life in the Washington, D.C. area, and I just love it when a car being driven over the Memorial Bridge from Virginia into D.C. immediately finds itself sailing past the U.S. Capitol Building — in real life, wa-a-ay across town from one another — or passes the same landmark twice on the same trip.

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In one oldie-but-goodie movie, “No Way Out,” starring Kevin Costner, there is a lengthy chase scene, on foot, in which Costner is being pursued by the bad guys through various parts of Washington. He runs along the C&O Canal towpath, into a side entrance to the Georgetown Park shopping mall . . . and makes his escape by hopping onto a waiting Metro train. Fact check: There is not, nor has there ever been, a Metro station anywhere in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. When the Metro lines were being designed and built, the homeowners in the elite, historic enclave refused to allow a station to blemish their sanctum sanctorum. And thus it has remained.

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So maybe I am a little OCD; I don’t deny it. But these things — along with misprints, misspellings, and grammatical errors in books and magazines — can drive me bonkers. So I try to make a game of it and catch as many flubs as I can. Maybe one day I’ll apply for a job as editor for one of the studios or publications that turn out these mistakes — they really do need my help.

And now I’ve got you thinking about it too, don’t I?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/16/23