Thursday, September 29, 2022

Thursday Movie Picks #429: Cold Cases (TV edition)

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. It's the last Thursday of the month, which means another TV-themed edition. This time, that theme is "Cold Cases", which was a bit difficult for me since cold cases are supposed to be mysteries. I thought about using Unsolved Mysteries, except that I used it back in 2018. Eventually, I came up with one show that clearly fits the theme, one that kinda-sort fits, and a third that's about old cases but not exactly mysteries:

Cold Case (2003-2010). OK, this is fairly obvious, a series about a Philadelphia police investigator who gets assigned the cold cases. I actually never watched the show, since this was after I stopped watching most episodic TV.

History's Mysteries (1998-2011). History Channel series that looked at various past events and phenomena that could be either mysterious or unknown, not all of them are the traditional sort of "cold case" mystery. Technically, Jack the Ripper would be a cold case if it weren't for the fact that every suspect has been dead for decades.

Hardcastle and McCormick (1983-1986). Hardcastle (Brian Keith), a retired judge, has files on 200 cases that appeared before him where the defendant got off on a "technicality". Now that he's retired, he no longer has to be impartial, so he can go after those defendants, which he does with racecar driver McCormick (Daniel Hugh Kelly), who had appeared in court before Judge Hardcastle. So old cases, but technically not cold cases. I wondered when the show came out what they were going to do if the show got to 200 episodes, but it only got to a third of that number before getting cancelled.

3 comments:

Brittani Burnham said...

I almost went with Cold Case myself. That's one I tend to listen to while I work.

Birgit said...

I thought Cold Case would be everywhere this week but I never watched it. I ended up watching the whole thing of the Mysteries one on jack The Ripper. I love these types of shows but, for some reason, I don't recall seeing this show. Personally, when I watched and read all about The Ripper, I find it too easy to choose a Polish/Jewish man because the English (an us today) just dripped of prejudice. I still think it was Druitt. A dr. from a prominent family who had his office near Whitechapel. They found an underground tunnel leading from his place into Whitechapel close to one of the killings and he came from a family where, let's just say, he had issues with his domineering mom. He committed suicide shortly after the last murder. He just comes from a "good" family so, to this day, he seems to be dismissed as a suspect.
I used to love Hardcastle & McCormack and watched it all the time. I love Brian Keith...totally forgot about the premise of that show.

ThePunkTheory said...

History's Mysteries sounds like it would be 100% down my alley!