Angela Lansbury is the author of more than sixty best-selling mysteries and a lurid past in Paris that includes affairs with Matisse, Picasso, and Doctor Laurence Olivier. Now she's confined to a wheelchair, has a wonky memory, drinks heavily, and is addicted to the Late Late Show. That doesn't stop her grandchildren and their souses from showing up to wish her a happy birthday and discuss how they're going to have her declared insane, ship her to a nursing home, and split up the estate now. But thanks to her ex-con manservant, Tariq Yunis, she has an electronic set-up to deal with the fires she keeps setting from dropping matches in the wastebasket, and for killing people in the garage. So when grand-daughter-in-law Hildegarde Neill is killed that way -- which is also how the murder in her next book is set to go -- there are a lot of suspects.
It's from a stage show co-written by Jerome Chodorov and Norman Panama, and starring Claudette Colbert and Jean-Pierre Aumont. As directed by Alvin Rakoff for television, it's opened up nicely, mainly by editing and moving cameras. I didn't care for how the murder is solved, but it's certainly a pleasure to see Olivier and Miss Lansbury act together.
