Diagnosis Murder

Diagnosis Murder: Classic TV Before Its Time … Comfort Entertainment With A Twist

Linda Alexander

Foreword by Lee Goldberg

512 pages

6x9 size

ISBN 9798887719948 paperback $38

ISBN 9798887719955 hardback $49

Diagnosis Murder was an American mystery medical crime drama television series, with considerable humor and fun thrown in, starring Dick Van Dyke. If you include the pilot and the television movies which preceded the weekly series, it was seen on the tube from 1991 - 2002. That is called longevity. Yet its beginnings were rocky. The certainty of it becoming a household name, a definite success, were never written in stone. In fact, if you were an industry insider, you would have never have bet on this show. Never. Not at the beginning. Not as it got up-and-running. Not during its middle years when it seemed to really be going full steam. Never.

Why is that? Television is a hard nut to crack, and once it's cracked, it can become very, very messy to contain. Success is never a given, even when a property seems to be riding high. Diagnosis Murder had all the right elements as far as the viewing public was concerned. It seemed to click off all the needed criteria for a show which had a star as universally well-known and popular as the effervescent Dick Van Dyke at the helm. He certainly carried a huge fan base made up not only of those of his own age, but also of the younger generation. The show should have been a shoe-in.

In some ways, it was. In many, many other ways, it definitely was not. This book, Diagnosis Murder: Classic TV Before Its Time … Comfort Entertainment With A Twist, gives an in-depth look at all it took over the years, and it took quite a lot, to give this show an iconic place in the annals of television history. Diagnosis Murder bridged that gap between old-fashioned TV of the early days, and fast-paced, sexy, pseudo-violent shows of the evolving future. Despite the changing landscape of what the viewing public might want, or what some of the viewing public might want, and how that warred with what other viewers still cared to see from days past, those folks who put together Diagnosis Murder over the years managed to cautiously walk that crazy tightrope. Always, always at the forefront was the steadying personality of the man who drove the heart and soul of the show—Dick Van Dyke.

Come along on this rocky, entertaining journey which tells of the birth and life of one of television's most comfortable and feel-good shows of recent history, Diagnosis Murder. Fans from around the world still religiously watch it every day on some sort of media. Maybe you do, too!

"I think Linda has done a remarkable job writing a fair and balanced account of the making of Diagnosis Murder, the good and the bad ... and everything in between. She takes a holistic view, touching on all of the various aspects of the show—the birth pains, the production problems, the interpersonal issues, the business realities, the creative challenges, the conflicting visions and goals, and the misunderstandings...." 

- Lee Goldberg, Executive Producer, Diagnosis Murder