I could not disagree more about the poor ratings the reviewers give to this episode of Mystery Woman.

The primary cast is excellent, and work well together--Kellie Martin as Samantha Kinsey, Clarence Williams III as Philby, and Nina Siemaszko as Assistant District Attorney Cassie Hillman, Samantha's best friend.

There are certainly flaws in the show. For instance, Samantha has a somewhat cavalier attitude toward breaking and entering residences and offices. In fairness, this cavalier attitude has been a staple of the private eye genre from the very beginning.

These episodes of Mystery Woman were produced in the early 2000's. It is nice to see the Hallmark Channel now being a bit more reticent about having their heroes shrug and so blatantly break the law.

I also had slight complaints regarding Samantha's two friends in this episode. Philby keeps saying that he feels charged with protecting Samantha, but allows her to keep going out by herself and not either riding with her or driving behind her on her errands.

And Samantha's assistant district attorney friend, Cassie is more of a "Doubting Thomasina"-- or even an obstruction to Samantha. In the previous episode, Mystery Weekend, Cassie was an almost eager assistant to Samantha, even as she sometimes was putting her career in jeopardy.

A big part of the charm of these two characters--and the performers themselves--is the impish glee they seem to have working together. That was mostly missing in this episode.

The mystery itself was a complicated one. While it was pretty clear, early on, that there was suspicious financial dealings going on--it was not clear who was responsible for Barbara's murder, or her brother's likely murder. I liked that the show took its time revealing the pieces of the mystery.

I also enjoyed watching Samantha blow up sections of photographs in order to examine and reveal detail and get closer to the truth.

My biggest disappointment is that there is only one more episode of Mystery Woman available on DVD--when there were actually 7 more episodes produced in the period between 2005-2007.

In summary, I like all of the main characters of Mystery woman, and am sorry that Hallmark stopped producing the series in the mid 2000s.

This entry into Hallmark's rotating mystery series is fairly dull. One wonders where that extremely high rating - and no comments - comes from.

Mystery Woman lacks the colorfulness of the McBride series. Kellie Martin is darling, but this show dragged. It's always great to see old-timer Clarence Williams III. However, he is so laid back in this, he makes the late Perry Como seem manic.

The lack of energy is probably due to the poor direction. One more establishing shot of the "Mystery Woman Bookstore" and I was ready to do an Elvis and shoot the television. The whole thing was done in a very pedantic style.

I have been reading cozy mysteries so I figured that since there is so much horrible TV now, I'd switch to something harmless and boring to just have on to pass the time. My biggest disappointment? Clarence Williams III, of Mod Squad fame. This is a 2005 film. The poor man is walking through this part and barely moving around. And this was 15 years ago! Oh well. Still harmless and mindless entertainment.