Changes are afoot for Masterpiece Theater, and MYSTERY! has now been wholly absorbed into it as part of the yearly run. On the interesting side, Gillian Anderson, looking prettier for her age, is the new Dianna Rigg (or Vincent Price, if you go that far back). Appropriate enough! Thing is, they’re talking as if “Masterpiece Mystery!” will now cease to have its own theme music, and will be ditching the Gorey intros for “amazing graphics”. This is all a bit sad, as the Gorey intros have made an enormous and tangible difference in my life. It’s one of those weird little personal nexus things. They helped to define much of my adult artistic sensibility, and they have led somewhat directly to some of my most important personal relationships.

Then again, the “new” Gorey intro has been in place for around twenty years now. Not that it’s in any way dated, I can see how they might be tiiring of it. Since he’s dead, they can’t just commission a new one.

In general, PBS has been rather neglecting MYSTERY! for a while. Whereas it used to be a regular companion series to Masterpiece Theatre, eventually it got folded into the run of its parent series and they ditched the host altogether. I suppose ITV hasn’t been producing cdetective series the way they were in the ’80s and ’90s. Though Poirot is still ongoing, I think Suchet only does a movie every couple of years now. Jeremy Brett is dead. Morse and Cracker are past. Does WGBH even invest in ITV production anymore? Can they afford to, the way PBS is run now?