Tim Benzie is an award-winning playwright, performer and lifelong Murder, She Wrote fan whose cult hit Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote turns a classic episode into an interactive night of clues, games, guest-star trivia and collective sleuthing. The show comes to Theatre by the Lake in Keswick on 18 October with “Paint Me a Murder”. Ahead of the performance, Sean Sable caught up with Benzie to talk Jessica Fletcher, the current cosy-crime boom, loving something enough to laugh at it, and whether the world’s most famous fictional mystery writer could get away with the perfect murder.

For anyone coming to Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote without knowing what to expect, what exactly happens during the show?

If you love Murder, She Wrote, this is absolutely the show for you. I created Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote as an interactive screening of an episode of Murder, She Wrote. Over two hours, we watch an episode in segments, stopping to play games and do activities. We solve the crime collectively using the Suspiciometer, and there’s also a Fameometer where we rank the guest stars according to their level of fame. We even have a commercial break that features snippets of commercials from the year the episode aired – and I always try to pick the most iconic ones.

You’ve now developed Solve-Alongs for dozens of episodes. What makes a Murder, She Wrote episode work particularly well in this format, and what makes others less suitable?

The episodes that work best for the show have a decent mystery that you can solve. The writer S. S. Van Dine had this rule in 1928: all clues must be plainly stated. Agatha Christie always followed it, as did Murder, She Wrote. You get all the information you need to solve the crime. And the best episodes for the show have got to have good guest stars. The earlier seasons are best for that: Jane Powell, Vera Miles, Van Johnson. Good guest stars and a good story. It doesn’t have to be Cabot Cove, but it does have to have a good mystery.

Of course, there are some great episodes of Murder, She Wrote that don’t work well for my format. I’ve done 48 different episodes and I’ve learned that although Murder, She Wrote seems to have this very set cosy-crime format, they were making 22-ish episodes each season, so they played around with the form quite a bit.

For example, “Crossed Up”. The episode is beloved by fans. Jessica is holed up in her house with a bad back, it’s stormy outside and she overhears a murder plot on a crossed telephone line. It’s kind of an homage to Sorry, Wrong Number. I would love to do it, but there are only really one or two suspects because the story focuses on the act of solving a murder from her bed. For the show to work, I want more like six suspects.

Another popular example is “Appointment in Athens” featuring the MI6 agent Michael Hagarty. There’s a murder and Jessica solves it, but the genre is really spy thriller. Those don’t work as well.

And sometimes the concept is perfect, but the story is too convoluted. The best example of that is “When the Fat Lady Sings”. I thought: it’s got opera in it, it’s camp and fun, but there are two murders and it is the most fiendishly complicated episode of Murder, She Wrote ever. It still boggles me what the hell happened in that episode and the audience were like, “What happened? This is too confusing.”

Audience participation can wobble some theatregoers. How do you keep the show interactive without audience pressure?

We have an important rule: although it’s very interactive, you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to. Everyone gets a party bag with a Jessica Fletcher paddle. You wave it when you see something suspicious and I move the suspects’ faces on the Suspiciometer. But if you sit there and decide not to move through the whole show, you’re not going to get picked on or bothered or made to take part.

That matters because people always say to me, “I used to watch this with my nan,” or, “I used to watch this with my mum.” I’ve heard that hundreds of times and I love it and I want to stay true to it. I want the show to be comforting as well, like sitting down and watching TV where you can just relax. It’s the mac and cheese of television viewing. It shouldn’t feel stressful.

To see my full interview, please visit Northern Arts Review

See you in the shadows my loves,

Sean x