November 5, 2007

Court TV Books More Murder Cases

Murder by the Book returns with a fresh format that puts acclaimed crime writers such as Sandra Brown in the back seat, writes Seth Arenstein.

Tube Stake | Programming Reviews by Seth Arenstein

• Murder By The Book, Season II premiere, 10pm ET/PT tonight, Court TV.

It’s not certain that the new format of Murder By The Book is evidence of Turner Broadcasting System putting its stamp on Court TV. If so, viewers should welcome Atlanta’s influence.

In its premiere season, Murder By The Book was tied to authors who’d written books about the murders being discussed on that night’s show. They narrated the episodes and were an overwhelming presence. This worked sporadically. When the author had a good voice and feel for voiceover work, the series was one of Court TV’s better offerings. Unfortunately, the personalities (and idiosyncrasies) of the authors sometimes suffocated the facts of the case, which worked against the series.

In this new season Turner may have gone too far in the opposite direction. In tonight’s episode author Sandra Brown, above, is treated almost like an interloper. She’s not the narrator, and it’s not made clear that she’s even written a book about tonight’s case, a thrilling murder of a Texas housewife, who was hacked to death by 41 blows of an axe.

While Ms. Brown, a Texan, clearly followed the case, she’s called on only to make a comment here, and an observation there. Her contributions are interesting—she notes that the murder victim is a woman named Betty Gore; the murder was done on Friday the 13th; that the Gores lived on the 13th house on their side of the street; and that the 41 axe hacks made her (and plenty of others) recall Lizzie Borden.

Yet the most important comments come either from the voiceover or investigating police officers. It is they who note that Ms. Gore’s husband had an affair with their neighbor, a church-going school teacher named Candace (aka Candy) Montgomery, a petite 30-year-old.

Montgomery, the narrator says, admitted to being in the Gore home on the day of the murder, June 13, 1980. A police investigator notes that Montgomery’s fingerprints were found on the Gore refrigerator; Ms. Gore’s blood was found in Ms. Montgomery’s car. She was arrested and charged with the gruesome murder. The story gets even more interesting after that.   

If murder cases like this titillate, Murder By The Book, and Court TV’s website, do little to cool that enthusiasm. Tonight’s tale is so compelling, and is told so well, if a bit slowly, that the lack of Sandra Brown’s involvement in the episode isn’t important. Still, the format—reenactments and interviews with primary players in the case—lacks personality, making the series seem like many other Court TV shows. It’s a somewhat dispassionate recalling of a gruesome case.

It’ll be up to Court TV’s viewers to decide whether or not this is a problem. It didn’t matter last year. The first year of the series, whose storytelling wasn’t nearly as good, boosted Court TV's primetime delivery of adults 18-49 (up 31%) and total viewers (+42%) vs. its time period in the prior year.

For an extended sneak peek, click here.