Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote - Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026

​For the fourth year in a row, we are back at the Fringe for Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote. We have given it a glowing four stars for each of the past three years, but after four consecutive visits, bringing more and more friends each time who then decide to make their own annual pilgrimage, it feels increasingly obvious that we have been underselling it. It is time to bump that rating up. Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote is a five-star Fringe experience, and the fact we keep coming back in numbers is probably the best review we could give it.

This year’s episode is “Menace, Anyone?”, which sees Jessica Fletcher heading to a tennis tournament where a former student, played by a very young Linda Hamilton, finds herself the prime suspect after her boyfriend is blown up in her car. Alongside Hamilton is an equally young Bryan Cranston as a tennis professional, giving us another chance to play the increasingly unreliable game of trying to work out which  guest star is inevitably going to be the murderer.

Tim Benzie is once again the perfect host. His encyclopaedic knowledge of Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons and more than 250 episodes, is impressive enough, but it is his understanding of the show's cultural context that makes the experience more than simply watching an episode on ITV3 in the middle of the afternoon. Benzie digs into the casting, the fashions and the conventions of the era, helping us appreciate just how gloriously strange this television world can be.

And then there are the costumes. Benzie appears in a succession of Jessica Fletcher outfits and wigs, including the iconic grey tracksuit from the opening credits. We were particularly gutted to miss this year's “Jessic Jogs”, where Benzie and a group of fans don their grey sweatpants and recreate those famous opening credits by jogging around the host venue and waving at passers-by. There are few things that better capture the wonderfully committed silliness of this show.

The genius of Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote is that it understands that simply screening Murder, She Wrote is not enough. The audience becomes part of the investigation. We raise Jessica Fletcher paddles whenever we spot something suspicious, rank our suspects on the Suspiciometer and test the theory that the most famous guest star is probably the murderer. The writing is so wonderfully heavy-handed that there is plenty of wrist action as we collectively try to work out where the clues are taking us.

It is this balance between watching and participating that keeps the show so enjoyable. The interactive elements never overwhelm the episode itself, instead giving us a reason to pay closer attention to a television series we might otherwise happily have on in the background. Benzie gives us the tools to become amateur Jessica Fletchers, while the episode provides an endless supply of suspicious glances, questionable motives and extremely obvious clues.

With a seemingly endless pantheon of Murder, She Wrote episodes to choose from, Benzie can keep changing the mystery each year while retaining everything that makes the format work. Four years in, it still feels like an event rather than a repeat viewing and despite having just finished this year's investigation, I am already looking forward to booking my fifth.

Lee Hutchison

5/5

Runs until August 29th at The Space UK