‘Murder She Wrote’ and ‘Maine Cabin Masters’ Will Give You That Vacationland Vibe (Even If You Can’t Make It All The Way Up To Maine This Summer)

For some, August is a month to relax. Taking a cue from the French, who take the whole entire month off, some Americans are lucky enough to carve out a week or two towards the end of the summer for rest and relaxation. One popular destination is Maine, as indicated by the slogan “Vacationland” on their license plates. 

For others, August is another month on the grind, or time to get back into a classroom with a substandard HVAC system. Fortunately, thanks to the magic of streaming, it is possible to visit Maine through your television or laptop, regardless of your physical location.

In very different ways, the two most Maine shows to stream are Murder, She Wrote and Maine Cabin Masters. One of these is a network classic; the other an underrated player in the home improvement universe. Both offer a simple pleasure of a familiar and predictable storyline, albeit with different outcomes. 

Maine Cabin Masters, now in its eighth season (and streaming on Max and the Magnolia Network), follows the adventures of the Kennebec Cabin Company, a close-knit team of contractors who fix up old cabins in Maine. Almost every episode begins with the crew arriving via some unusual means of locomotion, horseback, JetSki, where they meet the family that owns that episode’s cabin. The team consults with the homeowner about their goals, agree on a budget and a timeline, and accepts the keys to the cabin from the homeowner. As a rule, the goals of the homeowner are more room for kids and grandkids, and upgrades to kitchen and baths. Frequently, these upgrades are needed to make spouses, kids, and grandkids want to come to the camp. 

Chase is the leader of the Maine Cabin Masters, his sister, Ashley handles décor, and her husband, Ryan, presides over the nuts and bolts of the renovations, assisted by Dixie and the generously bearded Jedi. There is bickering, but the dynamic is very wholesome. There are unexpected challenges that appear like clockwork – rotten sills that need to be addressed before the cabin falls into the lake, entire crawlspaces full of mouse poop, and so forth. But the Maine Cabin Masters persevere, and each episode ends with the crew returning the keys to a delighted family. 

Tolstoy said that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The Maine Cabin Masters family and their client families seem to be happy – if you want macabre twists, this is not the show for you. If your idea of relaxing is sitting on the couch with a cold glass of Moxie and pretending you’re about to jump in a lake, it’s hard to beat. 

If your idea of relaxing is sitting on the couch with a cold glass of Moxie and pretending you’re about to jump in a lake, Maine Cabin Masters is hard to beat. 

Murder, She Wrote was on network TV for twelve seasons, and probably needs less of an introduction. I am guessing a fair number of Decider readers had not previously heard of Maine Cabin Masters; I am guessing even more Decider readers have made up their minds about Murder, She Wrote. You may have been allowed to watch it with your grandparents as you snuck the occasional Werther’s Original. A lot has happened since then. You probably have more on your mind these days. I urge you to ask your doctor if bingewatching a couple hundred episodes of cozy murder mysteries featuring a widowed mystery writer from Maine played by an actor you might remember from her turns in Gaslight or Sweeney Todd is right for you. 

To recap, Angela Lansbury plays Jessica Fletcher, a citizen of Cabot Cove, Maine, who turns to mystery writing after her husband dies. As it develops, in each and every episode of the program, Jessica encounters a real-life mystery which she solves, in spite of the interference of incompetent law enforcement officers. Even in 2023, shows focusing on the exploits of a grown-ass woman are hard to find; it’s even harder to find network TV shows that suggests that cops are not good at their jobs. 

The plots are somewhat predictable, and Jessica often moves through a world that feels like the Aldi version of an ’80s nighttime soap. Big hair? Check. Shoulderpads? Check. Repp ties? Check. For me, the real delight comes in seeing who the guest stars will be. Over its 264 episode run, Murder, She Wrote featured more than 1,100 guest stars, according to IMDB. Jessica is the only character who appears in every episode, and aside from a few regulars – notably Tom Bosley as Cabot Cove Sheriff, with a wildly chaotic approach to a Maine accent – you get an all-new cast every week as Jessica visits more old friends and encounters another murder. 

Famously, Angela Lansbury used this structure to get work for older actors who needed a credit to keep their union benefits current, and the result is a feast for “It’s THAT guy” people. If you can find another show that has room for Ernest Borgnine, LeVar Burton, Karen Black, Linda Blair, and Dick Butkus, go watch that show instead. 

I divide MSW episodes into Home and Away – the home episodes feature murders in Cabot Cove, while the away episodes feature Jessica traveling to visit a nephew or former student, where she encounters a murder. The road episodes can be a bit more fun, as the plunge Jessica into a TV version of the subculture of, say, the Calgary Stampede, but if you want Maximum Maine, stick with the home episodes – it’s pretty easy to tell which is which from the episode descriptions. 

Both Maine Cabin Masters and Murder She Wrote, lean pretty hard into regional stereotypes – the State of Maine underwrote the costs of some parts of some of the MCM episodes, and some of the Cabot Cove characters could have come out of some alternate universe Mayberry-by-the-Sea. At the same time, we see this kind of caricature over and over for other parts of the country, and it’s nice to see this in Maine, instead of “the South” for instance. 

In a perfect world, we’d be dipping our toes in the Atlantic, eating lobster rolls, and crushing a Lunch. Until then, Chase and his crew and Jessica her own bad self have a lot to offer for chill vacation vibes.

 Jonathan Beecher Field was born in New England, educated in the Midwest, and teaches in the South. He Tweets professionally as @ThatJBF, and unprofessionally as @TheGurglingCod. He also sometimes writes for Avidly and Common-Place.