john and matt before sudden death came along

I have to give credit to the company once known as Comcast.

Ever since I joined Xfinity Rewards, I've been treated to books ("Memphis" by Tara Stringfellow, as well as "The Bad Guys", a movie novelization, by Kate Howard) and movies to own ("A League Of Their Own", "Jurassic Park", and "Top Gun", all watchable forever, for free!) and downloadable activity pages for children (from "Sing 2" and "The Bad Guys"), and even 30-day periods of watching pay channels for free!

Last month, it was the Lifetime Movie Channel.

This latest gift for May is for UP Faith & Family... so I gladly took it!

There are several Hallmark mystery series whose movies are on that one, so they'll be good entertainment for my month of birthday64.

(smile!)

One of those series, from 2005, is with a character named McBride, who once was a criminal attorney until he tired of defending unsavory characters.

Now, he's practicing law again, but this time he's trying to make sure truly innocent people get a fair shake and don't go to prison for life.

Today, I've watched the fifth in the series.

Well, it may well have been the fourth... I can't say for certain.

See, the synopses for three of the movies made it clear that those were the first, the second, and the third.

The other two didn't specify.

The order in which I viewed them (over several days) is as follows:

"Murder Past Midnight" - a younger wife is accused of trying to kill her older husband;

"The Chameleon Murder" - a man is accused of killing his wife, who is a trigamist;

"It's Murder, Madam" - a Nebraska would-be actress is accused of killing a Madame;

"Anybody Here Murder Marty?" - a naive guy is accused of killing a toxic talk show host;

"Tune In For Murder" - morning show host is accused of killing his shock-jock partner.

All five were very interesting and filled with twists and false leads, so I very much enjoyed them, especially as John Larroquette was in the lead role.

Hey, even at 67 years old, he's a rather handsome gent!

(smile!)

So, as I'm watching the first one, the younger man playing 'Phil', the failed public defender, seems familiar, but I couldn't place him.

In the next movie, 'Phil' has taken a job as McBride's assistant, as 'Phil' figures he could learn a lot about law by following in the man's footsteps.

It wasn't until the third movie that I realized who 'Phil' was.

Right place, right time!

He's the missing link between the "Night Court" alum and the short movie I so love (and that I gave to my first niece, who I so love, along with "God Help The Girl")!

He's Matt Lutz, the male singing researcher in "Sudden Death!"!!!

She had immediately seen Larroquette's name on "Sudden Death!" and wondered how the man got involved with a short musical.

I'd told her that one of the other actors, Matt Lutz, knew him and knew his comedic bent, and that's how he became to mysterious Coast Guard fellow.

And now I know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say!

After working together in 2005 on these five 90-minute Hallmark movies, they were probably pretty close, right?

I'm sure Larroquette jumped at the chance to work in a comedic short!

Good to know, good to know!

(smile!)