Hello again, and welcome back to another installment of The Other Andy. Today’s film might just show Andy as the farthest from the kind hearted Mayberry sheriff as I have seen, and the scary thing is that the character he plays was a real guy. Culled from the 1979 book Murder in Coweta County by Margaret Anne Barnes, which was based on real events, the TV movie shines a light on the very real problems of racism, corruption, and the good ol’ boy system that existed in Georgia in the late 1940s. This is a movie about the South in a period after slavery had been done away with and replaced with the servitude culture of sharecropping. It’s sad to say, but as a Southerner, the problems exhibited in the film have yet to gasp their last breath. While the sharecroppers are long gone, the culture of racial division and cronyism still persists to this day. Examining these problems in a warts and all kind of way, paired with great performances from Andy Griffith and his co-star, country legend, Johnny Cash, combine to make Murder in Coweta County not only a fascinating film, but also the best Made for TV movie I have ever seen.
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