Every week, just before the next-to-last commercial break, you can expect to overhear a conversation that goes something like this...  Ellery Queen (Jim Hutton): "Of course! That's how it was done! Dad! Come here, please." Inspector Queen (David Wayne): "What is it, Ellery?" EQ: "I know who killed Archie Manning." IQ: "Just like that." EQ: "Just like that." Then Ellery will face the camera and ask viewers to guess the identity of the murderer-of-the-week. After the commercial, all the suspects will gather in a well-upholstered room somewhere, and Ellery will reveal which of them did the foul deed. In other words, what we have here is an old-fashioned — deliberately old-fashioned — murder mystery. Set in 1947 New York City, it is based on the venerable Ellery Queen stories, resurrected by executive producers Richard Levinson and William Link (Columbo, et al.). The suspects in a typical case are: the hard-boiled writer, the attractive secretary, the embittered research assistant, the urbane publisher, the Hungarian sexpot and — no kidding — the Filipino houseboy. Whodunit? Debut:   NBC, Sept. 11.

Pictured: (l.-r.)  Jim Hutton, David Wayne.