Ten years ago, Chikako Kaku was the most popular actress in trendy dramas. Though not classically beautiful, she was good at conveying the type of well-bred charm that's considered a paramount virtue in Japanese wives, while at the same time possessing a formidable capacity to exhibit nail-biting fear. She was a perfect match for the kind of domestic psycho-dramas that were the fashion on Japanese TV in the early and mid-'90s.
As soon as the kids started taking over trendy dramas, Kaku was banished to TV commercial land. Tuesday night, however, she makes her inevitable move into the realm of one-night mystery shows, the final resting place for over-30 TV actresses.
In "The Kyoto-Kanazawa Nursery Song Murder" (Nippon TV, 9 p.m.), Kaku plays Rinko, a reporter working out of a television station in Kyoto. She learns that a respected kimono-dyeing house has been the victim of a large-scale burglary. Since she once did an in-depth report on the house, she looks into the case.