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So much for a glossy soap opera about formidable gay women leading fabulous lives. Launched in 2004, The L Word was Sex and the City without the men. Now, it has become Murder, She Wrote, and fans are not happy.

For its sixth and final season (tonight at 10 on Showcase), the series has changed into a serialized murder mystery. “People are bracing themselves for it to not be satisfying,” observed Dorothy Snarker, the lesbian media columnist for the website AfterEllen.com.

Season 6, which begins with the demise of the bitchy character Jenny Schecter face down in a pool, à la Sunset Boulevard, was eviscerated in the reviews of Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times, which cited the show's “lunacy-revealing plot points.”

The abrupt departure of Jenny (Mia Kirshner of 24 and Exotica) shifts The L Word into unfamiliar territory as the final seven episodes track the investigation into her murder.

L Word co-creator and executive producer Ilene Chaiken was understandably defensive about the format change at the TV Critics Tour earlier this month. “The tone of the show hasn't changed,” Chaiken insisted. “It's still a drama about life and love and everything in between. The so-called murder-mystery storyline will finally put a few things into place.”

Filmed in Vancouver, passing for West Hollywood, the series is probably best known for restarting the career of former Flashdance star Jennifer Beals, who was cast as the feisty Bette Porter, unofficial head lesbian and den mother to a group of ladies who prefer ladies. Even if Flashdance was released in 1983, Beals has found a parallel in her two most famous roles.

“Both women know what it's like to be ‘the other' outside of society in some ways,” said Beals, 45. “My character in Flashdance didn't have any family or anybody else to rely on, except for this one woman who passes away during the film. Bette comes from the same place, but she's a stronger woman, a survivor.”

Girlfriends came and went on The L Word, but the core group remained intact. Over five seasons, the show has also made use of seventies film star Pam Grier – her own career already reheated by Quentin Tarantino's 1997 film Jackie Brown – who was cast as the strong-willed bisexual Kit. “It's been a very rare acting experience these past few years,” said Grier, 59. “We've never felt like we were making gay stories or lesbian stories on this show. To me, they're all people stories.”

A middling cable hit, The L Word was a gentle drama that found its own following. For all the chiding from critics for lightweight plot lines and occasional stereotyping, the series appears to accurately depict strong, independent lesbian women of varying ages.

Now, all the main characters are under suspicion and, likely most galling to fans, there's no mystery as to which one is taking the fall. Chaiken has already written and directed the pilot for another Showtime all-women drama that is set in a prison. It stars Alice (Leisha Hailey), and Showtime president Robert Greenblatt has been talking up the project for months. So much for who killed Jenny.

As one L Word door closes, the cable gate opens another for a lurid women-behind-bars drama, the milieu of fifties drive-in movies. The lesbian film genre is forever doomed to the past.

The L World begins tonight at 10 ET on Showcase.