Here we are, it's the final episode, the cream rises to the top, the A list.
What we have left is solid TV gold and yet, someone sod still had to rank them.
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15. A Stitch in Crime
"You're too modest, Doc. No, most people, they'd be in such a state of shock, they'd never be able to split their concentration like that, the way you did, setting your clock there."
Leonard Nimoy takes all of his work from Spock, and twists it just slightly, so that his murderous Doctor is a genuinely terrifying prospect. His attempted murder via sutures is enough to make you phobic of heart operations, and his murder of the nurse is cold blooded. To say nothing of the way he disposes of a patsy who didn’t even know about him. Columbo suspects Spock early on, but he quietly builds a medical case around him.
Columbo loses his cool with this guy and you can see why. Often in fan top ten polls, it's really difficult to rank different shades of A+ but this one, I just slightly prefer other tales.
14. Try and Catch Me
This one lives a lot on one scene.
The one where Abigail Mitchell invites Columbo to her talk on crime novels and gets him to give a speech instead. Here, we see a great insight into Columbo’s own mind.
“I like my job, I like it a lot and I'm not depressed by it and I don't think the world is full of criminals and full of murderers, because it isn't, it's full of nice people, just like you and if it wasn’t for my job, I wouldn't be getting to meet you like this. And I'll tell you something else, even with some of the murderers that I meet, I even like them too sometimes, like them & even respect them, not for what they did, certainly not for that, but for that part of them which is intelligent, or funny, or just nice, because there's niceness in everyone, a little bit anyhow, you can take a cop's word for it.”
And its especially brilliant because he’s saying this in front of an audience which includes the person he already has twigged must be the murderer in the case.
And she takes it as confirmation that Columbo is a kind man who will let her be when he understands the case.
To this point, she makes one of the daftest decisions any Columbo killer ever makes, handing Columbo, in person, crucial evidence which can link only her to the death, no matter her attempt to cover it as an old lady's flimsy memory. This is at the end of another key (ahem) scene, where she tried to dispose of the evidence only for Columbo to catch her in the act.
“I’m fond of you, I think you’re a kind man.”
“Don’t count on it.”
Amazing.
Peter Falk is sensationally good in this one. He is clearly enchanted working alongside Ruth Gordon, who was eighty at the time, and was an Oscar and Emmy winner. She also wrote the Spencer Tracy/Kate Hepburn classic comedy Adam’s Rib. She manages to give Abigail, an Agatha Christie who commits her own murder, an equal sense of strength and fragility.
She is distraught after her niece’s death in a boating “accident”, to the point where her removal of her chief suspect gets marks for ingenuity but marks off for providing other suspects if it was proven murder.
I love Columbo’s entrance into the play, counting down from within the safe to double check you couldn’t hear anyone within. I’m less enthralled with murdered in-law Galvin who, while he seems to genuinely care for Abigail, walks into his own death trap without even a bit of incredulity at the odd things he is asked to do.
The script also makes clear that Columbo believes Galvin murdered the niece. We’re spoon fed the belief that Abigail is sympathetic as a result. Yet there’s nothing in Charles Franks performance to suggest he was a stone cold killer, and if a lack of photos is a proof of a loveless marriage then me and Mandy are in trouble!
I think the show needed more faith in the Abigail Mitchell/Columbo chemistry. Columbo and viewers gain sympathy for her even if she was so stricken by grief she’d made the wrong conclusion on her niece’s death. Instead, it feels like hammering the point.
In the 1930s, Neville Chamberlain complained that Hitler had mistaken Britain’s “understanding for weakness”. In her hope that Columbo will let off this little old lady in mourning, she makes the same mistake. Confusing Columbo’s understanding for forgiveness. Whereas we have two strong characters compelled to do what is in their nature, no matter how much they like and respect the other .
It’s that which lies at the heart of this story and makes it so worthwhile rewatching.
Is deathbed testimony that strong as circumstantial evidence, though?
13. Ashes to Ashes
Patrick McGoohan makes his final on screen appearance, this time as an evil undertaker.
When Golden Girl Rue McClenahan threatens to expose his dodgy past as a magpie of jewellery collected from dead stars, Eric Prince responds by bashing her head in.
And cremating her.
Now, the Gotcha this would later produce (cremating the wrong person at the wrong time) has lost its original WOW value on repeat viewing, as I’ve been informed by folk who work in actual crematoriums that Columbo’s vital evidence is actually something that could easily happen all the time.
That said, the interactions between Falk and McGoohan are glorious. I love the scene where Prince all but admits he must be the murderer but that Columbo cannot prove it, it goes well over the line of hubris, but it works in context.
There’s also a number of interesting female roles. Rue’s TV gossip queen (a Liz Smith type) is wonderful for the short time we see her. Watch her kiss the corpse of the war veteran, so that the cameras will focus on her! Sally Kellerman of MASH fame as the widow who couldn’t wait to jump into bed with Patrick McGoohan leaves us guessing just how much of the alibi she’s created she knows about.
Best of all is Ferris Beuller’s Day Off’s Edie McClurg, as a woman whose husband has died prematurely of a heart attack and who couldn’t be more delighted about it! Her ever venomous comment about her undearly departed spouse is the sort of comedy Columbo does brilliantly well.
The comedy song near the end, less so, but it doesn’t detract from a last gasp return to form for the series.
After this, only two more stories were made.
The Billy Connolly maestro mess, and the plucky nightclub one. Neither were as good as this final hurrah for our detective hero.
Although, as Eric Prince casually walks off to the police car, you could suspect that even he knows the evidence against him is flimsy at best.
Oh, and the line that Prince knows everyone, even Steve Bochko? Glorious and genuinely laugh out loud funny.
(A US TV heavyweight in the 90s, back in the 70s, one of his earlier roles was writing Columbo episodes, including the great Murder by the Book - more on that one in a bit!)
12. Suitable for Framing
This one has what Columbo fans oft consider the greatest Gotcha moment in the series, which I wont spoil, though I will say it feels a little like a cheat set up. Though that is being pedantic.
Ross Martin excels as the least likeable sort of Columbo killer, brash, arrogant, dangerous to women. His downfall is all the sweeter. Suitable for Framing starts with a bang and ends on a bang. In between, naïve accomplices gets bumped off, dotty Aunts get stitched up, and shades of grey lawyers nearly steal the show with raised eyebrows.
I find it difficult to talk about without spoiling. Martin's defeat is absolute, Columbo's belief in the innocence of the dotty ex-wife is lovely, and we have yet another in a long line of accomplices who are far too trusting of the main villain!
Lt. Columbo : I'm gonna tell you something. Do you know that there is a reasonable explanation for everything, if you just put your mind to it? Course, sometimes these things, they pop up. Like with alibis. Do you know in most cases, people, they don't remember what time it is. They forget all that. Like the artist fella; he's all mixed up about the time. And Mrs. Matthews... she don't even remember what time she went to bed last night!
Dale Kingston : Being sober might help, I suppose.
Lt. Columbo : Now with you, Mr. Kingston, it's just the opposite. Very unusual. With you, we know exactly where you were, and when. Not only that, we know your whole car was empty.
Dale Kingston : Yes, isn't that nice?
11. Death Lends a Hand
The title of this one comes from the moment Carl Brimmer slaps Lenore, causing her cinematographically aesthetic death. It also leads to a marvellous sequence where we see the clean up job from his bout of manslaughter, superimposed into the lenses of his glasses. This allows a speed up of necessary scenes, as we see different ones in each left and right glass, and Robert Culp’s eyes behind them, processing things, before he moves, to go and do the stuff we just saw.
It’s a sensational bit of editing by Bernard Kowalski and if apparently it gets edited out on TV re-runs then that’s a shame, as it sells the terrible error Brimmer has made, and how he now needs to act to save his own skin.
He’s not a likeable man, as a private investigator willing to turn a blind eye to an affair providing he can blackmail someone for it. Yet it’s interesting that such an unsympathetic character has one of the least premeditated crimes in the show.
Columbo uses basic detection to narrow down his subject, and then slowly needles him into a confession. If this involves a bit of a cheat in aiding his Gotcha, then the scenes between Peter Falk and a bristling Robert Culp make up for it.
There’s also a quiet dignity to Ray Milland’s widower. He really did love his wife, and he really does trust Brimmer. He's much better in this role than he would be as a Columbo murderer in Greenhouse Jungle.
Also unique in this story – the killer attempting to pay off Columbo from the case with a golden handshake! It doesn’t work, crime is crime for our lieutenant.
I spent a long time deciding if this one should make the top ten, or our next one, but eventually the gut punch of the next one decided matters for me.
10. Forgotten Lady
This is ranked so highly due to Janet Leigh’s performance of a killer most unusual.
But even more so for John Payne, whose Ned Diamond is one of the best characters in the series. Entirely noble, he wishes nothing but the best for Grace Wheeler, his long time co-star he loved for decades.
Columbo works on this one flaw, his nobility, to the point where Ned realises the truth of what has gone on, and its heart-breaking.
Janet Leigh provides a character which manages to be ruthless and vulnerable in the same story. This one goes on a bit too long, but it can’t escape the top ten, because when it comes to the final 20 minutes, Grace, Ned and Lt Columbo are going to break your heart. Doesn’t matter if you seen it for the first time or the hundredth time.
I'm being deliberately vague because if you haven't seen this one, you cant have that denouement spoiled. If you have seen it, you know exactly what I mean.
It's just an emotional rollercoaster.
9. Identity Crisis
Patrick McGoohan is back, not only as killer, but as director of the story. (Which he'd continue to do with his next two Columbo appearances.)
The cinematography in this one is lovely. With McGoohan framing every shot to make Columbo look the hero, there’s some wonderful moments that could have come directly out of an Otto Preminger drama. Look at that introduction of Columbo in the night time, smoking away, slowly coming into focus as he approaches the dead body. At his best, Patrick McGoohan was an artist.
Here we have McGoohan as Nelson Brenner, salesman, CIA operative and double agent. He bumps off his former friend, Henderson, another spy played by the great Leslie Neilsen.
Spies falling out?
Surely you can’t be serious.
I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.
This one revolves around Brenner’s diplomatic immunity and Columbo’s steadfast sleuthing, and while the latter wins out over the former, I’m left to wonder if it wasn’t a draw at the end. Columbo knows who did it, but Brenner is too important for America's national interests to charge with murder, and while he knows Brenner is the elusive Steinmetz, he can’t actually prove it.
No, I think this is one crime the lieutenant will never bring to court.
However, that doesn’t detract from a wonderful story.
There are so many great scenes here.
Leslie Neilsen and Patrick McGoohan casually talking of betrayal and revenge in espionage while walking through a carnival pier, even winning a cuddly toy for a small child.
The way McGoohan goes from friendly to insane in the murder scene, eyes bulging.
Columbo being tracked by the CIA men at the festival, and the showdown in an antique steam train.
The moment Brenner reveals the Columbo household was bugged, through the use of classical music. “I knoooooow!”
And for lovers of The Prisoner, “be seeing you”. They don’t even lampshade it, Brenner just uses it to end phone calls without bringing attention to it. Lovely little Easter egg for geeks.
You can tell Peter Falk was having a ball here, and while sometimes that Falk/McGoohan friendship was to the detriment of the show, here is works supremely well to bring the best out of our heroic policeman.
8. Candidate for Crime
"Uh, excuse me, Lieutenant, don't misunderstand. You're a very nice man, I like you very much, but I would hate to have to depend upon you if I was in a hurry for something."
This possesses to my mind the greatest Gotcha in the series.
I don’t want to spoil it for newcomers save to say that the alibi of failed
assassination attempts comes back to bite our odious politician and that Peter
Falk has rarely been this good in the role.
Look at the scene where Columbo
draws a map of the Crime scene, and then kindly deconstructed each plausible
scenario Jackie Cooper gives him for how the murder happened.
He's rarely this
firmly in control of character. He even brings up the ballistics report which
is to be key in the denouement.
And who else is there but Joanne Linville.
She’s brilliant in this. Playback showed us the potential in someone’s faith
in a killer being destroyed.
This marriage is broken.
Linville knows of
Cooper’s affairs, she knows the other woman, she turns to drink to hide her
despair.
As soon as she knows who has been killed she sort of twigs what must
have happened but cannot believe that her husband could be a murderer.
And then
slowly, as evidence mounts, she knows. Her tears are not from sudden
realisation. It's that she cannot hide from the truth that she knows any
longer. Not even the drink can hide away the end of her marriage. She is such a
well played tragic character.
Elsewhere Cooper’s character is such an unpleasant
opponent that is downfall being so set in stone is extra special.
7. Any Old Port in a Storm
"Nobody really needs a $5000 bottle of wine, Karen. I just don't want anybody else to have it."
Poor Adrian Carsini.
He’s not a happy man, despite his success in life, and when he lashes out and kills his brother, it only makes things worse for him.
Even as Columbo entraps the guy, you can sense he really likes our snobbish vigneron, and if he likes the guy, we sort of do too.
It helps when you cast an actor as great as Donald Pleasance. He bursts with rage, he has quiet dignity, he provides the role of Carsini with intense dignity and life. This is a gold standard for playing a Columbo villain.
My sympathy has its limits, there’s too much premeditated planning about Carsini’s murder after the first act.
Yet, he is doomed by his own character.
Only he would have known that port was spoiled.
Only he would have to tell the detective himself.
Having an A list star around gives us A list Peter Falk performance too. Spoiled port may be LIQUID FILTH but this is pure gold.
"IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG? EVERYTHING is WRONG! An EXCITING MEAL has been RUINED by the presence of this... This..LIQUID FILTH!"
6. An Exercise in Fatality
An Exercise in Fatality contains some of the darkest elements to be found in any Columbo episode.
The murder scene, where a terrified Gene fights back, then tries to escape, only to be choked to death, is easily the nastiest in the series.
While we have seen the murderer try to edge in on the widow of the deceased before, we’ve never seen that end in an attempted suicide.
Milo Janus is vain, faithless and furious. His network hurts hundreds of people through both his loan shark ways and his charlatan business model.
Little wonder he doesn’t like Columbo at all.
Where this episode shines, however, is where we see that Columbo clearly doesn’t like Janus either, and doesn’t even bother to try and hide it.
The scene in the hospital waiting room, where an angry Columbo accuses Milo of the murder, and destroys his alibi in front of witnesses, is justifiably considered among the best in the series history. Peter Falk and Robert Conrad sparkle against each other, providing a tense spark to the story.
Columbo: You don't care whether she lives or dies. As a matter of fact, she's drinking because of you, because she thinks you're responsible for the death of her husband. And you want to know something? So do I. Janus: I warned you in my office. Don't you... Columbo: I checked your alibi for the time before you got to the house. It doesn't wash. Janus: First of all, I don't need an alibi...and secondly, I was at Parker Motors. Columbo: You said they were closed when you got there. The fact is, they've been open every night until 9:00 for the past month. Janus: You know something, Columbo? You're a devious man. Columbo: That's what they tell me. Janus: What I meant to say was that I drove out to Parker Motors but when I got there, Parker's car was gone. So I assumed that he left for the day. And since my original statement to you was verbal you must have misunderstood what I said. Now, if you claim otherwise, I'm gonna deny it. Is that clear? Columbo: That's very clear. Janus: I don't care what you think. I don't care what you suspect. I don't care what visions you see when you look at your cigar ashes because I'm innocent. I have an alibi for the time Gene Stafford died. And you can huff and puff on that rotten cigar until next July and you'll never prove otherwise. Columbo: I wouldn't count on that.
And when Columbo really hates your guts, he goes all out.
Mileage is split on the Gotcha.
Peter Falk loved it so much that he went on The Tonight Show to promote it. But its not a showy Gotcha. It’s not a Suitable for Framing moment where everything is immediately obvious that the duck is dead.
At first, you wonder why Columbo has gone on so much about the shoelaces. But then you realise that they are only the last strand in a long list of evidence which not only kill Milo Janus’s alibi, but also place him at the scene of the crime.
Columbo has pieced together a water tight conviction, from coffee burns all the way to shoelaces, and Janus is doomed. He can’t get out of this one, because in constructing his own alibi, he betrayed knowledge that only the killer could have known.
And just look how much satisfaction Columbo has in his final line.
“It’s your perfect alibi that’s gonna hang you.”
He really hated that guy!
The nastiness of the murderer and the murder, and the detection work of Columbo, combine to make this a classic. Here we have a villain that our hero detests, and Robert Conrad is great in the role.
This episode also includes the gag that Columbo never reads crime novels, as he can never figure out whodunnit in them!
5. Murder by the Book
If Prescription Murder was An Unearthly Child, then this is the Columbo version of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. The moment the show announced it was here to stay.
A star is born in this story, and that star is director Steven Spielberg.
Watch that opening crane shot, as we cut from Jim Ferris typing away in his skyscraper office, to Ken Franklin in his car. We see Franklin ignore a No Entry sign as Ferris puts the finishing touches on their latest novel. It’s a remarkable bit of cinematography.
As Ferris laughs off Franklin’s practical joke gun, we get an insight into both characters, and, crucially, Ferris’s complete trust of his partner.
All of this is shown, not told.
The build to the murder in the cabin, with Jack Cassidy showcasing a variety of barely supressed emotions, is wonderful.
And Columbo is rarely this empathetic, taking Mrs Franklin away from the “crime scene” to make sure she eats something.
His empathy is quickly contrasted with Franklin’s lack of it. Throughout we see Franklin has a mind for plots (the murder, the set up of the body), but little for the prose or necessary bits that make a plot stick together. He also has a self-opinion of his own talents considerably above his own achievements, and so continually walks into Columbo’s little traps, all the while thinking the cop a bit thick.
However, Jack Cassidy manages to paper over these concerns with one of the best performances as a killer in the series. His entrapment of the poor witness, Lily, is Columbo-esque in its chilling effectiveness. And note the sound cuts off from the murder scene a second before the discretion shot.. That Spielberg might have a future at this, you know.
As doomed Lily la Sanka, Barbara Colby brings a nervous excited energy to the role. She clearly loves Ken Franklin, unrequitedly, but is oblivious to his feelings of disdain for her. She reminds me a bit of Maggie Wheeler’s portrayal of Janice in Friends. Even as Lily manages to blackmail Ken, she genuinely thinks its just the start of a beautiful friendship.
And she dies. Poor woman.
The scenes between Colby and Cassidy flicker with chemistry, and its tragic to think that both actors would be dead by the end of the decade. Jack Cassidy’s untimely death, at the height of his powers, is an oft-mourned one, dying aged 49 from an accidental house fire started by a dropped cigarette after a night of partying. Barbara Colby’s demise was even more horrific. In 1975, the popular actress had just signed a deal to play a lead role in the TV series Phyllis (as Cloris Leachman’s boss) when she and a friend were gunned down walking to their car after rehearsals. Colby was killed instantly, and in 2023, nearly fifty years later, the case remains unsolved.
This gives Murder by the Book an eeriness the episode doesn’t deserve. It’s a genuinely great slice of TV, and gave the momentum to carry Columbo as a series throughout most of the seventies. It has a great villain, and wonderfully, he’s undone by the very character traits revealed in the opening scenes.
It’s repeated on TV regularly.
Go watch it.
4. Death Hits the Jackpot
The best of the 90s Columbo episodes. Rip Torn plays a villain in debt who bumped off his favourite nephew, to gain the nephew’s lottery win. (He’s also shagging the nephew’s estranged wife, because no nineties Columbo is perfect!)
Torn is excellent in the role. His facial reactions, the way his eyes dart around the room while his body remains still, his performance gives every line reading two or three possible character motivations. He’s a well-rounded, flawed, antagonist in an era with few of them.
He’s so good as the villain, he commits the murder dressed as George III, and it only adds to the menace! The shot of a hooded Rip Torn sneaking up the apartment stairs to Freddy’s flat wouldn’t look out of place in a horror film.
It also helps that we don’t see Columbo for half an hour into the story, leaving the writer and actors plenty of time to sketch out the complicated relationships between murderer, victim and family, and show the level of planning Uncle Leon has put into his crime.
And in an era where quality of villain plays a large role in quality of story, the presence of Rip Torn inspires Peter Falk to up his game. Falk tones down most of the eccentricities he’d been testing on recent episodes, and gives us a very focused, careful performance, the sort of which we all know Peter Falk could give.
This means that, when Columbo appears at the murder scene, we know he knows who the killer is without any dialogue needed.
It’s that suspiciously time reliant alibi.
Poor Leon.
He’s doomed before he’s even met Columbo.
The murder victim (Freddy, played by Gary Kroeger) is rather naïve and terrible with both finances and trusting people, but it makes a refreshing change to see a Columbo murder victim who has a lot of friends who clearly cared for him and struggle to cope with his murder.
When Columbo comes back to the scene of the crime to look for clues, he stumbles across Freddy’s neighbours holding a wake in his honour. This is weeks later. They loved the silly fool. This adds depth often lacking to the show in the time period.
By making Freddy so obviously a huge part of so many people’s lives, to see them visibly grieving, makes him feel more important.
We haven’t had a Columbo victim treated this respectfully since Bertie Hastings (more on him in a bit).
Freddy is also trusted to look after the local chimpanzee, and this brings about Leon’s downfall.
An actual chimpanzee. Not keen on folk having them as pets. Do like Columbo treating it as if it were any other witness to a serious crime, and trying to calm it down during a panic attack. The poor animal adds to the murder, as when Leon locks the door of the bathroom to drown Freddy, the chimp, aware of what's going on, desperately tries to break into the room to save its friend.
Leon looks down on the animal, and this curses him in the end.
Good.
And the murder scene might be the most brutal in the series. Freddy gets bashed in the noggin with a bottle. Leon then goes to drown him in the bath to make it look a tragic accident. But then, Freddy wakes up, and so Leon has to overpower him and slowly drown him in the bath. We get a discretion shot away from this, but it lingers. It’s up there with Milos Janus hunting down his prey in An Exercise in Fatality.
This episode hangs on Rip Torn interacting with Peter Falk. They’re magic together, two actors at the top of their game, dragging every character drop out of their lines.
As soon as Leon twigs that he’s a suspect, he is a drowning man who finds that every route out of his predicament is blocked by Nemesis.
This is best established in the excellent scene where Columbo quietly demolishes Leon’s story, by mentioning the case of champagne Freddy bought on the night of his death. (Therefore, he had to expect he was coming into money, which blows Leon’s story about their relationship.) Clinging desperately to his alibi, Columbo asks Leon if he heard what Columbo had said.
“I hear you, Sir, I just wish I hadn’t.”
It’s glorious.
Also, the scene where Columbo shows up at Freddy’s funeral, and we go from the old Italian woman raging at his shabby clothes to being so proud an Italian American has become a lieutenant in the police, she wants to marry him off to one of her cousins? I love that. And given the way you can see Peter Falk corpsing before the camera quickly cuts, you can tell he loved it too.
3. A Friend in Deed
It’s the one where the killer is the Chief of Police!
There’s so much to say about A Friend in Deed.
Richard Kiley makes an excellent villain as the slimy double natured Mark Halperin. Just look at his debut scene. As the uneasy Hugh enters the casino to look for his neighbour and friend, having just spoken to the mans wife, we see Halperin, gambling, against a mirrored wall, cavorting with a young woman and drinking. It’s an excellent piece of character reveal by camera work (and not the last bit of that from Ben Gazzara behind the camera here).
Very much the man of law, he wins a game of dice, and then plots to use a case of manslaughter to his own advantage.
One is tempted to feel sorry for the nervous Hugh, played excellently by Michael McGuire. Yes, he has killed his wife, and at the very least is guilty of manslaughter, but we know from the first scene he knows exactly what he has done, and what’s his first port of call? To go to his police officer best friend. It was his bad luck that that man was Halperin.
Of course, Hugh’s internal weaknesses then doom him the rest of the way, but he’s a fascinating counterpoint to the cool and calculating Halerpin.
Indeed, the speed with which the police chief orchestrates his half of a Strangers on a Train gambit makes me wonder how long he had been planning the whole thing.
In fact, Mrs Caldwell died after an argument about boyfriends. We do see one of them later, but up to that point, you do wonder how much of Hugh’s insecurity was fed to him by his neighbour, who knew the likely conclusion, as Iago did when gaslighting Othello.
Regular Falk star Val Avery also excels as framed robber Artie Jessup.
The Gotcha is often proclaimed one of the best in the series, and I agree. However, I also like how Columbo keeps warning his own boss not to fall into his trap, and the man ignores it. I also love the surprised look Falk gives as Halperin denounces his theories of a spurned lover. “You think there’s nothing to my theory” he says, while working out who actually done it in the same instance.
This does make me wonder why the chief of police personally chose Columbo to investigate this crime. But that is niggling at the edges of brilliance.
2. Now You See Him
There’s so much to enjoy in Now You See Him it’s hard to know were to start.
Jack Cassidy excels in his final of three Columbo villain roles, this one broadcast months before his untimely death in that accidental fire. As an acclaimed magician (previously a Nazi death camp officer) Cassidy was taught to look convincing by Mark Wilson in his tricks.
The scenes where he goes from Houdini style illusion to murder his victim many floors above, through busy kitchens and door lock picking, and all in time to return for his on stage reveal, is sublime with a flourish.
Everything is better when Nehemiah Persoff shows up, and here he is a one of the least sympathetic murder victims in the show. A man who knows someone is a wanted Nazi war criminal, but chooses to profit personally off the information. It’s a small role, but given deep stature, given the quality of the actor.
And there’s Columbo. Peter Falk might be at his best in this story. There’s the running joke with his new coat, bought by Mrs Columbo and admired by all except the Lieutenant.
There’s the lovely relationship between him and a returning Sgt Wilson. Wilson is green but eager and willing to show all his learning to his hero. Columbo is quick to let him down on his mistakes, but equally appreciates the things Wilson sees that Columbo cannot. The Great Santini mocks Wilson as being “Dr Watson” at one point, but it is a fair and kinder point. Wilson’s youth, exuberance and gut sees things Columbo misses, and Columbo’s experience and knowledge sees how everything fits together, while Wilson keeps thinking it will be the least likely suspect.
I love the moment Wilson gives Columbo his theory on how the waiter did it, and Columbo listens to the whole story before going “That’s good work. It was the magician that did it.”
And even in the reveal, which is down to Wilson’s knowledge of the typewriter, the younger policeman is keen to point out he helped! Bob Dishy is enjoyable in the role, I wish they’d brought him back. Peter Falk wanted them to, but they never did.
Working with an inexperienced partner gives us another treat.
How often do we see Columbo walk into a crime scene and then, through Peter Falk’s facial reactions or body language alone, pick up the fact that he’s noticed a killer clue and is now zooming in on the culprit.
His acting speaks where pages of dialogue isn’t needed.
However, here, we have a change.
Because he has to show the other cops in the room what has happened, Columbo speaks aloud his thought process, and so, for the only time in the shows history, we get an example of how Lt Columbo’s brain works on the scene of a crime in real time.
He goes through every possibility, works out every possible angle, and comes up with the likely scenario for the murder, and thus shortens the list of people who could have done such a murder, within five minutes. And the takeaway from that is, this is how his mind always works. Quick connections, deductions, fitting the facts into the patterns and cutting off loose ends. It's like an attempt to show into Sherlock Holmes mind palace, or the moment in The Eleventh Hour where Steven Moffat tried to show us how fast Doctor Who’s brain works.
And yet, that’s not the best scene in this episode. Oh, no.
That would be the glorious showdown between cop and magician, in front of an audience. Columbo is brought up from the crowd to be put in his place by Santini for a quick cheap trick. So far, so good. But wait, Columbo has a suggestion of his own. A bet at the police station that Santini couldn’t break out of a pair of police handcuffs. And he produces a pair of handcuffs, fitted with the type of lock on the murder scene door.
Instantly Santini recognises the lock, and Columbo knows he does.
And so the magician is left with a quandry – lose face in front of an audience, or admit private culpability potentiality?
The audience wins, and Santini breaks out of the handcuffs to wild applause and a smile from Columbo.
“I knew you could do it” said our hero, with a wink, and they both immediately know that he knows the truth.
This is the best scene in the entire show. Two fine actors at the top of their game, with so much subtext and context to the scene, and character work. Time and again, Columbo villains face the prospect of losing face or incriminating themselves. This is easily the best.
In getting to this point, we haven’t mentioned the scene where Columbo visits the frail old magician (another wonderful scene), the costume work, or the Gotcha. I knew you’d pick number 2. Top to bottom, Now You See Him is quality TV, and it would have required a tour de force performance to prevent it getting top slot. And even though that hasn’t, all I can say is: if you haven’t seen this episode yet, go and watch it now. You wont regret it.
1. The Bye Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case
Even my mum knew this was going to be top. My refrain of "terrible title for an amazing bit of TV" is almost a catchphrase!
"I was an imitation adult, because that's what was expected of me. Most people don't like smart people. Most children despise smart children; so, early on, I had to hide my so-called gift, conceal it from my own brothers and sisters, my classmates, in the service... Painful, lonely years."
It’s hard to pity someone who murders in cold blood. Oliver Brandt’s crime is one of the most premeditated in the show.
Yet the trick in The Bye Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case, which really is a terrible name for a TV great is that it implores us to still find sympathy in Brandt. And through some excellent scripting and a fantastic performance by Theodore Bikel, we get closer to it than all but a few of the Columbo antagonists.
Oliver Brandt is not a happy man. He married into a higher class, but it made him stressed and struggling with money, rather than happy. An intelligent man who struggles to keep friends even in a MENSA like club of similar geniuses, in fact he finds the posturing of the pseudo-intellectual discussion even more infuriating.
His biggest issue is that he is so insecure in his own intelligence and own being, that he thinks more about how he can achieve difficult things rather than stops to think of the consequences. And as a result, he deals with an issue of embezzlement (to buy his wife the expensive lifestyle she is accustomed to) by murdering his only true friend in a ludicrously overcomplicated (and brilliantly fun) way, without stopping to think of the consequences, until he’s alone in the room later, faced with them.
A worried and alone man, with soot on his face.
And then the door goes, and there’s Columbo standing in the doorway.
What really separates this story from all the others is the relationship between Columbo and the killer.
We’ve seen killers who antagonise the hell out of our hero, ones who don’t take him seriously, ones who give themselves away and ones Columbo clearly has a degree of sympathy for, like Janet Leigh.
We’re used to episodes where Columbo knows exactly who he is after as soon as he shows up on the scene. Here the victim was in the room of a man who had a perfect alibi, a conceit we’ve been taught to know he instantly suspects.
But the difference here is that this instant recognition is mutual!
The moment Columbo appears in his life, we see from Theodore Bikel’s reaction that he knows he has come face to face with Nemesis!
And so the story becomes as much “how will Oliver escape his fate?” as much as it is “how will Columbo catch him?”
In fact, the former becomes more of the story. There’s a scene where Brandt tries to get rid of the murder weapon in a public park, only for Columbo to show up for a few extra questions.
As they discuss a crucial umbrella, Bikel and the audience see that the gun can be seen in the bin next to them, and then the music and cutting and Bikel’s panicked reactions implore you to root for this man.
They manage to turn Columbo into the antagonist in his own TV show.
Against a man who committed pre-meditated murder!
This leads to the big reveal, which I wont spoil, though the line “The genius who came up with all this, you make him out to a BUMBLING ASS” is as amazing as it sounds.
Brandt isn’t comfortable in his own intelligence, he has to show it off.
He’s caught for the same reason he committed the murder of his own friend.
The need to prove he could do it.
It trumps everything else, and made a lonely man only lonelier, and a man in trouble now drowning in worse.
Little wonder Columbo has sympathy for him.
It's a great slice of TV. Now I want to go watch it all over again.
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