Rather nicely done mystery, although it's a departure from the usual formula. Ordinarily, we see a conflict between two people that sets up the motivation, then the carefully prepared plot designed to mislead the police with frame-ups and false cues, then the entry of Columbo's raggedy police lieutenant, then several jagged bolts of constabulary intuition, and the murder's plan unravels. The murderer generally shrugs and gives up the minute he's confronted with some minor piece of evidence, as if he'd just lost a game of ping pong.
Here, the murderer is Andrew Stevens, manipulative tennis player, and the victim is his fiancée, the strikingly handsome Janet Margolin who is about to discard him because of his infidelity.
Actually, I got a little lost because I didn't get the motivation. Mostly, the motive is simple, sometimes almost entirely dispensed with, but here I kept waiting for it and it never arrived.
We never see the actual murder committed either, and the audience is kept as much in the dark about precisely how it was pulled off as poor Columbo is.
There are the attempts at the kind of humor we associate with Columbo. He's called into the morgue for a conference and leaves immediately when he spots the body of a man who blew his own head off with a shotgun. He's hoisted up into the trees on a cherry picker and shat upon by crows. He can't find an ash tray for the flakes of egg shell he's carrying, left over from his hard boiled egg.
But none of these incidents quite works. The old Columbo would have frozen silently at the entrance to the morgue, his face grim, and walked away. Here, his disgust is too spelled out. He emerges from the morgue, shakes his head, and says, "Whew" to himself. The old Columbo would never have been so demonstrative. Nor would the original Columbo have managed that cherry picker with such aplomb -- never mind the crows.
There's a big plus and an equally big minus in the performances. Much of the success of the series depended on the villains, and Andrew Stevens, handsome though he may be, isn't much of an actor. His killer isn't the unflappable type we've become accustomed to. He's more of a nervous wreck, always shouting and breathless.
The plus is a great performance by the bulky Brenda Vaccaro as Margolin's jealous sister. Vaccaro is all business. She heaves herself about deftly, ordering people to shut up or sit down, and she does it in a manner that seems perfectly natural to both the character and the actress. Yolanda Lloyd in the small part of Rosa the housekeeper makes a sinewy impression as well.
Janet Margolin doesn't get much screen time as the murder victim and it's too bad because she's almost infinitely appealing. Not only beautiful, even at forty-six, but girlish and vulnerable. You want to protect her. She died of cancer a few years after this episode.
Here, the murderer is Andrew Stevens, manipulative tennis player, and the victim is his fiancée, the strikingly handsome Janet Margolin who is about to discard him because of his infidelity.
Actually, I got a little lost because I didn't get the motivation. Mostly, the motive is simple, sometimes almost entirely dispensed with, but here I kept waiting for it and it never arrived.
We never see the actual murder committed either, and the audience is kept as much in the dark about precisely how it was pulled off as poor Columbo is.
There are the attempts at the kind of humor we associate with Columbo. He's called into the morgue for a conference and leaves immediately when he spots the body of a man who blew his own head off with a shotgun. He's hoisted up into the trees on a cherry picker and shat upon by crows. He can't find an ash tray for the flakes of egg shell he's carrying, left over from his hard boiled egg.
But none of these incidents quite works. The old Columbo would have frozen silently at the entrance to the morgue, his face grim, and walked away. Here, his disgust is too spelled out. He emerges from the morgue, shakes his head, and says, "Whew" to himself. The old Columbo would never have been so demonstrative. Nor would the original Columbo have managed that cherry picker with such aplomb -- never mind the crows.
There's a big plus and an equally big minus in the performances. Much of the success of the series depended on the villains, and Andrew Stevens, handsome though he may be, isn't much of an actor. His killer isn't the unflappable type we've become accustomed to. He's more of a nervous wreck, always shouting and breathless.
The plus is a great performance by the bulky Brenda Vaccaro as Margolin's jealous sister. Vaccaro is all business. She heaves herself about deftly, ordering people to shut up or sit down, and she does it in a manner that seems perfectly natural to both the character and the actress. Yolanda Lloyd in the small part of Rosa the housekeeper makes a sinewy impression as well.
Janet Margolin doesn't get much screen time as the murder victim and it's too bad because she's almost infinitely appealing. Not only beautiful, even at forty-six, but girlish and vulnerable. You want to protect her. She died of cancer a few years after this episode.
