FADE IN TO MURDER (COLUMBO)

year: 1976
rating: ****

This episode, during one of the final seasons where the writers knew exactly what to deliver, epitomizes everything great about the popular detective series: as scruffy Lt. Columbo busts high class people who think they've pulled off the perfect crime - which the audience sees in punctuating detail in the first fifteen minutes - by pestering them into submission and, while complementing their abilities to aid him at his job, underrates himself as being totally incapable without their help i.e. the bad guys basically screw themselves. William Shatner plays a TV detective, a "fictionalized" Columbo, who kills a woman (Lola Albright as a beautiful cougar) who's taking control of half his paycheck. The murder-motivation is somewhat thin but how Shatner provides his alibi, using Bert Remsen, spiked booze, and an early-model VCR, is quite clever. Several gloriously long scenes involving Falk and Shatner going back and forth with various theories is downright hypnotic: Falk doing what he does best and Shatner pontificating with his iconic halting-speech style which, since he's playing a bad actor, seems like intentional self-parody. Timothy Carey as a cafe owner, and Walter "Chekov" Koenig, provide nifty cameos.

PRESCRIPTION: MURDER

title: PRESCRIPTION: MURDER

year: 1968

cast: Peter Falk, Gene Barry

rating: ***

Columbus discovered America, and I've discovered Columbo, one of the best crime shows ever made. The perfect murder almost pulled-off by usually high class high brow society members thwrated by the epitome of "the little guy": a sloppy glass-eyed remora cop who eventually gets his man or woman by slowly figuring out what we, the audience, already know by sticking to them like crazy glue: each episode beginning with a creative homocide - the audience sees who the killer is and it's up to Columbo to figure things out from there. That was the series that came out in 1971, but this, the 1968 TV movie, not even called COLUMBO: PERSCRIPTION FOR MUDER but simply PERSCRIPTION FOR MURDER, isn't that great because, for one, Falk hadn't completely found the character yet. He only wears his trademark trenchcoat (the reverse superman cape) halfway through the episode, in the beginning donning a somewhat nifty suit. He's not clumsy and unassuming but precise, clean-shaven with a neat short haircut, not looking much different than the classy psychiatrist he's out to bust for killing his wife: aided by his lover, a beautiful actress. Columbo is more of a snarky tough guy than an accidental, neurotic genius here... although he does underrate himself somewhat and badgers people - only it's not as fun or entertaining. The third episode (actually, the second episode, not including this movie which ISN'T a pilot) MURDER BY THE BOOK (1971), directed by Steven Speilberg, REALLY gets the ball rolling. And it's all uphill from there. "Oh, and one more thing..."