lucyrfisher Reviews

Columbo: Strange Bedfellows (1995) Season 10, Episode 10

Might have been better if Dick Francis had written it

[5/10 · 21 May 2024]

Oh no, let's humiliate Columbo and make him allergic to clams. One reviewer said this sub-plot made the episode worth watching. I fast forwarded. Suddenly Columbo can't speak Italian when meeting a mafia boss. Is he just pretending, so that he can listen to their conversations? If so, why does he not recognise the word "vongole" - clams?

The surrounding story is OK and well-acted by the barman, receptionist, restaurateur, hysterical lady and a mouse.

Rod Steiger is brilliant as the mafia boss. It's a treat to watch and listen, even if his Italian is suspiciously clear and "first steps in". (Don't the mafia communicate in Sicilian dialect?)

Columbo: It's All in the Game (1993) Season 10, Episode 7

I hate it when the writers embarrass Columbo

[6/10 · 10 May 2024]

Cringing is the new laughing? To me it's just cringing. I fast forwarded over the flirtation. However, I liked the guys in the bar who act as a Greek chorus as Columbo updates them on the case.

She killed her two-timing lover? "What took her so long????"

Anyone who has seen Chinatown will work out the identity of the younger woman (very well acted).

Enjoy Miss Dunaway's gowns and general glamour. She makes the present look drab.

The ending is a bit of a cliché, but I'm sure you'll agree that Columbo did the right thing.

Does he turn up with a boiled egg and a cup of coffee in this one? I feel I've seen that trope a few too many times.

Maigret: Les petits cochons sans queue (2004) Season 13, Episode 4

Enjoyable episode

[9/10 · 10 May 2024]

I really enjoyed this episode - partly because I wasn't tutting over needless diversions from the original plot. I am a Simenon superfan and I don't remember this book - or was it a short story? Everyone is good, especially Mme Blanc and her sinister father.

We must be in the South, because there are palm trees and the sun shines, and the useless local inspector calls the missing man "M'sieur Bleng". His accent probably locates the story for French speakers - like setting a story in Scotland. The young cop who assists Maigret complains that his pickpocket pal is incomprehensible - "Can't understand a word he says". Perhaps because he comes from the north.

Watch it, it's good. Also gives an insight into the crooked world of French boxing.

Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949)

Enjoyable

[8/10 · 6 May 2024]

Dick Barton is the English gent, and Snowy is the Common Man - that's what he's doing there! I warmed to him, even if his jokes aren't very funny. He gets the "Cor blimey guv what a shower" type of dialogue.

I loved Fouracada (the villain)'s description of the lethal effects of unlimited electrical power and a GIANT TUNING FORK! He is indeed an effective villain as others have said.

And yes, the fight scenes are simply appalling! The sonic weapon wails for about ten minutes (I turned the sound down and the subtitles on).

Tragic that Don Stannard was killed in a car accident while travelling with Sebastian Cabot (Fouracada). Cabot survived - hopefully to play more criminal masterminds.

Columbo: Murder, a Self Portrait (1989) Season 9, Episode 1

Unusual for several reasons

[9/10 · 29 April 2024]

Oh, so we have to have some "comedy". I fast forward whenever Dog appears. But apart from him...

As others have said, the music is great. Opera is the soundtrack to Vito's Bar, where the artist and his first wife used to live. But what opera are they singing in Louise's nightmares? I'd love to hear the whole work! The nightmare scenes are very well done, with the artist and Columbo in monochrome in the background.

The psychologist is dignified, and tho Freud's theories are largely baloney, good use is made of them. A French uncle? Mon oncle? A Mon... ocle? Earlier there's been some chat about a monocled art dealer who disappeared - "went back to Europe".

He was "very English" apparently, wore a bowler and often called people "old chap". What a shame! No Englishman had behaved like that since about 1910.

The three bickering women are good, especially when the remaining two make it up in the sauna over a bottle of white. Bauchau is good as the utterly horrible Barsini, redeemed only by his skill. His paintings are by an art director, and his portrait of Columbo is genius!

Columbo: A Stitch in Crime (1973) Season 2, Episode 6

Nice episode, shame about the "comedy"

[8/10 · 18 April 2024]

Great to have Leonard Nimoy and Anne Francis - we really feel it when she's bumped off early on. Good plot, great mystery - howdunnit? But then we have to have the "laughs". No, please no. Columbo hates injections and nearly throws up/passes out. Spare us. We have to humiliate him by making him scoff a plateful of buffet food while grilling Nimoy - I fast-forwarded.

Nita Talbot's interview with Columbo is truly funny, however. She comes out with a dictionary full of psychological clichés of the time. What would her speech sound like today? And she admits she moved to the hospital from a private clinic because she only ever meets men who need facelifts.

I've just remembered when Leonard Nimoy appeared on a breakfast radio talk show here in London. The interviewer got his name wrong (think he called him "Nemo") and said: "Star Trek - that was just a three-year gig for you, wasn't it?" Unbelievably rude! Can't remember what Nimoy replied. He was a good actor and a nice man - a friendly presence on Twitter, ending all tweets with "LLAP", until he was taken from us.

Columbo: Columbo Likes the Nightlife (2003) Season 10, Episode 14

Dark, edgy, dark

[10/10 · 12 April 2024]

The scene-setting is very dark. The despatch of the tabloid journalist, suggested by the rusty radiator ripping away from the wall... grim. And the first (accidental) victim is last seen under a thick glass coffee table (foreshadowing his eventual fate) but then just disappears. The gardeners heaving about planters with trees are a red herring.

Mr Schirripa as the mafia emissary is genial in a terrifying kind of way, but somewhere there is a man who's lost his son.

Not my kind of music or partying, but the ambience is impressive. The guilty pair do a good acting job. There's a suggestion that Justin, who'll do anything for a fast buck, is just another mutation of the traditional mobsters back in New York.

Farewell, Lieutenant Columbo. Glad you went out on a high.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Atmospheric

[8/10 · 8 April 2024]

I love the 1979 version so much I didn't think I could bear to watch the film. But I became hooked. The locations are perfect (though the air is filled with the fog or is it talcum powder that blurred life in the past). Interiors are larger - and papered with hideous Vymura.

Casting is brilliant. Oldman, Cumberbatch, Firth, "Trigger", Kathy Burke. Ricky Tarr, damaged and sleazy, is more convincing than Hywel Bennett. (Though why does Peter attack him?)

It's no longer 1979, and we need - or do we? - gore and sex. I could have done without the gore. Would it even be safe for the Russians to slaughter a couple of men (one of theirs, one of ours) before exiting with Irina. And we never hear what happens to her, unless that was in a bit I fast forwarded.

A lot of the dialogue was from the 1979 version - even some of the gestures and facial expressions. And much of the dialogue, of course, was written by Le Carré.

It would be hard for someone who had never read the book or seen the 1979 version to follow the plot, but never mind.

The drabness of the 1970s on both sides of the Curtain was perfectly invoked. Smiley re-enacts his meeting with Carla, in close-up. We've both seen the flaws in each other's position - what's to choose between them? Why not switch?

I couldn't help thinking that all the cast had been irreparably damaged by being sent away to boarding school aged seven. At one point Ricky says "I want a family - I don't want to be like you lot!"

Columbo: Murder with Too Many Notes (2001) Season 10, Episode 13

Good in parts

[7/10 · 8 April 2024]

Billy Connolly is good as the film composer. His conducting looks convincing. I didn't spot who wrote the music, but it is fabulous - more Hermann than Williams.

Downsides: if Connolly merely drugged his young protégée (who has been writing all his music while he hits the bottle), why does the boy gag and gasp as if there was cyanide in that champagne? What knockout drops work that fast?

I fast forwarded over the "name that tune" segment. Some people call it "humour" or "comedy" but to me it is Columbo being humiliated and I can't bear it.

And what was the point of the driving scene? Fast forwarded over that one, too. It seemed interminable. What's funny about driving slowly? Or having an old, beat-up car? Roll on the 15-minute city and Americans getting out of their cars and - gasp! - walking!

Maigret: Maigret's Little Joke (1963) Season 4, Episode 13

Light-hearted end to the series

[10/10 · 7 April 2024]

Though the cast are mourning Torrence, who was such a vivid member of the team in this series. Janvier has joined from the Vice Squad, though we don't meet him.

Maigret, shot in the shoulder in the previous episode, finds it hard to fill his days. But there's a good mystery in the papers - a doctor's wife, thought to be in St Tropez, turns up naked in her flat. (In the book she's in a cupboard?) Her husband dodges between Nice and two rather plain mistresses, while letting his wife go her own way. But she has the money...

Maigret is contacted by the fiancee of the doctor's assistant - she's also rather plain but characterful. He can't intervene, but sends helpful notes to Lucas, who is in control of the case.

The episode ends with the Maigrets embracing - they're off to Concarneau. But I wish they'd made more eps.

Columbo: Try and Catch Me (1977) Season 7, Episode 1

Maximum drama, minimum "comedy"

[9/10 · 3 April 2024]

Well, there is a scene where a class of belly dancers trip the light fantastic around Columbo - but they are very good and a pleasure to watch! Too good to be beginners in a class.

Ruth Gordon of course is a joy. She is a Christie-like mystery writer (Abigail Mitchell) with a long-running play. Watch the scene where she exchanges wills with her victim. She is leaving him everything, and vice versa. But this means she gets back the rights to her "Mousetrap" /on his death/.

Edmund, her niece's husband and possibly murderer, is the rat in her trap, but he turns out to have some of her ingenuity.

Her assistant, Veronica, blackmails her with a missing piece of evidence and the two set off on an expensive cruise. Abigail is plucked from the cruise and and Veronica goes on alone. But wasn't she taking a change setting off on a sea cruise with Abigail???? Wouldn't history repeat itself?

Columbo: Old Fashioned Murder (1976) Season 6, Episode 2

Very old-fashioned

[7/10 · 2 April 2024]

In fact the plot is borrowed from an old Bette Davies/Miriam Hopkins movie. Surely the subtext about birth certificates shows that Janey IS Ruth's daughter? Her sister nicks her boyfriend and surely she can't carry on as a single mother? What would the neighbours say? The suggestion is that she then murders the boyfriend with something in the camomile tea.

The still beautiful Celeste Holm is good at the "I never left a room without a man's arm to lean on" stuff, but nobody could rise above the silly fainting. There is also a cringey "funny" scene where Columbo gets a haircut. Fortunately his hair soon springs back to life.

Columbo: Last Salute to the Commodore (1976) Season 5, Episode 6

Yes, a dud

[1/10 · 2 April 2024]

This was the first Columbo episode I saw. I came in as he was saying "The Commodore's watch" to everybody. It put me off the series for about 40 years. I've only recently started catching up and been surprised by how much I like Columbo.

Other reviewers are right. Everybody is too touchy-feely. Columbo is in everybody's face. He behaves like a method actor of the 50s, clutching and pawing at anybody he's talking to. You wish he'd just back off.

I'm disappointed to know this episode was directed by the respected Patrick McGoohan.

Wilfred Hyde-White comes off the best. You'll be glad you don't live next to the yacht club crowd.

Columbo: Short Fuse (1972) Season 1, Episode 6

Roddy McDowall irritates everybody

[8/10 · 26 March 2024]

He's a brilliant, we're told, chemist and heir to a chemical company. In a Shakespearean setup, those at the top are trying to get rid of all the others. But Iday Lupino, looking chic in a tailored Thai silk ensemble in ice blue, holds the controlling shares.

Roddy McDowall dances about, postures, giggles and acts dumb. He has an infuriating habit of spraying people with pink plastic string, and a strangely mild way of saying "OK, you win!" that his enemies should beware of. There's a strange moment as he and Columbo wander round the chemical plant (more beautiful to me than the rather bland mountains), when he claims he threw up chemistry because he was no good at it, and took up woodwork where all you had to do was make a henhouse and paint it red. He has a PhD!

He must have used an explosive device he "prepared earlier" as he wouldn't have had time to make it and plant it in a risky process relying on witnesses having their head under the hood of his car, in a cupboard etc.

Columbo: I get vertigo in a lift! I don't even like being this tall!

Columbo: Murder Under Glass (1978) Season 7, Episode 2

Got about a third the way through

[6/10 · 24 March 2024]

I hate watching people eat on TV and in films. And this one seemed to be all about food. And the chefs and restaurateurs had an unhygienic air - I longed to cut their hair and moustaches and scrub them with green household soap.

Peter Falk did pretty well interviewing a waiter in Italian, but there was much too much chat about fettucini alle vongole.

I read the reviews to find out the murder method. I recognised it from a Dorothy L Sayers short story series about a wine salesman. She should have written more of them.

Some reviewers have complained this episode wasn't as funny as others - well, there was no making Columbo look a fool, and nothing about that tedious beagle. At least, not in the bits I saw.

Maigret: Maigret et le marchand de vin (2002) Season 11, Episode 1

Lovely to look at...

[7/10 · 13 March 2024]

Lovely to look at as usual, and the crew have hired a vast complex of warehouses (plus barrels) as a set. Here Chabut's "secretaries" type in a an empty shed, and Maigret's offices seem to be somewhere else in the building. We see rather too much of the premises of Madame Blanche and her "maison close", where plushy rooms are hired for assignations.

We meet Chabut's many mistresses, and an art book publisher/blackmailer. The cast are dogged by a stalker, probably the missing bookkeeper Pigou. Madame Pigou is played by a famous singer, and the camera dwells on her face while she fails to convey the character, who in the book lives off several men and spends her day chain smoking, reading trashy magazines and listening to records - the fiend!

Pigou is given a motive - he once owned a wine business himself but was taken over by Chabut, for whom he now works in a lowly role. This is not in the book, where he is just a grind. But the book describes a very dramatic motive for Pigou's animosity towards Chabut. But this violent scene is told only in reported speech by La Sauterelle, Chabut's mistress.

Pigou's arrest - again, in the book this is highly dramatic, with the suspect tapping on Maigret's flat door in the middle of the night. Pigou then explains what he's been doing since he was sacked by Chabut for petty thefts - this could have been dramatised in a flashback,

I can't even remember how the TV version ends - did I fall asleep?

Torture Garden (1967)

60s horror anthology from Amicus

[9/10 · 11 March 2024]

I saw this movie on the TV not long after it was released. It stands the test of time!

Why Torture Garden? Probably taken from the recent Bond novel, Live and Let Die, which features a deathly Japanese garden full of poisonous plants and bubbling volcanic fumaroles.

Michael Bryant and John Standing look very young - Bryant went on to seduce students and meet his end in the war in Roads to Freedom, while Standing adopted a permanent half-smile as a former spy in Tinker Tailor.

No one has mentioned the part played by the decor. 1967 was big on modernist interiors. Clashing fabrics in the actresses' flatshare, and weird monochrome in the pianist's palatial apartment. Maurice Denham's country cottage is full of grandfather clocks and whatnots in another 60s trend.

I'm rather fond of story No. 2. "I can introduce you to people who might help your career!" I always hated that one.

Columbo: Make Me a Perfect Murder (1978) Season 7, Episode 3

End of an era

[6/10 · 5 March 2024]

Time for Columbo to battle Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. They said Holmes was never the same afterwards.

Good things about this episode: the locations in the beach house and offices. The ruthless business attitude behind the scenes of television. Why DO they have to be so nasty to each other all the time? Miss Freestone seems to be fire-fighting all day instead of following a schedule.

Something missing from the Columbo formula - brainstorming with colleagues. We never know what is passing through Columbo's mind, which makes trying to guess his line of thought all the more fun.

Loved the music track by someone who really loved Bach. I'll have that little flute tune on my mind.

And I find Dog utterly resistable.

Maigret: Maigret et l'écluse no.1 (1994) Season 4, Episode 2

Great atmosphere

[9/10 · 16 February 2024]

I love this series, everything is so true to the books - and to life. But the writers can't stop tinkering with the plots. I'm sure in the book there was no dilemma about saving the mother or the baby. Bebert wasn't the attacker, or the father of Aline's child. Nobody contracted syphilis.

I seem to recall that Jean is the father of the child - he kills himself when he's told Aline is his sister. Will have to read it again!

The atmosphere in this episode of industry by the side of the Seine, with men shovelling sand and gravel. There is a constant background hum of hooters, sirens, clanging, bangs, engines. It is very effective.

Perry Mason: The Case of the Lethal Lesson (1989 TV Movie)

Enjoyable episode

[9/10 · 24 January 2024]

Worth it for the clothes! It's 1989 - high 80s style. BIG hair. WIDE shoulder pads. HUGE coats. All the female students are dressed in neat, pressed, brushed, EXPENSIVE outfits - what we used to call power suits. When I was a student I wore jeans and lived in a scruffy shared house. This lot live in what look like "show flats". Or "condos" as they would call them.

Others have told the story. The victim's assault of a female student is oddly downplayed, but maybe this was deliberate, considering the outcome.

I liked the student who'd had an affair with the victim who just plagiarised her essays - used her as a Sidney Carton.

Perry Mason: The Case of the Lost Love (1987 TV Movie)

A bit too Hallmark

[7/10 · 19 January 2024]

I cringed a bit at the soft focus, soft music bits. But the really grating section featured the psychiatrist who treated Laura for her "nervous breakdown". How could Perry possible intuit that he had faked her illness, and given her inappropriate drugs and ECT because he was "in love with her"? Why wasn't a rival psychiatrist put into the witness box, eg the one who'd "written the book" on what we now call bipolar disorder? Would this doctor be sued for criminal negligence? How much damage did he do to Laura?

Also, what will happen to Laura in the end? "Taken downtown" and interviewed, bailed, eventually judged guilty only of "accidental manslaughter"? Given a light sentence - community service maybe? Well, she'll never be a Senator now!

I'll watch all of these, though, for the presence of Burr, Stiers, Hale, Katt and others. And I LOVE the shoulder pads!

Columbo: Fade in to Murder (1976) Season 6, Episode 1

Interesting

[7/10 · 5 January 2024]

What kind of fictional detective is Shatner playing? Philo Vance? He speaks almost in an English accent, and adopts a mannered manner, both of which he keeps when playing "Ward Fowler", the actor. It turns out that he started life as "Charles Kipling" - or rather he didn't, as he's an army deserter who fled to Canada.

As the show progresses, he speaks to Columbo as Lucerne, the TV detective, discussing whether "Ward Fowler" was the killer. This is quite creepy.

The clue about the different shades of make-up on the mask is presented to us but never discussed. And was "Fowler" a locksmith in a former life? In the army he was a sharpshooter, but we see him pick a lock, and there is much byplay with the complicated lock to his front door (which doesn't appear very solid).

On the whole Shatner is OK, and manages to convey subtly that he and Clare were once lovers.

Columbo actually has a few colleagues in this one, including Walter Koenig.

Columbo: Blueprint for Murder (1972) Season 1, Episode 7

If you like architecture and construction sites...

[9/10 · 3 January 2024]

These detective shows cycle through different worlds and here we are in the world of architecture, with the obligatory futuristic model on a table that we know is going to be swept aside in one arm movement by an angry character.

So this was Peter Falk's one and only attempt at directing? He did a good job. Another commenter complained Columbo was unusually "stiff and stern". I noticed the absence of the "humour" that consists of Columbo being humiliated, or asking "What'd you pay for a pair of shoes like that?" or "Oh, my wife loves modernistic office buildings".

The construction site makes a great background for the action, with muscly extras doing real digging. Oh, just one more thing that bothers me... Columbo is sometimes accompanied by a sergeant, but we never see his office, we never see the police station, we have no sense that he is part of a team - apart from the squad car men we sometimes see when the body's discovered. He doesn't have sidekicks. And where are forensics?

Goldie is a fun character, always dressed in a bit of lamé, but why is she there? She pushes the investigation on, and refuses to believe that Beau is "travelling in Europe and unavailable". This leaves Mrs Williamson to look gullible and dim.

Columbo: Requiem for a Falling Star (1973) Season 2, Episode 5

Good episode

[8/10 · 1 January 2024]

Anne Baxter's ageing movie star has a close relationship with her downtrodden secretary - will she turn out to be an "Eve"?

Baxter is as "Eve"-il as ever - how did she manage not to get petrol on her clothes? Wouldn't the smell be a giveaway?

More oddities about the Columbo character - there's a running gag about him ogling beautiful young girls. But he doesn't seem like that kind of a creep at all. Is it an excuse to show girls in belly dancing outfits (always hanging about on fictional movie lots)? And this is the 70s and we can be broadminded now?

Just one more thing - he is very touchy-feely with suspects. These days he'd never be allowed to paw Miss Chandler, let alone hug her. To me, this jars.

One high point - that awful dog is absent.

Columbo: Étude in Black (1972) Season 2, Episode 1

Good musical episode

[8/10 · 31 December 2023]

These shows, from Perry Mason to Murder She Wrote, take us from competitive chess thru tennis to opera. This is Columbo's classical music episode, and it's not bad.

I'm watching the whole series to catch up on it. Previously I've only seen a few here and there, enjoying the distinguished guest stars, the location shooting, the ingenious methods of murder. Columbo's world is very expansive, with wide shots of luxurious mansions (love those) and, well, the Hollywood Bowl. I love anything set in Los Angeles. I like Columbo's method of noticing the odd details that don't add up.

But... you knew there was going to be a but. No disrespect to Peter Falk, but I don't really "get" the central character. He's treated as a buffoon. He seems constructed out of a kit of parts.

He has an amusing dog. I loathed the scene at the vet's. Not funny.

He has a beat-up car that nobody recognises. Is this funny? I suppose in a world where money is positively worshipped and everybody has to have a new, shiny car this might be funny. I suppose we are meant to enjoy looking at the latest shiny cars but I can't drive and cars mean nothing to me.

He is shabby and his shirt is coming free from his waistband. Is this funny?

Is the big joke that he is working-class among all these successful snobs, and he doesn't seem to notice their status and riches? Is it a comment on their shallowness, etc? That could be funny.

And he talks as if he was eating his moustache. I wish he wouldn't do that, but I've noticed that Americans think it's funny. He probably has what we'd call a "common" accent.

Why does he slump so far that he's looking at the floor? Why does he hold one arm in the air? It's baffling. He sometimes holds his hand over his blind eye - like Nelson showing that he sees far more than you think he could?

He smokes all the time, in ritzy drawing-rooms. Yuk!

But back to this episode. Cassavetes is devilishly handsome - but his head is almost on a level with Columbo's. I get the feeling I'd have towered over him if we met. And he smokes on the actual podium while waving a baton!

Wow, Blythe Danner is pretty. I noticed she was pregnant, too.

I'll go on watching, though, for the reasons stated.