If you enjoy the Columbo series at all, you ought to like this one. There's a bit less comedy built around the central character -- really only one incident that takes place in Chasen's, a fashionable and expensive restaurant in L.A. But the plot is pretty good, though full of the usual lacunae.
Jack Cassidy is the supercilious heavy this time and he's real snotty too, as Riley Greenleaf of Greenleaf Press. I wonder if this was intended as a kind of joke. At the moment, there is a Greenleaf Press, evidently a Catholic publishing house that brings out titles like, "Ancient Rome for Children." But in the 1970s, when this was filmed, there was another real Greenleaf Press that was probably the most prominent publisher of pornographic novels in the decade. I know this because I once was thinking of dashing off a book for them. It was only the kernel of an idea at the time. I hadn't got past the title, "Peggy's Sexcess," but then I found that they paid only two cents a word -- not enough to cover the cost of the typing paper. Well, they were infra dig anyhow.
The story is a little complicated, with a secondary villain (Chandler) the repugnance of whose reptilian sneer exceeds even that of Cassidy. A genuine factory reject whose greatest thrill comes from blowing things up. I imagine there are times when all of us know how he feels, but still -- The recently deceased Mickey Spillane has a small part as a murder victim who is the author of what someone calls "tripe". Spillane was a beefy sort of guy. I think he played a lead in a movie based on one of his own novels. Unfortunately, though he looks fine, kind of Hemingwayesque, he can't act. Compared to him, Norman Mailer is Richard Burbage.
The episode isn't outstanding in any way but that's okay, because it embodies all the things that made Columbo so popular a show on TV. It's pretty good.
Jack Cassidy is the supercilious heavy this time and he's real snotty too, as Riley Greenleaf of Greenleaf Press. I wonder if this was intended as a kind of joke. At the moment, there is a Greenleaf Press, evidently a Catholic publishing house that brings out titles like, "Ancient Rome for Children." But in the 1970s, when this was filmed, there was another real Greenleaf Press that was probably the most prominent publisher of pornographic novels in the decade. I know this because I once was thinking of dashing off a book for them. It was only the kernel of an idea at the time. I hadn't got past the title, "Peggy's Sexcess," but then I found that they paid only two cents a word -- not enough to cover the cost of the typing paper. Well, they were infra dig anyhow.
The story is a little complicated, with a secondary villain (Chandler) the repugnance of whose reptilian sneer exceeds even that of Cassidy. A genuine factory reject whose greatest thrill comes from blowing things up. I imagine there are times when all of us know how he feels, but still -- The recently deceased Mickey Spillane has a small part as a murder victim who is the author of what someone calls "tripe". Spillane was a beefy sort of guy. I think he played a lead in a movie based on one of his own novels. Unfortunately, though he looks fine, kind of Hemingwayesque, he can't act. Compared to him, Norman Mailer is Richard Burbage.
The episode isn't outstanding in any way but that's okay, because it embodies all the things that made Columbo so popular a show on TV. It's pretty good.