Month: March 2021

EP3413: The Man Called X: The Laughing Lady

Herbert Marshall
Ken and Pegon go to Sicily to take on the mafia. The only clue they have is the last words of a dying circus performer.

Original Air Date: September 26, 1948
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EP3412: The Fat Man: Murder Shows an Unfamiliar Face (AU)


Brad picks up a young woman hitchhiking and agrees to search for her missing father.

Original Air Date: March 3, 1955

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EP3411: Casey, Crime Photographer: Pick Up

Stats Cotsworth

A woman meets Casey in a bar and offers him information on the killing of a jockey…in exchange for $10,000.
Original Air Date: May 22, 1947
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Season 5 Ep 25 Federal Men Treasury Men in Action

Video Theater 200: Treasury Men in Action: The Case of the Deadly Dilemma

A Treasury Agent (Charles Bronson) wants to get in good with a criminal and gets an opportunity…if he performs a hit job.

Original Air Date: March 24, 1958

Season 5, Episode 25

Audio Drama Review: Black Jack Justice, Season Nine

Season Nine of Black Jack Justice sees Jack (Christopher Mott) and Trixie Dixon (Andrea Lyons) back for six more investigations. The ninth season continues the same high standard. It offers everything you come to expect: The opening monologue that introduces a well-worn aphorism as a basis for the case, the clever banter, and the solid mystery stories you come to expect.

Jack’s status as a newly married man has a small impact on the series. Had there been romantic tension between the two lead characters, it would have been much more major. However, unlike in most detective fiction, where statements of contempt hide passionate love, the statements of contempt between Jack and Trixie reflected that they didn’t much like each other personally but had a good working relationship. However, Jack’s mood is less dour than in past seasons as he’s enjoying conjugal bliss. One episode, “Home for the Holidays” saw Jack getting involved in solving a crime in a small town so Jack could get home to his wife.

The series had limited appearances from the recurring guest cast. Jack’s wife is seen and not heard after appearing in the previous two seasons. King the office dog and Freddy the Finger are far less present than in previous seasons.

The episodes are all good. I particularly liked the contrast between the last two episodes of the season. In “The Big Time,” Jack and Trixie get an unexpected opportunity to take on a big case for an insurance company with a big payoff. This is followed by, “The Learner’s Permit” where they agree to help a writer do research for his new detective story, and then bungle their way into a murder investigation where they should be able to tell the police everything needed to solve the case and provide photographic evidence, but instead have bungled it so badly that someone else has to step in and solve the case. Creating a contrast between a high water mark and one of their most embarrassing moments business is a clever take by writer Gregg Taylor.

While I did miss some of the recurring characters, this was still a fun listen. If you enjoyed any of the past Black Jack Justice seasons, Season 9 is well-worth listening to.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

Black Jack Justice Season 9 is available to listen to for free at Decoder Ring Theatre.

EP3410: The Silent Men: Heroin Source X


A Narcotics Bureau special agent travels to Turkey to find a source of heroin coming to the U.S.

Original Air Date: November 18, 1951

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EP3409: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Douglas Taylor Matter

Edmond O'Brien
When a private detective working for Johnny is murdered, Johnny ends up being drawn into the investigation in order to protect the insurance case he and the murdered detective were investigating.
Original AIr Date:October 6, 1951

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EP3408: Mystery is My Hobby: Tov Morelli, Bank Robber


Barton Drake matches wits with a child-killing bank-robber whose holding a police officer hostage at a snow-bound rural home.

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EP3407: Man Called X: Madagascar Physicist

Herbert Marshall
Ken and Pegon travel to Madgascar to help rescue an atomic physicist on the verge of a great story from an unscrupulous gangster.

Original Air Date: September 19, 1948
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EP3406: The Fat Man: Murder by Mail (AU)


A woman from the country hires Brad to find her missing brother who disappeared and took all the money out of their joint checking account.
Original Air Date: February 10, 1955
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EP3405: Casey, Crime Photographer: The Laughing Killer

Stats Cotsworth

A band leader who was convicted of manslaughter is out of jail and drunk. Casey takes him home, only to find the bandleader is wanted for murder.

Original Air Date: May 8, 1947

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EP3404s: Voyage of the Scarlet Queen: Queen Anne Pistols and the Dealer on King George Road and Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Queen Anne Pistols Matter (Twice Told Tale)

Captain Philip Kearney is hired to deliver a set of Queen Anne Pistols to a gun dealer when the Scarlet Queen is in port in Australia.
Original Air Date: February 18, 1948
Johnny is called in to deliver a pair of highly insured Queen Anne Pistols to a Gun Dealer in Boston.
Original Air Date: November 4, 1950

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EP3404: The Silent Men: The Transatlantic Push


Two treasury agents head Europe to bust a criminal who took the life savings of a Holocaust survivor and exchanged it for counterfeit U.S. currency.
Original Air Date: November 11, 1951
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Four Difference Between the Original and Later Columbos

Columbo in the 70s
Columbo 90s

Note: A version of this article was published in 2015.

Peter Falks had two runs as Columbo. The first ran from 1971-78 over NBC as part of the network’s Mystery Wheel. Columbo returned in 1989 over ABC in a series of TV movies, with the last airing in 2003.

There were four key differences between the newer Columbo films and the originals:

1) Length

Most of the original Columbo films had a 90 minute time slot on air which made them about 70-75 minutes without commercials. The new Columbo films took up 2 hours and had a running time of approximately 90 minutes. I have to admit, in general, this was a case of “less is more.”

One key example was the second ABC Columbo, “Murder, Smoke, and Shadows” where the film started strong but dragged on too long and at the end of Columbo’s denouement we had (and I kid you not), the police coming out and doing a musical number when they announced the arrest.

The old Columbos worked because of their limitations. They didn’t go on forever, and when there was a longer case thrown in such as with, “A Friend Indeed,” the time was well-spent while the only new film that I think benefited from the longer running time was, “Agenda for Murder.”

2) More Adult Content

Columbo in the 1970s remains a tasteful family-friendly TV show. The latter Columbo had a lot more sex in the plot and a lot more skin on the screen. A few episodes featured lurid plots and disturbing murder scenes. Of course, this isn’t to say that all of the latter Columbos were strictly adult affairs but quite a few pushed the envelope.

With one exception, the added sexual content and violence tended to detract rather than add to Columbo. At its core, the strength of Columbo are great characters and their interactions, and the episodes that had the most adult content such as, “Uneasy Lies the Crown” and “Murder: A Self Portrait” tended to sacrifice quality for titillation. If there was an episode that seemed more “grown up” that did work, it was, “It’s All in the Game” starring Faye Dunaway as a suspect who is trying to seduce Columbo to keep him off her trail but that works because of the character interactions.

3) More Experimentation

Of the forty-four 1970s Columbo films, only one messed with the formula of Columbo being an inverted mystery (Season 5’s “Last Salute to the Commodore.”) Of the twenty-four revived shows, there were half a dozen different attempts to break with the formula. These variations ranged from following the killer up to the point of the murder and finding someone else had already committed the murder, not showing the murder and then planting doubt as to the killer’s guilt, and then there were two adaptations of Ed McBain novels.

“Last Salute to the Commodore” was one of my two least favorite 1970s episodes, but some of these later experiments aren’t too bad. “Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo” begins with the funeral of “Mrs. Columbo” and is told through flashback from the point of view of a woman seeking revenge on the good Lieutenant by murdering his wife. The McBain novel adaptation, Undercover” is a fine thriller if you can get past the fact Columbo’s behavior is inconsistent with everything we know of the character. “Columbo Cries Wolf” also had some good moments,.

The other three are more problematic, but not for messing with the formula. Still, while some of the revived Columbos that go in other directions can be entertaining, they still can’t beat the best of the “normal” Columbo episodes.

4) Less Star Quality

The original Columbo was known for the amazing casting. Among the actors who played Columbo murderers in the old days were Anne Baxter, Robert Culp, Leonard Nimoy, Roddy McDowell, Martin Landau, Dick Van Dyke, Patrick McGoohan, Ricardo Montalban, Ruth Gordon, and so many more. Peter Falk was a fantastic actor and had great chemistry with so many guest stars and that chemistry made the 1970s episodes so memorable.

The new series had a virtual power outage, particularly in 1989 and 1990. Of the first eleven villains, the only actor in Falk’s league was McGoohan. The second best of the group was Fisher Stevens. That’s a big gap.

The series did get better guest stars between 1991-94 when Columbo cut back from 4-6 films a year to between 2 and 3 films. The results were among the best of the new run as Faye Dunaway was nominated for both an Emmy and a Golden Glove for her appearance. Dabney Coleman, George Hamilton, and Rip Torn turned in memorable and satisfying performances in their turns against Columbo.

Of course, not even a good guest star could save some films. A mustached William Shatner is miscast in Butterfly in Shades of Grey. Tyne Daley did the best she could with a fairly stereotypical flirty lush role in A Bird in the Hand but deserved far better as a Columbo villainess.

Conclusion

There did seem to be a fair share more stories in the later years that strained credulity in terms of motive or were plain derivative (i.e. “Strange Bedfellows.”)

Yet, the one thing that remained the same was Peter Falk. Some episodes felt like the only thing good in the movie was Columbo but almost always that still made it worth watching. There’s so much in every moment when Falk’s on the screen that he can carry the show by himself which was a good thing because he often had to.

By almost every measure, ABC’s Columbo was an inferior product to its predecessor, but it provided two dozen opportunities to see Peter Falk in action as his greatest character and that makes most of them worth viewing.

You can watch the 1970s episodes of Columbo on IMBD TV and all episodes of the series are available for viewing on Peacock.

EP3403: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Protection Matter

Edmond O'Brien

Johnny investigates an incendiary fire, and finds it’s tied into a protection racket.
Original Air Date: September 26, 1951

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