Schleichendes Gift

This is one of the better second generation Columbos. The murder is ingenious and the murderer is more intelligent than many others in the later Colombos. He doesn't make any careless mistakes and if not for his arrogance in thinking he couldn't be caught, probably would have gotten away with it. James Read plays a charming and sophisticated villain. It's a pleasure to watch him spar with Colombo and to see his mounting irritation as Columbo keeps turning up as the proverbial bad penny ("uh, just one more thing, sir..."). The cameos by the murderer's poker buddies are a nice treat. Columbo's solution is equally fun and ingenious.

Dentist Wesley Corman works for his father-in-law's firm and has wasted a small fortune of his in-law's money on business ventures and bad gambling. However his luck has run out – his wife is cheating on him and is planning a divorce while his father-in-law is planning to call in all Wesley's debts. Desperate for a way out he calls in his patient (and his wife's lover) Adam Evans and sets something inside his crown. Later that night, while he is at a poker game, the poison in the crown breaks out and kills him in the arms of Lydia Corman. Wesley comes to the rescue, taking the body out on the road and making it look like an accident – naturally his in-laws appreciate his discretion to protect his wife and all is forgiven. However Columbo gets assigned the case and a grain of salt, an empty stomach and some blue blotches are all it takes to lead him back to the Cormans with a lot of questions.

As with many TV film series (such as Perry Mason), if you like one or two of them then you'll pretty much like them all. This entry in the Columbo series pretty much follows the usual formula – we know the killer and the "perfect" plan but then watch Columbo follow his hunch and gradually starts to pick holes in the story he is told before eventually finding enough to prove his suspicions. Knowing this ahead of time won't ruin anything for you; it is simply what happens in all the films. With this strict adherence to formula it is usually simple enough for the series to do the business although I have had my fingers burnt with some of the "new" Columbo's. With a solid pun of a title and a world that Columbo is a stranger to (dentistry) things looked OK but it is a foundation that the story can't build on that well. The plot steps away from the classic cat'n'mouse game, retaining only an element of that if favour of more of a general investigation. This works better than I suspected but the unlikely plot undermines it a bit just because a lot of it doesn't ring true – Corman's office being empty of staff, his in-laws doing a 180 so easily, the crown idea working as well as it is; all these are things that take a leap of faith that sometimes the material can't make.

The cast are mixed. Falk is on pretty good form, not quite his best but he doesn't look as old as other "new" films and he comes across as a bit sharper. Read is a bit bland and doesn't quite match up to Columbo, so it is perhaps in his favour that the film only turns to cat and mouse in the final third. The support cast is so-so, some nice characters like Columbo's dentist and Gilborn's George but the family is not that great. There are some "star" cameos from people like Walker and Sargent as themselves at a poker game – I didn't care about them so much as I was annoyed by the guy doing impressions at the game, he is just the sort of w*nker that you wouldn't want at a game! The game itself though provides a nice touch where it is contrasted and intercut with Mrs Corman panicking.

Overall a solid Columbo despite the problems with the plot. The cast aren't anything special but the story moves along well and Falk in on good form. Not up to the standard of the original series' then but it stands up for itself with the lesser "new" episodes.

PLOT: A charismatic dentist with a gambling problem (James Read) concocts a clever way to murder his wife's movie star lover and frame her (Jo Anderson), but Columbo finds flaws in the elaborate scheme. Paul Burke plays the senior partner father-in-law in his final role.

COMMENTARY: The script was originally written in 1973 by Steven Bochco for the third season of Columbo, but Falk felt the villain was weak. So the teleplay was later used for the penultimate episode of McMillan & Wife, "Affair of the Heart" (1977). Obviously Falk changed his mind by the time this episode was shot, but he was unaware that it was used for McMillan a dozen years earlier.

While the murder scheme is a little too creative (i.e. farfetched), this installment is as good as any typical segment of the 70's show and plot-wise is reminiscent of "A Stitch in Crime" (1973), which may be an additional reason why Falk rejected it at the time. It's not great like "Stitch" because it's 24 minutes longer and contains some padding, but it's still a very good episode. Redhead Anderson is strikingly lovely.

GRADE: B+

A substantially plotted and scripted 1990 Columbo episode penned by prolific writer Steven Bochco, which sees a debt-ridden, gambling dentist murder his wife's lover, by putting an overdose of a heart condition drug in the crown he puts in for him and then frames his wife, who is filing for divorce and also possesses a tragic marital history.

The murder set-up is fine, the story holds together very well, but it isn't particularly well-paced despite the deft development of clues which shift the focus of the investigation from the murderer's wife to murderer. Moreover, the story deserves more gritty and assured performances than we evidence, particularly from James Read as the murderer, who, for me, shamefully underacts in his relatively juicy role. Consequently, his scenes with Columbo, which should have possessed a mesmerising ferocity, instead only generate mild entertainment, which unfortunately deflects from the proficient elements of the storyline (just think what Jack Cassidy or Robert Culp could have done with the material!).

Very passable stuff for a new Columbo series that was trying feverishly to get somewhere near the quality of the original series, and in terms of storyline they get very close here. Sadly, the performances from the supporting cast don't really get the best out of the material.

One of the better of the later Columbo movies has James Read as a most prominent dentist with a gambling problem being cheated on by wife Jo Anderson with movie star Marshall Teague and also being kicked out of the practice by father-in-law Paul Burke.

Using the knowledge of his profession Read concocts a scheme to kill the lover and frame the wife for the crime. Read is one cocky and arrogant suspect as he plays the role of the wronged husband standing by his wife.

To show how prominent Read is with the prominent people there's a nice scene here with a poker party with several of his patients playing themselves. They include Dick Sargent, Nancy Walker, and Dodger great 3rd baseman Ron Cey. Read is losing there and he likes to bet frequently on slow horses.

In fact it's at the track where Peter Falk confronts him even still not quite having put it together.

Read's one of Columbo's best villains, the ones you really love seeing tripped up.