Columbo: No Time to Die

PLOT: The bride of Columbo's nephew (Joanna Going) is kidnapped on their wedding night and Columbo has to find out whodunit before he & his team can track her down and execute a rescue.

COMMENTARY: While several Columbo episodes experiment with the 'Howcatchem' formula, this one and "Undercover" (1994) are the only two to completely abandon it. This can be traced to both scripts being adapted from 87th Precinct mysteries by Ed McBain. Falk & the producers were no doubt getting bored and wanted to experiment with the series. But is "No Time to Die" any good?

As noted, there is no murder at the beginning as usual, but rather a kidnapping. The detective story starts as a Whodunit and eventually turns into a Howcatchem with "can they make it in time" suspense at the close. Actually, the plot doesn't stray from formula as much as "Undercover." The episode simply exchanges a murder at the beginning for a kidnapping. From there Columbo & crew have to sort out the evidence to figure out who the culprit is, locate his whereabouts, and liberate the girl. Some reviewers point out that there's no murder; true, but there is a killing and that's all I'll say on that.

The first time I watched "No Time to Die" I thought it was below average. Maybe because I was turned off by the deviations or perhaps I just wasn't in proper Columbo mode. Seeing it again, I was surprised at how good it is. It's a solid Columbo flick and I appreciated the changes. It's not the same old, same old. It's fresh. And it's superior to the mediocre "Undercover."

GRADE: B

I notice a number of fans have slated this episode of COLUMBO, describing as the worst of all time. I can't help but disagree with them. I've seen plenty of other episodes that were less entertaining on account of them being duller than this one. Cheesy and dated I can cope with; dull is the biggest no-no in my book.

NO TIME TO DIE is one of those 1990s TV movies that attempts to shake up the familiar order by offering twists and a new template for the dogged detective. I wish they hadn't experimented like this - there's no point trying to improve on what was pretty much a perfect formula - but at least it helps NO TIME TO DIE stand out from the crowd. There's no actual murder here but rather a kidnapping for the star to solve.

The episode has a number of problems, a completely ineffectual villain being the biggest of them. However, watching Columbo lead a task force is quite a novel experience, and Falk does well in the part, playing up the humour with physicality in a script that gives him virtually no funny lines. The strong supporting cast includes Doug Savant (TRICK OR TREAT), Donald Moffat (THE THING), and cameos for Juliet Mills and Don Swayze.

Columbo is attending the wedding of his nephew to a budding young model. After the celebrations Columbo is about to head home until he gets paged by nephew Andy who tells him that he came out of the shower to find Melissa missing. Columbo looks around and finds evidence of a kidnapping. He starts investigating further while Andy calls in other officers to help out. Meanwhile, as tensions built between the men, Melissa wakes up bound and gagged in a strange room with her captor planning to make himself her second husband.

If you loved spaghetti bolognese and someone told you that that they were going to make it with potatoes instead of spaghetti then you may rightly say "whoa, slow down chef boy – don't mess with a winning formula". So as a Columbo fan, when one of the films goes way off the usual formula, it gives me pause to worry that perhaps it is not the wisest thing. However, despite knowing this was not a normal episode, I decided to give it a go because just because something is different doesn't mean it isn't any good. The fact that it is different is a problem though – too many characters, no cat and mouse stuff and none of the opportunities for Columbo to be, well, Columbo. It doesn't help either that the story is poor – it is not clever but rather solved by simple, plodding police work; nothing wrong with that but it doesn't make for an interesting film. The cuts to the kidnapped Melissa are no help at all as they rarely have anything approaching tension. I hate to say it but I was genuinely bored by the end of it – it rarely had anything typically Columbo about it and it failed to be what it apparently was aiming to be.

Falk does his best to lift this thing but without any frame of reference his character is a bit lost and his performance isn't up to much. The vast array of supporting characters undermine him and reduce his screen time significantly. Calabro is OK but nothing special while Going is a strange mix – she does "frightened and a bit spooked" quite well but other than that is as expressive as a blank piece of paper. The support features a surprising amount of familiar, if not famous, faces. Don Swayze is a strange find but his one-note psycho with a singsong voice gets old very quickly. The rest are bland but does include Frasier's Bulldog (Butler), Clear Present Danger's President (Moffat), Red For Red October's Davis, baseball player Pierce and the A-Team's LeGault – shame none of them add anything other than a distraction to the dull story.

Overall one of the weakest Columbo films I've seen. It goes miles from formula but offers nothing else of interest in its place. I understand the difficulty for writers to reproduce the same formula every time while also making it fresh and entertaining so I can understand why they tried to do something else. However I cannot fathom why they wanted to jump so far away from it and try to be something completely different. Only one moment really worked for me and that was at the very end when Columbo asked "what time is it", only for the time to be typed on screen as it had been all film – at least it showed that someone was keen to have a laugh and poke some fun at the rather turgid, humourless affair that had gone before.

I agree with most of the Columbo fans that this movie was an unnecessary change of format. Columbo is a unique cop with unorthodox police methods. This movie looks like a remake of any other ordinary detective dramas from the past. And that is the disturbing point, because Columbo is no ordinary detective.

There are two parts in this film that left me intriguing. First, I can't figure out the title of this movie. It is misleading. Maybe a better title would've been "The Vanishing Bride" or something similar. Second, Columbo hides a piece of evidence without offering the reason (to the viewers at least) why he does it.

I don't feel betrayed, just disappointed. I'm glad Peter Falk went back to the usual Columbo.

Granted this was not your normal "Columbo" episode and grant that some of it was far fetched. This made for a very suspenseful kidnapping drama. In that respect it succeeded. Not the greatest Columbo episode made but definitely not the worst.