8-Foot

I've shared the prior lamentations that "Oliver's Travels" was neither available on home video nor, to my knowledge, had it been repeated on PBS. Now, try AcornOnline--dot--you-know-what or, alternately, see the Amazon listing (less $$) for March 2005 delivery.

This miniseries is a delightful, skillful blend of humor, mystery, suspense, intrigue, crime, romance, history, and travelogue. Crosswords and anagrams also figure as important plot elements. (Oliver can make an anagram out of almost anything but his own name.)

At the story's center is a villainous multinational corporation which has sucked many of the characters into its vortex. Although details of this operation remain vague and shadowy to the end, the conclusion is nonetheless satisfying.

The "Travels" concluded in the Orkney Islands, and by then, I was ready to hop on the next plane to there.

So enjoyable on many levels! Absolutely first rate!

This departure from the basic Columbo script works out well, for once. For reasons not revealed here, Columbo's singular murder suspect has to be dropped from consideration. From then on, the show becomes more like a classical whodunit. After some twists and turns, the conclusion has Columbo in a room full of potential culprits, smoking out the guilty one. Columbo is as clever, adept, and at home with this tactic as in his usual one-on-one battles. And there's no skimping on the touches that make "Columbo" a unique and special detective show.

Columbo is guest lecturer for a criminology class. The students invite him along for their after-class get-together. Transiting the nearby parking garage, they discover their regular teacher, next to his car, dead from a gunshot wound. (No, Columbo was not after the man's job.) As a class project, Columbo involves the students in his sleuthing.

Two students, tentatively identified by the viewer as culprits, were in the lecture hall for the entire class. Furthermore, surveillance camera tapes of the parking garage show that no one other than the professor entered or left after he was last seen unexpectedly departing the lecture hall.

Reversing the normal routine, Columbo is the one that is pestered by the evil (?) duo, eager for progress reports and an ear for their theories. Forensic evidence is almost nonexistent. Solution of the case hinges on some eventual and interesting good luck.

On first viewing, it seemed that Columbo had swallowed whole the culprits' misdirection; however, on repeat viewing, small details revealed that not to have been the case at all.

This reviewer has yet to tire of "Columbo Goes to College."