Thu 7 Aug 2014
A TV Review by Michael Shonk: COLUMBO “Undercover” (1994).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[16] Comments
“Undercover.” From the COLUMBO series. ABC/Universal TV, 2 May 1994. Starring Peter Falk as Columbo. Teleplay by Gerry Day. Based on story by Ed McBain. Produced and Directed by Vincent McEveety. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link. Executive Producer: Peter Falk. Producer: Christopher Seiter. Guest Cast: Ed Begley Jr, Burt Young, Harrison Page, Shera Danese, Tyne Daly.
Sorry for the commercial interruptions on this YouTube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbfSGOX_wQU
OK, who is this character posing as Columbo? Where is the inverted mystery? The real Columbo, one properly dressed in his car with his dog does not arrive on screen until the final scene. Until then this imposter works in a police station where he shares a desk with his partner, needs his Captain’s approval to take the case, goes undercover, carries a gun and gets knocked out by the bad guy in this average TV mystery.
And the most unforgiving flaw with this cop show posing as a Columbo episode, was I knew who the killer was while Columbo believed it was another suspect. We expect more from Columbo.
After a man is murdered by someone searching for a piece of a photograph, the alleged Columbo goes undercover searching for the killer and the photograph that would lead to the location of the missing four million dollars from a botched bank robbery.
The acting, directing and production values were up to usual Columbo standards. The script by Gerry Day (Wagon Train, Dennis the Menace, Murder She Wrote) had its moments such as when one character described Burt Young’s character as looking like that guy from Rocky. But there was nothing about this episode that made it special enough to abandon the series premise of the inverted mystery or the main character’s methods.
Columbo does a story by Ed McBain, master of the police procedurals! There are so many things wrong with that sentence.
The McBain book adapted here was Jigsaw (1970). This and the episode “No Time to Die” (adapted from McBain’s book So Long As You Both Shall Live (1976) and was the only COLUMBO episode without a murder) were the only Columbo episodes not originally written for the series. Both books were from McBain’s 87th Precinct book series.
This episode is also available on DVD (Mystery Movie Collection: 1994-2003).
SOURCE: The Ultimate Columbo Site.
August 7th, 2014 at 10:38 pm
At what point did this sound like a good Columbo episode?
August 7th, 2014 at 11:52 pm
Some genius thought lets take a great crime writer and great crime TV series and put them together. Two greats together, how can it fail?
It was as if watching a GAMES OF THRONE story done for THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW.
You did notice Peter Falk was executive producer.
August 8th, 2014 at 12:58 am
The problem with this particular film was that the inverted crime was so much a part of the COLUMBO format that by removing it you rip out the heart of the show. It’s like an episode of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE where, instead of tricking the bad guy into destroying himself, they simply get a sniper and kill him in the first two minutes.
August 8th, 2014 at 7:01 am
Well, so late in the day and perhaps inevitably there are going to be attempts to tinker with the formula. However, in the case of DOUBLE SHOCK and LAST SALUTE TO THE COMMODORE, both of which unexpectedly become whodunits, this felt like a clever variation that added somethign new without damaging the formula. In my view the same goes for RIP MRS COLUMBO, which also takes a few liberties (but less than it at first seems). Falk acknowledged that the McBain adaptation were controversial in, of all places, an episode of the sitcom THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW but the discussion, as I recall, got derailed by Jeremy Piven’s derriere. UNDERCOVER and NO TIME DIE could work, but sadly they don’t – which is a shame, but then COLUMBO did set the bar very high!
August 8th, 2014 at 9:47 am
3. Bradstreet, you are right every TV series has a theme, abandoning the theme of a self-contained episode rarely works. We didn’t watch COLUMBO to see a story better suited for MCCLOUD.
The best scene in the episode was the one tacked on to the end. A pointless (and expensive to film) scene where they recover the loot, but having the independent arrival and exit of Columbo, the real Columbo with his dog, in his special car, and finally dressed properly, was like a special note reassuring the fans that the Columbo they loved still lived.
August 8th, 2014 at 10:07 am
4. Sergio, you are right, after so many years creative people tend to take a risk – if only to relieve the boredom. But certain parts of any successful drama is like a running gag in a comedy sacred to the audience. TV dramas can get away with taking risks with stories but not changing its characters. Dropping the inverted mystery could have worked but the changes in the character of Columbo, especially his lack of normal independence, was fatal. The scenes in the police station had me screaming for the Columbo I had come to watch.
UNDERCOVER and NO TIME TO DIE have worked as McBain’s novels and in countless cop shows, it was the character Columbo that did not work.
I wonder what other form of mystery (besides inverted and police procedural) would work for the character Columbo?
August 8th, 2014 at 1:37 pm
Although he is nominally a police officer, Columbo is really a Great Detective in the Gideon Fell/Father Brown mold. In order to make him work in a Police Procedural, you have to make so many changes that he isn’t really Columbo anymore. William Link’s THE COLUMBO COLLECTION has one tale which, as well as being an inverted , is also a disappearing weapon story. This makes me feel that the character could also work within an impossible crime scenario, although to move him from the inverted genre is to move him from the setting for which he is designed.
August 8th, 2014 at 2:08 pm
BRADSTREET, I like the Father Brown comparison. I had been trying to think of a great writer of books that could create a story where Columbo would fit. Traditional writers seem to get closer than the hardboiled one. Columbo in Christies “Ten Little Indians” vs Hammett’s “Maltese Falcon.”
One would think a crime story featuring the “bulldog-like” cop who never stops pursuing the serial killer might work. The serial killer is a sub-genre that can have the killer known to the audience/readers from the beginning and it is the actions of the detective/hero (or villain as anti-hero) that makes the story work.
Who cares about Superman vs Batman, I want to see Columbo vs Hannibal Lecter.
August 8th, 2014 at 3:34 pm
Relatively early in the series, certainly well before this, they did an episode on a cruise ship with Robert Vaughn where Columbo has the wrong killer in his sites for much of the episode (Vaughn well cast because it would occur to no one Robert Vaughn was innocent of anything). That is a clever variation.
This isn’t clever, it feels and plays desperate. As Michael says Colombo is no more a real policeman than Rory Alleyn or John Appleby and suddenly trying to turn him into Steve Carella or HILL STREET BLUES is not going to work. No real police department would have put up with Columbo — how would he ever have gotten through uniform patrol? You don’t start as plainclothes, those gold badges are earned.
You can’t suddenly inject Ellery Queen or Hercule Poirot into the real world anymore than you could have Sam Spade in an English country manor solving an impossible crime.
The problem here is Dey wasn’t Levinson and Link and Columbo wasn’t Columbo. As an independent cop film with the same cast it would be better, but here it’s as if Chuck Jones had let the Coyote capture and eat the Road Runner.
August 8th, 2014 at 7:15 pm
It’s telling that Levinson and Link specified that Columbo was never to be seen at his desk or discussing his cases with his boss. He is all the more scary for not being an ordinary, working policeman. He’s always reminded me of the cartoon character Droopy: the bad guy locks himself behind a hundred doors, swallows the key, dives into the cellar and locks himself in a safe…but just when he thinks that he’s safe, he turns around and Droopy’s there!
August 8th, 2014 at 8:23 pm
In 1977 (its last season), McMillan (without wife) did an episode titled “Affair Of The Heart”, an “open form” mystery about a society dentist played by Larry Hagman, who murdered a guy and tried to frame his wealthy wife for it.
In 1990 (its second ABC season), Columbo did an episode titled “Uneasy Lies The Crown”, an “open form” mystery about a society dentist played by James Read, who murdered a guy and tried to frame his wealthy wife for it.
Coincidence?
Plagiarism?
The ghost of “W. Hermanos” at Universal City?
Steven Bochco was the credited writer of both scripts; it wouldn’t have been hard for him (he was an early contributor to both series) if U-TV had simply called him in and said “Hey Steve, you remember that McMillan you did about the dentist? Think you could turn that into a Columbo? We’re dry this week.”
For precedent, see the whole history of TV (special reference to “W. Hermanos” above.
I spotted this pair a few years back when MeTV was running McMillan on Sunday afternoons; I remembered the very similar Columbo from the ABC run. Once I had DVDs of both shows to check, all the rest fell into place.
Over the weekend I’ll pull the DVDs and double check.
What was Universal-TV thinking when they tried to turn an 87th Precinct story into a Columbo film?
Something like “Standard Operating Procedure”, most likely.
August 9th, 2014 at 1:00 am
In one of the DVD box sets of the Roger Moore THE SAINT series, there is an amusing little anecdote about writer Terry Nation. He had written for the Roger Moore series, and then found himself script-editor on THE BARON with Steve Forrest. Needing a story double quick, he decided to just dust down one of his old Saint episodes, change the names, and turn it into an adventure of The Baron. Everything, even the dialogue, was pretty much the same. All went well….until both episodes of both series were shown back to back on the same American television channel. Even THE AVENGERS reused episodes from the black and white video era when they moved into colour. In the era before commercially available video and DVD it was not looked on as in any way unusual.
August 10th, 2014 at 12:04 pm
TV, like the old pulps, is a glutton with an endless appetite for content. In TV, the joke goes, plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. Another form of the thought is you know you are a success in Hollywood when someone sues you for stealing their idea.
What is odd about COLUMBO, was it had more time than the usual weekly American series. This episode aired in May 1994. For the entire 1993-94 season only three COLUMBO episodes aired. A lack of time was not to blame when the series aired at a random times. The problem that plagued COLUMBO from the beginning was there are very few great writers and even fewer who can master the inverted mystery. During its time on ABC COLUMBO was past its prime and showed it.
December 10th, 2020 at 9:59 pm
This was the wierdest and strangest Columbo episode. I’ve loved Columbo but had never seen this one. I wish I could still say that because nothing made sense. Columbo undercover? Serial killers? Finding puzzle pieces? It was just too contrived and had none of the endearing qualities of Columbo.
May 11th, 2022 at 12:35 pm
Belatedly:
There’s a book that came out last year: Shooting Columbo, by David Koenig (Bonaventure Press), which contains much of the inside skinny about the production of both series (NBC and ABC).
Herein, Peter Falk comes across as kind of oblivious to the daily practicalities of making even a limited series: endlessly demanding rewrites, calling for constant retakes, creating delays, and so forth.
Here’s a digest version of the Dentist show:
Steven Bochco originally wrote it as a Columbo, for Season 4 on NBC.
What happened was that Peter Falk didn’t want to do a show about a dentist, so the then-producers
quickly substituted the sea cruise show.
Meanwhile, Bochco got back his dentist script and rewrote it into a McMillan, as noted above.
Fast-forward to 1990 and ABC:
Falk is now in total control; he’s scanning the mothball files for stuff he might have missed from the earlier run.
Seeing Bochco’s name on the old dentist script, Falk figures that maybe it might work after all.
He puts several other writers to work tweaking the show, and Presto! – a whole new Columbo!
As Koenig’s book indicates, this wasn’t Peter Falk’s only bad idea about Columbo.
Up above, somebody wondered “Who ever thought that adapting Ed McBain books into Columbo episodes was a good idea?”
Koenig IDs the culprit: Peter Falk himself.
Though he hadn’t read any of the 87th Precinct books, the idea of doing something different appealed to him (according to the book, he had encouragement from his crony Patrick McGoohan), and off they all went.
By Koenig’s account, almost every Columbo that misfired can be laid to bad judgments by Peter Falk (coupled by his own intransigence during production).
Shooting Columbo is about 240 pages, plus index and notes; there’s a lot in here that die-hard fans might rather not know about Falk’s darker moments – but I’m guessing that the clientele around here can stand up to it all.
May 11th, 2022 at 12:40 pm
I think everyone here is at least mildly interested in what went on behind the scenes for most movies and tv shows. Thanks, Mike!