Wed 5 Jul 2023
A TV PI Mystery Episode Review: BARNABY JONES “To Catch a Dead Man†(1973).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[9] Comments
BARNABY JONES “To Catch a Dead Man.†CBS. 04 February 1973. (Season One, Episode Two.) Buddy Ebsen , Lee Meriwether. Guest cast: Janice Rule, Darleen Carr, Victoria Shaw, William Shatner. A Quinn Martin Production. Directed by William Hale. Currently streaming on Amazon and (for free), on YouTube. [See below.]
It’s almost a given that everyone of a certain age reading this will know the basic premise of this vintage almost geriatric PI series from the mid-1970s. (Buddy Ebsen was 65 when the show started, and it lasted for most of eight years.) In the first episode (this is the second) Barnaby Jones care out of retirement as a PI to find the man who murdered his son Hal. Teaming up with him is another private eye, a man by the name of Frank Cannon, also of some TV fame, who was a friend of his son.
By the end of the episode Barnaby has decided to go back into the PI business again, assisted by his son’s widow, Betty (Lee Meriwether), as his devoted secretary.
In “To Catch a Dead Man” Barnaby is hired by a young girl whose boy friend has disappeared. I don’t consider it giving away anything to tell you that the boy friend is dead, killed in a boat explosion caused by a millionaire (William Shatner) who would like the world to believe the man in the boat was him. In the meantime, he has hunkered down in a fishing resort area with his current girl friend.
What follows is, well, we the viewers following along with Barnaby as he painstakingly puts the clues together to solve the case, with a continual twinkle in his eye and a knowing grin. I only watched the show on and off over the years when it was on, but until someone can tell me otherwise, I assume that this was the pattern for all of Barnaby’s investigations from this point on.
As enjoyable as this episode is, and in all honesty, based only on this episode, it seems unlikely that Buddy Ebsen’s folksy charm as an actor would be able to carry the series for as long as it did, but on the other hand, it certainly seems to have done.
July 6th, 2023 at 7:18 am
An impression. This series is pathetic compared to Mannix and Cannon.
I did like a few episodes:
A Gold Record for Murder
Rendezvous with Terror
July 6th, 2023 at 8:56 am
I will have to watch a few more episodes from here and there in the series before I make a final decision, but I liked this one more than I was expecting to.
But no, in comparison to either CANNON or MANNIX, I don’t think BARNABY JONES will become a retroactive “must see.”
July 6th, 2023 at 3:26 pm
Just watched this.
It is indeed better than I expected.
This combines missing persons mystery, with inverted mystery.
A Gold Record for Murder has inverted aspects.
Rendezvous with Terror has missing person.
July 6th, 2023 at 8:34 pm
Is this not cozy in the Agatha Christie tradition of say, Murder Is Easy? Watchable, but without an edge. No danger, no sex. These things are there but only alluded to.
July 7th, 2023 at 1:06 pm
Barry
I have been thinking about that, but in reverse fashion. Trying to assign a number to BARNABY JONES on my HB (hardboiled) scale, the best I could do was 1 or 2 (out of 10). Assuming that HB and cozies are polar opposites, that would make its coziness factor 8 or 9. Sounds right.
It certainly matches your definition of a cost: ” Watchable, but without an edge. No danger, no sex.”
July 7th, 2023 at 10:04 am
It depends which BARNABY JONES episode you watch. The first two seasons are excellent with strong mysteries, hissable villains, and a shrewd performance by Ebsen probably inspired a bit by Falk’s Columbo, in that Jones’ specialty is getting his foes to underestimate him.
The next two seasons are pretty good, but not as clever as the first two seasons. Seasons 5 & 6 (the first with Mark Shera joining the cast) are mediocre, and the series starts to rotate focus between Ebsen, Meriwether, and Shera.
The final two seasons are fairly bad. The show rarely uses top-notch directors anymore, and Ebsen is visibly bored in most of his scenes. To cut down on his workload, he barely appears in many episodes, which are still designed to focus on Meriwether 1/3 of the time and Shera 1/3 of the time.
July 7th, 2023 at 1:09 pm
Thank you, Marty. This is exactly what I was hoping someone would tell me in the comments. A season by season progression of what was going on in the series. Sounds like the usual decline of a popular show, only worse.
July 7th, 2023 at 11:16 pm
I know it can’t have been true, but it seemed as if every episode had Jones having to climb a long staircase in some building urgently and the suspense rose from wondering if he would make it up those stairs.
November 28th, 2023 at 5:35 pm
There is another reason why the first couple of seasons are better. Amazon Prime is showing a mixture of the (restored?) network prints and syndication prints which were cut by 5 minutes. The first season consists of 51 minute prints, the second season has eleven 51 minute prints and fifteen 46 minute prints. As the seasons progress, complete network prints are a rare exception.