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The case

The killer

Patrick McGoohan as Oscar Finch

The victim

Louis Zorich as Frank Staplin

Guest cast

Patrick McGoohan, Louis Zorich, Kirk Thornton, Arthur Hill, Bruce Kirby, Anne Haney

Columbo is an inverted mystery: the murder opens the film and the killer is known from the first minutes. What you are watching for is how he proves it — see how the character works.

5:53

The murder

Oscar Finch is a celebrated attorney about to be appointed to high federal office. Frank Staplin, a former client, has evidence that Finch fabricated an alibi in an old case — the sort of thing that ends an appointment and a career together.

Finch shoots him in his office and stages a suicide, right down to the note. The plan is professionally excellent: he understands exactly what a prosecutor would need, and he has removed all of it in advance.

The only slip is domestic. Before the killing, Finch ate from a cheese board in the office, and took the trouble to remove the wedge with his bite mark in it. He did not think about what remained.

Finch's whole life is arranged around the appointment that is about to be announced. He is a defence attorney of national reputation, he has spent decades building an unimpeachable record, and the federal post is the reward for all of it.

Frank Staplin was a client, and in defending him Finch fabricated an alibi. Staplin has kept the proof and has now decided to use it — not for money but because he is being prosecuted again and wants leverage.

The murder is executed with a lawyer's understanding of what a prosecution needs. Finch shoots him in his office, types a suicide note on Staplin's own machine, arranges the body and the weapon correctly, and removes everything a case would be built from. Then he goes home and waits to be appointed.

How Columbo gets him

McGoohan and Falk are extraordinary together here — their fourth collaboration and clearly the most comfortable. Finch is polite, amused, entirely unbothered, and the duel is conducted almost as a courtesy between two men who both know how it ends.

Columbo's problem is that everything about the scene supports suicide. So he stops working the scene and starts working the man: the appointment, the old case, the reason a successful attorney would need a dead client.

The proof is dental. The missing wedge of cheese means somebody removed evidence of their own bite — and Finch's own dental records, obtained legitimately, complete the match.

The scene is the best-prepared in the series, and Columbo says so out loud, which is itself a tactic: the more he admires the arrangement, the more Finch relaxes into being admired.

Their scenes together are unlike any other pairing in the run. Both men are entirely relaxed, both know what is happening, and neither raises his voice — the fourth and last collaboration between Falk and McGoohan is played almost as a conversation between colleagues.

Since the physical evidence has been removed, the lieutenant works the appointment instead: who benefits from the timing, what the dead man was about to file, and why an attorney with nothing to hide would visit a client at night.

9:21

Worth knowing

• McGoohan won his second Emmy for this performance and also directed the episode.
• It is often ranked the strongest of the entire ABC run and the only one that stands beside the classic era without apology.
• The final scene, in which Finch congratulates Columbo without a trace of bitterness, was reportedly McGoohan's own idea.
• McGoohan won his second Emmy for this performance, twelve years after the first for By Dawn's Early Light.
• He also directed, and the office scenes are shot with the same long, still takes he used in Identity Crisis.
• Broadcast in February 1990, the strongest single season of the ABC run.

Verdict

The best of the second run and one of the twenty best of the whole series. Everything works: the murder is smart, the clue is small and fair, and the two leads are old friends playing enemies.

It is also the last time McGoohan appears as a murderer, and the film gives him an exit worthy of the four performances.

The best film of the second era and the only one that stands unapologetically beside the classics. Everything is in proportion: a smart murder, a small fair clue, and two actors who had been playing this duel for two decades.

The cheese clue also settles an argument about the format. A federal appointment, a fabricated alibi and a decade of reputation are undone by a bite mark — which is exactly the scale the series has always worked at.

Familiar faces

Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.

• Bruce Kirby as Sergeant Kramer8 episodesalso in Lovely But Lethal, By Dawn’s Early Light, A Deadly State of Mind, Identity Crisis, Last Salute to the Commodore and 2 more
• Patrick McGoohan as Oscar Finch4 episodesalso in By Dawn’s Early Light, Identity Crisis, Ashes to Ashes
• Charles D. Miller as Crime Scene Cop4 episodesalso in Columbo Goes to College, Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health, Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star

Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →