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Make Me a Perfect Murder
Russian title: Идеальное преступление · Russian version
A television executive murders her mentor to take his job, and edits her own alibi together in a cutting room. Trish Van Devere plays a woman who is coming apart while doing the most technically precise work in the series.
Editor’s rating — 7.5 out of 10.
- Number
- 43 of 69
- Aired
- February 28, 1978
- Running time
- 97 min
- Director
- James Frawley
- Writer
- Robert Blees
The case
- The killer
- Trish Van Devere as Kay Freestone
- The victim
- Laurence Luckinbill as Mark McAndrews
- Guest cast
- Trish Van Devere, Laurence Luckinbill, Lainie Kazan, Patrick O'Neal, Ron Rifkin, Jerome Guardino
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.
The murder
Kay Freestone is a producer at a television network, competent and overlooked, and she has just learned that the executive position she has been promised is going to someone else. The man who made that decision, Mark McAndrews, is also the man who trained her and, until recently, slept with her.
She shoots him in his office and then builds an alibi in the place she knows best: the editing suite. She cuts a film reel so that the timing of the evening appears different, and uses a screening she was seen attending to cover the hour of the murder.
The plan is professionally excellent and personally disastrous. Kay is not a cold killer; she is a woman under enormous strain who has done something irreversible, and the film watches her hold it together scene by scene.
Kay Freestone has done the work and watched other people take the credit for years. The promotion she has been promised goes to a man with less experience, and the decision is made by Mark McAndrews — her mentor and, until recently, her lover.
She shoots him in his office. The film is careful to show that the murder is not cold: she is shaking, she takes too long, and she nearly leaves something behind.
The alibi is built in the place she is best: a cutting room. She edits a film reel so that a screening she attended appears to have run longer than it did, and the missing stretch of evening disappears into the join.
How Columbo gets him
Columbo's usual approach — sympathy, patience, apparent stupidity — has an unusually strong effect here, because Kay is the rare murderer who actually wants someone to talk to. Their scenes are almost gentle, and all the more uncomfortable for it.
The technical work is about film. Reels have lengths, projectors run at fixed speeds, and an evening reconstructed from a screening can be measured to the second by anyone willing to sit through it.
The lieutenant also notices what everyone around Kay is too polite to mention: she is not sleeping, she is drinking, and she is behaving like a person waiting to be caught.
Columbo's usual sympathy has an unusually strong effect here, because Kay is the rare murderer who wants somebody to talk to. Their scenes are almost gentle, which makes them worse.
The technical route is film itself. Reels have lengths, projectors run at fixed speeds, and an evening reconstructed from a screening can be measured to the second by anyone patient enough to sit through it.
The lieutenant also sees what everyone around her is too polite to mention: she is not sleeping, she is drinking, and she is behaving like someone waiting to be caught rather than hoping not to be.
Worth knowing
- Trish Van Devere's performance is one of the most internal in the series; the murder is almost incidental to the portrait of professional humiliation.
- The episode was written by Robert Blees and directed by James Frawley, who made nine Columbo films in total.
- Patrick O'Neal, who played the killer in Blueprint for Murder, returns here as the victim.
- Patrick O'Neal, the murderer in Blueprint for Murder four years earlier, returns here as the victim.
- Trish Van Devere's performance is one of the most internal in the series; the film is a portrait of professional humiliation with a murder in it.
- Directed by James Frawley; broadcast February 1978.
Verdict
A quieter, sadder episode than most, and better than its reputation. There is no duel of wits — Kay is losing from the first minute, and the film is honest about why.
It also contains one of the sharpest observations the series makes about work: the murder changes nothing about the fact that she was never going to be given the job.
Quieter and sadder than most, and better than its reputation. There is no contest of wits — Kay is losing from the first minute and the film is honest about why.
Its sharpest observation is about work rather than crime: killing him changes nothing about the fact that the job was never going to be hers.
Familiar faces
Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.
- Bruce Kirby as TV Repairman 8 episodes also in Lovely But Lethal, By Dawn’s Early Light, A Deadly State of Mind, Identity Crisis, Last Salute to the Commodore and 2 more
- Jerome Guardino as Sergeant Burke 4 episodes also in Forgotten Lady, Try and Catch Me, Murder, Smoke and Shadows
- Milt Kogan as Dubbing Chief 3 episodes also in Columbo Goes to the Guillotine, Grand Deceptions
- Patrick O'Neal as Frank Flanagan 2 episodes also in Blueprint for Murder
- James McEachin as Walter Mearhead 2 episodes also in Etude in Black
- George Skaff as Producer 2 episodes also in A Case of Immunity
- Buck Young as Guard 2 episodes also in A Bird in the Hand…
Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →