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Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo
Russian title: Загадка миссис Коломбо · Russian version
A woman tries to poison Mrs Columbo in revenge for her husband's conviction. The only episode in which the lieutenant's wife is the intended victim — and she still never appears on screen.
Editor’s rating — 8 out of 10.
- Number
- 53 of 69
- Aired
- March 31, 1990
- Running time
- 93 min
- Director
- Vincent McEveety
- Writer
- Peter S. Fischer
The case
- The killer
- Helen Shaver as Vivian Dimitri
- The victim
- Edward Winter as Charlie Chambers
- Guest cast
- Helen Shaver, Ian McShane, Teresa Ganzel, Roscoe Lee Browne, Edward Winter, Michael Alldredge
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
Vivian Dimitri's husband went to prison on Columbo's evidence and died there. She has spent the years since building a plan that is not aimed at the lieutenant but at the person he cannot protect professionally: his wife.
She murders her own mother-in-law first, to establish a pattern and a supply of the poison, and then arranges for a contaminated gift to reach Mrs Columbo — a package that will kill a woman the audience has never seen and never will.
It is the most personal crime in the series and the only one where Columbo is a target rather than an investigator. The film understands exactly how unusual that is and plays the first half almost as a thriller.
The grievance is precise and, from Vivian's side, entirely coherent. Her husband was convicted on Columbo's work and died in prison; she has spent the years since deciding that the lieutenant should lose what she lost, and that killing him would be the lesser punishment.
The first murder is preparation rather than passion. She kills her mother-in-law with a poison she can obtain and account for, which gives her both a supply and a rehearsal, and the death is written off as natural.
The delivery to the Columbo household is the part the series had never attempted: a package arriving at a home the audience has spent thirty years never seeing, addressed to a woman who has never appeared.
How Columbo gets him
The tone here is different from anything else in the run: Columbo is frightened, and Falk plays it without any of the usual deflection. His questions are faster, his manner is harder, and the charm largely disappears.
The evidence begins with the first death, which was ruled natural and was not. Once he establishes that, the connection to his own case file is immediate — the name in the record is the reason all of this is happening.
The final act is a straightforward race: the package is in transit, the wife is at home, and the lieutenant has to prove and prevent at the same time.
Falk plays the first act as a man who does not yet know he is inside the case, and the shift when he realises is the most abrupt in the run. The apologetic manner disappears entirely for several scenes.
The investigation runs backwards from the earlier death, which had been closed. Reopening it requires an exhumation and a toxicology report, and the paperwork alone eats days the lieutenant does not have.
The case file is the link. Once Columbo finds the name, everything after it is a race rather than a puzzle — he knows who, he knows why, and he needs to reach a delivery before it is opened.
Worth knowing
- Despite the title and the plot, Mrs Columbo is not seen or heard — the series maintained the rule even in the episode built entirely around her.
- Helen Shaver plays Vivian, and the script gives her a genuine grievance rather than simple villainy.
- The episode also contains one of the few explicit references to Columbo's home life beyond anecdote: a phone call about his wife's cold.
- Despite the title and the entire premise, Mrs Columbo never appears, is never heard and is never photographed — the rule held even here.
- Shera Danese, Falk's wife, appears in the film, as she does in five other Columbo episodes.
- Broadcast in March 1990, in the middle of the strongest ABC season.
Verdict
One of the more interesting ABC films precisely because it breaks the emotional distance the format normally keeps. Watching Columbo work a case in which he is personally at risk is a genuinely different experience.
It also, remarkably, resists the temptation to show the wife. Thirty years in, the series still knew that she works better as an absence.
The tonal outlier of the second run and worth watching for that alone: a Columbo film with genuine suspense, because for once the outcome is not a foregone conclusion.
Keeping the wife off screen in the one episode built around her is the single most disciplined decision the series ever made.
Familiar faces
Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.
- Ed McCready as Plainclothesman 5 episodes also in Death Hits the Jackpot, A Bird in the Hand…, It's All in the Game, Strange Bedfellows
- Bill Edward Rogers as Policeman 2 episodes also in Columbo Cries Wolf
- Rosanna Huffman as Mrs. Thornwood 2 episodes also in Suitable for Framing
- Don Calfa as Rudy 2 episodes also in Strange Bedfellows
- Jean-Paul Vignon as Maitre d' 2 episodes also in Murder, A Self Portrait
- Robin Bach as Waiter 2 episodes also in Columbo Goes to College
Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →