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The Conspirators
Russian title: Конспираторы · Russian version
An Irish poet and gunrunner kills the arms dealer who has been cheating his cause, and hides the murder behind a public persona of charm and whiskey. The last episode of the original run to air, and a strange, warm farewell.
Editor’s rating — 7 out of 10.
- Number
- 45 of 69
- Aired
- May 13, 1978
- Running time
- 93 min
- Director
- Leo Penn
The case
- The killer
- Clive Revill as Joe Devlin
- The victim
- Albert Paulsen as Vincent Pauley
- Guest cast
- Clive Revill, Jeanette Nolan, Albert Paulsen, Kedric Wolfe, Bernard Behrens, Michael Horton
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
Joe Devlin is a celebrated Irish writer on a fundraising tour of America, and a buyer of weapons for a paramilitary cause. Vincent Pauley, the dealer handling the shipment, has taken the money and intends to deliver less than promised.
Devlin kills him in his hotel room and stages it as an ordinary robbery. His cover is the tour itself — receptions, readings, interviews, all of it documented, all of it witnessed by people who find him delightful.
The episode is unusually sympathetic to its murderer's politics without endorsing them; Devlin is charming, principled and running guns, and the script lets all three be true.
Joe Devlin is a poet on a fundraising tour, and the fundraising is for guns. The film is unusually direct about it for 1978 network television: the receptions and the readings are a cover for buying weapons, and everyone in the room knows.
Vincent Pauley, the arms dealer, has taken payment for a shipment he intends to short. Devlin kills him in a hotel room and stages a robbery, then returns to the tour and continues charming everyone he meets.
The alibi is the schedule itself: a man photographed at three events in an evening is difficult to place at a fourth.
How Columbo gets him
Devlin and Columbo like each other, and the film gets a great deal out of it. They drink together, talk about poetry and about wives, and neither pretends not to know what the other is doing.
The physical trail runs through the shipment. Weapons have paperwork, and money that changes hands in a hotel room leaves traces in more places than the room. Columbo follows the arms rather than the corpse.
The alibi is the tour schedule, and schedules are exactly what the lieutenant is good at. Every appearance is timed; the gaps between them are what he measures.
Devlin and Columbo take to each other immediately, and the film is essentially a long conversation between two men who like each other's company and understand exactly what is happening.
The lieutenant's route is the money rather than the corpse. Arms shipments generate paperwork, and payments made in cash still leave a hole where the cash used to be.
The whiskey is the human detail the series always prefers. Devlin drinks at a steady, measurable rate, and the level in the bottle at the scene records more time than his account allows for.
Worth knowing
- Clive Revill plays Devlin, and his scenes with Falk have the loose, improvised quality of two actors enjoying themselves.
- This was the final episode of the classic run to be broadcast, in May 1978, though How to Dial a Murder was produced later in the season.
- The episode's treatment of Irish republican fundraising in America was topical and, for network television of the time, unusually direct.
- Broadcast in May 1978, the last classic-era episode to air, though How to Dial a Murder was produced afterwards.
- Clive Revill's performance leans on genuine warmth rather than menace, which is what makes the politics uncomfortable rather than cartoonish.
- The episode was written by Howard Berk, who wrote four Columbo films.
Verdict
A relaxed, likeable end to the NBC years. The mystery is slight and the pleasure is entirely in the company — which is arguably the right note for a farewell.
The whiskey clue is one of the most physical in the series: a murder solved by measuring how much a man drinks and how fast.
A relaxed, talkative farewell to the NBC years, and a rare case of the series liking a murderer whose cause it clearly does not endorse.
The whiskey clue is one of the most physical in the run: a case closed by measuring how fast a man drinks.
What the people who made it said
Berk wrote two films for the series — By Dawn’s Early Light and this one. The first is usually rated higher, but the writer preferred the second.
“Actually, I'm more fond of 'The Conspirators.' It's more grandiose in its perception. It has a pseudo-political theme that elevates it.”
Quotes are in the speaker’s own words — from a transcript of the recording, or from the printed source. Players open at the right minute. Everything is shortened; the full version is in the source.
Familiar faces
Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.
- Jeanette Nolan as Kate O'Connell 2 episodes also in Double Shock
- Michael Prince as Michael Moore 2 episodes also in Death Hits the Jackpot
- John McCann as Brandon 2 episodes also in Any Old Port in a Storm
Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →