As a Patrick McGoohan fan, I'd been trying to catch this one for a while, having missed it in the late 1990's when Columbo was still prime-time. This episode was broadcast on a Sunday morning in England, at 11am. How the mighty are fallen, the great humbled, and the classics a mere space-filler. Time waits for no man and all that.
The episode is a rip-snorter, full of delightful performances and character combinations. It was essentially the final filmed performance by the great actor, Patrick McGoohan (barring some unexpected late-life cameo) and as such, it is as perfect an adieu to the medium as there could be. McGoohan often likes to add personal notes to his Columbo movies, and so in this plot his character's would-be nemesis (Golden Girl, Rue McLanahan) refers to his Eric Prince character as having been a "never-was actor from England, who never-was over here either!" Adding a further layer of subsumed reference is the presence of Catherine McGoohan, as Rita, Eric Prince's efficiently innocent mortuary assistant. She is given the task of beginning the end of her boss when she advises Eric Prince that, "Someone's waiting for you in the display-room." A corpse might be expected in such a setting, but whilst any corpse would barely ruffle the arch mortician that was Eric, the thick cigar-smoke wafting above the open coffin signals to us that Eric's time-clock is now ticking. Columbo has arrived! By the time Peter Falk shuffles in, we are already twenty minutes into the show. When we see him we realise why he is only putting in half a shift. Man! Columbo is old! He's grey, wizened and almost gap-toothed. His speed is gone. But what he lacks in speed has been replaced by wisdom. Heck, he's done so many of these cases he figures out what has gone on, in the twinkling of an old dog's eye.
McGoohan's Prince, is flabbergasted. He's on a hook and no matter how cleverly he shifts his weight, he knows he's being reeled in. he doesn't know how the other guy knows, but he knows he knows; and the other guy knows he knows he knows. Time to party! Two old men (McGoohan was 70, Falk 71) decide to fun with us young 'uns by playing up the fact we're all gonna die! Ashes to Ashes! We are taken to a Funeral Directors' "Man of the Year" ceremony! Death is all around: we have an uneasy fear of it. These guys laugh at it! They even make up witty songs about it. Death is a part of their life. The very last line has one saying to the other: "It's your funeral!" What a way to go.
By pure chance this viewer watched an old 1955 film for the first time, on a DVD at 11pm the night before this show. In the 1955 film Patrick McGoohan was playing scenes with Errol Flynn! Forty-three years later he played his final scenes with Peter Falk. Half a century after Errol Flynn became ashes, this viewer feels privileged to have been able to watch, in the space of twelve hours, what took these men a lifetime to achieve.
We'll seeing you, in all the old familiar places.
The episode is a rip-snorter, full of delightful performances and character combinations. It was essentially the final filmed performance by the great actor, Patrick McGoohan (barring some unexpected late-life cameo) and as such, it is as perfect an adieu to the medium as there could be. McGoohan often likes to add personal notes to his Columbo movies, and so in this plot his character's would-be nemesis (Golden Girl, Rue McLanahan) refers to his Eric Prince character as having been a "never-was actor from England, who never-was over here either!" Adding a further layer of subsumed reference is the presence of Catherine McGoohan, as Rita, Eric Prince's efficiently innocent mortuary assistant. She is given the task of beginning the end of her boss when she advises Eric Prince that, "Someone's waiting for you in the display-room." A corpse might be expected in such a setting, but whilst any corpse would barely ruffle the arch mortician that was Eric, the thick cigar-smoke wafting above the open coffin signals to us that Eric's time-clock is now ticking. Columbo has arrived! By the time Peter Falk shuffles in, we are already twenty minutes into the show. When we see him we realise why he is only putting in half a shift. Man! Columbo is old! He's grey, wizened and almost gap-toothed. His speed is gone. But what he lacks in speed has been replaced by wisdom. Heck, he's done so many of these cases he figures out what has gone on, in the twinkling of an old dog's eye.
McGoohan's Prince, is flabbergasted. He's on a hook and no matter how cleverly he shifts his weight, he knows he's being reeled in. he doesn't know how the other guy knows, but he knows he knows; and the other guy knows he knows he knows. Time to party! Two old men (McGoohan was 70, Falk 71) decide to fun with us young 'uns by playing up the fact we're all gonna die! Ashes to Ashes! We are taken to a Funeral Directors' "Man of the Year" ceremony! Death is all around: we have an uneasy fear of it. These guys laugh at it! They even make up witty songs about it. Death is a part of their life. The very last line has one saying to the other: "It's your funeral!" What a way to go.
By pure chance this viewer watched an old 1955 film for the first time, on a DVD at 11pm the night before this show. In the 1955 film Patrick McGoohan was playing scenes with Errol Flynn! Forty-three years later he played his final scenes with Peter Falk. Half a century after Errol Flynn became ashes, this viewer feels privileged to have been able to watch, in the space of twelve hours, what took these men a lifetime to achieve.
We'll seeing you, in all the old familiar places.