Columbo: Ashes to Ashes (1998)
Season 10, Episode 12
8/10
The Mortician
8 March 2016
Patrick McGoohan makes his fourth appearance(and third as director) as Eric Prince, a successful mortician who caters to the Hollywood set that finds himself being threatened by an obnoxious gossip columnist named Verity Chandler who(unwisely) tells him that she plans an expose on his suspected long ago crime of a diamond necklace theft, so he abruptly kills her, then hastily substitutes her body for another due for cremation, thinking that if there is no body, there can be no crime proved, but Lt. Columbo(Peter Falk) has enough doubt to inspire him to do something quite clever at the end to catch the killer... McGoohan is excellent as usual, both in front of and behind the camera, creating a sympathetic murderer you almost hope gets away with it! Morbid setting is handled with a deft touch, and this would have worked well as the series finale, but two more episodes would follow. Nice closing line(an in-joke) as well.
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