Columbo (season 1)
| Columbo (season 1) | |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of episodes | 7 |
| Release | |
| Original network | NBC |
| Original release | September 15, 1971 – February 9, 1972 |
| Season chronology | |
Here is a list of episodes from the first season of the American television detective series Columbo.
The season originally aired Wednesdays at 8:30-10:00 pm (EST) as part of The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie.
The season was released on DVD by Universal Home Video. The DVD includes the two pilot movies: Prescription: Murder and Ransom for a Dead Man.
Ken Franklin (Jack Cassidy) is one-half of a mystery writing team, but partner Jim Ferris (Martin Milner) wants to go solo; but it would expose the fact that Ferris did all the actual writing, and would leave the high-living Franklin without his cash cow. Franklin makes it look like Ferris was investigating gangsters, then tricks Ferris into taking a trip to Franklin's remote cabin two hours away. Lilly La Sanka (Barbara Colby), owner of a general store, happens to see Ferris in the car while Franklin makes a call to Ferris's wife (Rosemary Forsyth) to establish that he is far away. At the cabin, he convinces Ferris to call home and say he's working late at the office. During the call, Franklin shoots Ferris, then takes his body back north and dumps it on his lawn. La Sanka tries to blackmail Franklin into a relationship, so he bludgeons her to death and capsizes her rowboat, making it look like an accident.
Final clue/twist: After hearing that Ferris wrote down ideas for his mystery novels as small notes, Columbo searches his office and house and finds a note with the fake-phone-call alibi and confronts Franklin. Upon his arrest, Franklin makes a startling comment: the alibi idea was in fact his own, the only good one he ever had.
Jack Cassidy played the murderer in a total of three Columbo episodes (this one, episode 22 (Season 3), and episode 36 (Season 5)).
Carl Brimmer (Robert Culp), the very tough, hard-nosed head of a private detective agency, with unfortunate and fateful anger issues, is hired by Arthur Kennicut (Ray Milland), a powerful publishing magnate who suspects his wife, Lenore (Pat Crowley), of infidelity. Although Brimmer indeed finds evidence of her being unfaithful, instead of reporting so to his client, he attempts to blackmail Lenore into revealing secrets about her husband. She refuses and tells him she will expose his plot to her husband, at which point Brimmer accidentally kills her in a fit of rage. He dumps her body at a scrapyard and later joins the investigation into Lenore's death with Columbo. Brimmer secretly starts to divert suspicion away from himself and even offers Columbo a job.
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