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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 282700" data-attributes="member: 23">The Conspirators <img src="https://i2.wp.com/columbophile.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Conspirators-titles.jpg?w=717&ssl=1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 502px" /><img src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/83/51/80/835180dcd6b7443a39d94c62099b3600.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 503px" /> Here we are then. The end of the road for the original NBC episodes. When the episode opened with Clive Revill strumming a banjo while warbling along to a traditional Gaelic song I confess to being worried. I feared an episode filled with Irish stereotypes and terrible accents. Up to a point I wasn’t wrong. Some of the accents were a little curious. And there were a number of cliche behaviours, right down to the premise of the episode. The episode’s backdrop of the Irish Troubles seems a little tacky to me, because it’s done from the comfort of 3000 miles away by people who are unaffected by it. It doesn’t seem right to create entertainment from it, even for a series which has weekly entertaining murders week after week. Because of the distance involved from the situation - and not just geographically - it can’t seem anything other than broad and simplistic. Perhaps it makes more sense once it’s known that this wasn’t originally written as a Columbo episode. And, treated as a simple gun running episode, it did work. Clive Revill was an entertaining antagonist. He took a while to grow on me and I think he really started working for me once he was interacting with Columbo. Physically he reminds me a great deal of Corrie’s Len Fairclough, but with some of his eccentricities he also feels like he could have been the forgotten Doctor who appeared between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee. Jeanette Nolan - one of the best things about Double Shock - is back for a more subdued role. And Jessica Fletcher’s nephew Grady is here, possibly playing Revill’s nephew (though it isn’t clear). While I appreciated the time given to the first act leading up to the murder, it didn’t seem very gripping compared with the preceding episode. As things went along and the ship left port with Columbo appearing to lose, I found myself feeling quite invested. The Gotcha was fine, and Falk’s closing line - “This far and no farther”- was perfect for what would have been presumed to be the last episode ever. Production values seemed particularly high on this episode with some really impressive location work and a lot of helicopter shots, including one of the coast guard speedboat and helicopter giving chase. A shot of Columbo driving over the bridge looked stunning. For me this isn’t, by any means, a great Columbo episode. It feels more middling and ordinary than it might have done as a series closer. But it’s still watchable enough. </blockquote>

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