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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 284544" data-attributes="member: 23">Agenda For Murder continued It’s not just McGoohan with whom Falk has great chemistry. Denis Arndt as the slimy Congressman Mackey makes a great Columbo foil in his own right. One minute flashing his patronising grin at Columbo, the next raising his voice in warning as his patience ends. It’s fascinating to see him getting drawn into collusion with Finch through their shared “original sin” (the cause of the blackmail which prompted the murder). It’s a great role, and worlds apart from the lazy recent casting of secondary characters. At one point he even asks Columbo for his wife's name in order to send her his autograph. And Columbo responds "Mrs Columbo". Now we're really back on form, and the humour is genuinely funny once again.Bruce Kirby is back as Sergeant Kramer. It’s a small role that almost goes under the radar due to his generosity of performance in allowing the other characters to do their things. There’s also Anne Haney as Louise, the cigar-hating secretary who generously gives Columbo her spare aerosol of hard-to-find organic air freshener for Mrs Columbo. It looked for all the world like Glade to me, but perhaps that was hard to come by in 1990 Los Angeles. Anne is best known to me as the recast Polly in the infamously terrible Jaws The Revenge (a film for which I have a soft spot). It’s nice to see she still got work after that. If I have one minor grievance with the episode, it’s the Gotcha. Not the way in which Columbo gains his evidence, which is clever and based in forensic evidence. It’s that one insert at the beginning of the episode which clearly showed Finch placing the half-nibbled cheese back onto the plate. To me, it telegraphed the Gotcha. I don’t know if this insert is McGoohan’s choice in direction or a dictate of others involved in production who felt it needed to be spelt out. Either way, for me it was a spoiler. Most viewers know this kind of insert is there to tell us something, and this particular close-up could only be telling us one thing. Perhaps it was less obvious three decades or so ago, but not much. Even in Seventies Columbo, clues have been placed with far more discretion and subtlety. Had the same action been shown as part of other actions, or in a longer shot it might have made the Gotcha more surprising while still giving the audience the chance to pick up on it. As it was, it was given everything but a neon arrow pointing at the teeth marks. As I said, though. It’s a minor grievance. And it wasn’t the only clue. This episode has a lot going for it in terms of performances, writing and production values. There’s none of the silliness or gimmickry that has come to be a hallmark of this newer series and of all the episodes to date, this is one that could comfortably sit alongside classic Columbo without drawing many unfavourable comparisons. Indeed, it’s far better than a great deal of the Seventies episodes. I might even place this one somewhere in the bottom third of Premier League episodes. Which is quite an accolade given my feelings of the new series thus far.  Here’s hoping there will be other new Columbo episodes of this quality. </blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?