PLOT:
Wade Anders hosts a crime programme on TV. He murders chainsmoking Budd Clarke because Clarke has obtained a blue movie that Anders had made years earlier and threatens to expose Anders. He goes round to Clarke's house and puts nicotine sulphate (a highly concentrated form of nicotine) into one of Clarke's cigarettes. He watches as Clarke keels over dead. Then he removes the poisonous cigarette and replaces it with a normal one, thus removing the evidence. When Columbo shows up he begins to suspect all is not as it seems when the cigarette and the amount of ashes in the ashtray don't match up. Columbo knows that Anders had a meeting with Clarke on the morning before he died and that Clarke had been in a bad mood. Columbo delves deeper and finds evidence of the blue movie. Anders has a perfect alibi because he has altered the security camera footage to make it look like he was at his office at the time of the murder. Columbo looks at the footage closely and using the close up facility sees that on one piece of the footage the hedge is cut and this can't be because the hedge was cut the next day. However, there appears to be nothing linking Anders to the scene of the crime. Finally he finds claw marks on Anders' car and it turns out the claw marks are from Clarke's dog! Columbo has his man.
VERDICT: This is yet another implausible episode. Any dog could make claw marks on a car and if it was proved to be from Clarke's then there is nothing saying they were made on the day of the murder. This is also another 90s episode that copies a 70s one. The footage on the camera is very similar to the way Columbo nails Oskar Van Wick in Playback. George Hamilton is a competent villain, though this episode is far from a classic.
