After two decades of deduction by crumpled crimefighter Columbo, there is very little a guest star can do to bring anything fresh to the role of the outwitted murderer. But Dabney Coleman, a gifted comedy actor still best known in films as the chauvinistic boss from Nine to Five, does his best here to upstage star and executive producer Peter Falk, and actually succeeds brilliantly in one courtroom scene during which he shamelessly interrupts the prosecutor's potentially dramatic summing-up to the jury, and even steals one of Columbo's favourite lines - 'Oh... there's one thing that bothers me... ' Real-life rock legend Little Richard pops up to add to the fun, and there's a nice touch in having a particularly shady private eye going by the name of Sam Marlowe.

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