"Ashes to Ashes" is the sixth and final appearance of Patrick McGoohan on "Columbo". Additionally, he directed this episode.
The story begins with a very common cliche in cop and detective shows. A person knows another committed a crime and they confront them....with no witnesses nearby. Naturally, the viewer knows what will happen next...the criminal (usually a murderer) will just kill that person to shut them up (duh!!). It seems like a bad sort of trope because it is so predictable.
In this case, a gossip columnist (Rue McClanahan) announces to a funeral director, Mr. Prince (McGoohan), that she knows he's stolen from the bodies....in particular a super-valuable necklace worth a fortune. And, she's planning on doing an exposee on him. But when you're dead, it's pretty hard to do much of anything! And, to get rid of the evidence, he cremates her...as after all, no one can identify whose remains are whose after a cremation. But, of course, the man will screw up some way....and Columbo will eventually discover this mistake.
The mistake made seems pretty foolish to make. Couldn't Prince have just flushed the remains or poured them down the sink or taken them home and poured them in his garden?! This is a weakness of the episode. Another weakness, albeit a much smaller one, is seeing the elderly McGoohan so easily picking up bodies and moving them about with apparent ease. These mistakes knock off a few points for me.
By the way, it was cute that the murder victim's dog was called 'Louella'. This is obviously a nod to Louella Parsons, a famous gossip columnist from Hollywood's golden age.
