A Million the Hard Way

Ace insurance investigator Banacek is in Las Vegas working for a secretive and reclusive Howard Hughes like billionaire, more directly for Noah Dietrich like subordinate Don Porter

There is a million dollars in five stacks of thousand dollar notes in a display case that gets heisted during the excitement of someone hitting a bug payoff on the slot machine.

As usual George Peppard figures out the how before the who As for the who no big surprise.

He supporting cast is well typed for the roles. A good episode in this sadly only two year series.

The story begins in Las Vegas. At the precise moment a giant slot machine pays off $10,000 and throwing the casino floor into confusion, a display case which appeared to have $1,000,000 in it suddenly becomes empty! How could this be?!

Banacek manages to untangle the mystery and along the way he strikes up a relationship with a photographer (Margot Kidder). I mention this relationship because for a 1972 TV show, the program was surprisingly frank about sex....such as when they are on a private flight to LA and Banacek asks her if she'd like to join the 'mile high club'....to which she agrees and she places the plane on autopilot! All in all, an interesting episode....Kidder and all. Worth seeing and interesting.

Thomas Banacek(George Peppard) is called in by a casino in Las Vegas that has had a most unusual robbery of a million dollars from a display case in the middle of the day. It went missing the same time a big money slot machine payed out to a man who didn't want his picture taken by the casino photographer(played by Margot Kidder) that Thomas becomes involved with, even going on an airplane ride with her as pilot that ends up having been(almost fatally) sabotaged. This sends Banacek on a new path to determine just who, how, and why this clever theft was pulled off. Entertaining episode with Kidder quite appealing leading to the ingenious resolution.

Compared to other Banacek episodes, this one was a bit complicated. In how he came up with happened to the money. It got a bit confusing towards the end. I won't spoil it for you. But I didn't understand who was the person in the airport at the end.

The scenes with a young Margot Kidder as a photographer and a pilot was quite nice. This is one of her early roles and she did a great job of playing his love interest, as every Banacek episode has a love interest.

I thought it was funny when Banacek flew into Las Vegas and he claims the weather is fresh air was kind of ironic as pollution hadn't hit Las Vegas at the time.