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Escape artist Jack Merlin at a convention of competitive magicians attempts his stock in trade trick of staying under water for five hours sealed in coffin with an hour air supply but he dies - from a gunshot wound.

Levinson and Link who would go on to create &quot;Detective Columbo&quot; wrote several of the screenplays for the episodes on BURKE&#39;S LAW. This is one of the best ones...so good it was repeated with a variation years later when Gene Barry did a brief &quot;new series&quot; of episodes in the 1990s. The story begins with a stunt being readied at a fashionable hotel swimming pool in Hollywood. It&#39;s a kind of variant on the tricks that Houdini performed early in the 20th Century. The magician is one &quot;Merlin the Great&quot; (Gil Frye) who is to be chained and locked into trunk which is going to be deposited at the bottom of the swimming pool. Underwater cameras are trained on the trunk for 24 hours while Merlin is submerged. This is to keep a record that nothing has interfered with the trunk (i.e. nobody came down to release Merlin during the night). Merlin is looking around the poolside at the crowd as the chains are being put on him, and then stops as though staring at something. The newsman asks him if he has anything to say. &quot;Yes!&quot;, says Merlin, &quot;I will have a special announcement to make after the trick is finished!&quot; Then he descends into the trunk, and then he is committed into the deep. A day passes, and the crowd returns to see the success or failure of the trick. The trunk is raised, and put onto the side of the pool. Among the onlookers we see Paul Lynde, who is playing the hotel doctor, &quot;Dr. McCoy&quot; in this episode. Lynde watches as the trunk is opened. Suddenly he looks concerned staring down at the magician. He runs over opening his black bag. Putting it down in the trunk Lynde pulls out his stethoscope and starts listening for a heartbeat. He opens the shirt and looks surprised. Then he gets up. &quot;What&#39;s going on?&quot;, asks the hotel manager. &quot;I&#39;m afraid the man is dead.&quot;, says Lynde. &quot;He&#39;s been shot...Dead!&quot; For a cool beginning to any of the BURKE&#39;S LAW episodes this could not be beaten. It is a smooth little mystery about how a man in a bound trunk, who did not shoot himself, ends up shot (with a white feather found on him as well). Gene Barry, Gary Conway, and Regis Toomey have a wide number of suspects (including Nick Adams (as a rival magician), Charlie Ruggles, and Jill St. John) to deal with. The conclusion is neat and solid and sensible. If not the best BURKE&#39;S LAW certainly among the best ones.

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Who Killed Merlin the Great?

Sorry, folks. I had to give this a &quot;10.&quot; But this episode is very typical of the episodes seen on &quot;Burke&#39;s Law.&quot; Here, Amos Burke has the task to investigate the murder of a magician and goes through a typically odd assortment of suspects. What makes this episode notable is that Richard Levinson and William Link, who created Columbo, wrote this outing. As always, the guest stars are pretty much a &quot;Who&#39;s Who&quot; of Hollywood actors; here, it&#39;s Paul Lynde, Jill St. John, Charles Ruggles and Nick Adams, among other people. The ending is a good one, too, with plenty of tension. As for the regulars, it is clear that &quot;Burke&#39;s Law&quot; was truly an ensemble effort. Gene Barry carried quite a bit of his Bat Masterson persona over into Amos Burke, and does so with his usual flair. I would rather have him arrest me than Joe Friday anytime!!! Gary Conway, Leon Lontoc and Regis Toomey are also fun, as are Eileen O&#39;Neal and Michael Fox. My only gripe about this episode and the series in general is that it was not shot in colour. Had the show been in colour, and had it retained its glitzy/kooky élan, it would have stayed on the air longer. Changing the format to a spy series in 1965 did it no favours. Still, this is one show that did Aaron Spelling proud, and it was ahead of its time as well as of its time, for its unconventionality. It is also of its time in portraying the Los Angeles of the 1960s, and it is a sort of successor of &quot;77 Sunset Strip&quot; when it came to mystery shows. A great show that deserved better than it got!

User reviews

Who Killed Merlin the Great?

Burke's Law

"He's been shot....Dead!"

Very nice job, an archetypal episode

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