Any Old Port in a Storm

"Any Old Port In A Storm" is my own personal favourite Columbo episode & I have read that it was also Peter Falk's. It begins with wine connoisseur & maker of fine wines Adrian Carsini holding up a wine-glass full of one of his wines to the light. "Titian himself could not have created a better colour & would have gone mad trying". Donald Pleasance plays Adrian Carsini who runs a California winery. The property is owned by his younger half-brother Enrico played by Gary Conway. Adrian is a wine-snob who loves his business of wine-making to the exclusion of just about everything else. When his playboy brother needs money to finance his own interests he decides to sell the family business to rival wine producers, the Marino brothers. This infuriates Adrian who rages, "The Marino brothers. 5 cents a gallon Marino brothers. They don't make wine. They don't even make good mouthwash". In his fit of rage he clubs Enrico over the head with a lamp knocking him unconscious. He then ties him up in his wine cellar just before travelling to a wine conference in New York with his secretary played by Julie Harris. When he returns 5 days later Enrico is dead & Adrian tries to cover up his murder by making it look like a scuba-diving accident. When Columbo is put on the case he soon begins to suspect Adrian Carsini may be involved & what follows is great entertainment. The scripting is top-notch as is the acting by all concerned. Even the minor roles are excellent. Vito Scotti as a restaurant Maitre d' is great as is George Gaynes playing a Frenchman who owns a wine-shop. The latter teaches Columbo some of what he knows about wines in order to help him trap his suspect. "Let's start with the basics. How can you tell a good wine from a bad wine?", is Columbo's first question. "Er, by the price!", answers the wine-shop owner. This, for my money, is just a fabulous Columbo entry!.

This is by far the best episode of Columbo. A pure pleasure. Several others are very good but not quite in the same league as this one. I think the key to it's greatness is Donald Pleasence. Of all his roles before or after, this is his finest hour. The restaurant scene towards the end is pure magic. The interplay between Columbo and Pleasence is pure genius. Every time this comes on TV I tell myself I'll change the channel soon, but I always watch it until the end.. It is that good.

Donald Pleasence stars as Adrian Carsini, a wealthy wine connoisseur and merchant about to be awarded a man-of-the-year award from his colleagues that is disrupted by the ill-timed arrival of his half-brother(played by Gary Conway) who plans on selling the vineyard to hated rivals, prompting Adrian to hit him over the head, then locking him in his wine vault to be disposed of later. Lt. Columbo(Peter Falk) is brought in to investigate the missing man, but whose supposed accidental death at sea doesn't convince Columbo, who reluctantly targets the otherwise likable Carsini, whose beloved wines are the key to his arrest. One of the best episodes has a superb performance by Pleasence creating the first real "sympathetic" murderer, and though the plot isn't quite airtight, is still very entertaining.

Adrian Carsini (Donald Pleasance) runs a California winery owned by his younger half-brother (Gary Conway, in a flat performance) who reveals he's about to sell it. This enrages the older wine connoisseur who knocks the young playboy out cold and ties him up in the wine cellar. Soon Carsini has committed a murder and makes it look like a scuba diving accident. Our rumpled Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) is on the case and is willing to harass everyone—even Carsini's cold but devoted secretary (Julie Harris)—until he's discovered the truth.

Leo Penn directs a script by Stanley Ralph Ross (from a story by Larry Cohen) that is mainly excellent. The murder—or rather its cover up—is splendidly tricky. Columbo's scenes with his main adversary and the secretary are inventive and witty. "Columbo vs. wine connoisseur" was a premise waiting to happen, and Ross makes the most of it. Not all the scenes are as tight and purposeful as they are in "Murder by the Book" or "A Stitch in Crime," but this slow-paced episode never seems to drag.

What makes this "Columbo" rank among the best are Julie Harris, in a familiar but welcome performance, and Donald Pleasance, who seems to have lived in his character for years and knows the man's every aspect, from his imperious snobbishness and petulant tantrums to his nervous boyishness and childlike enthusiasm. We don't care about the half-brother; but a second tragedy happens in the wine cellar, and it's one of the saddest moments in the series.

An accomplished Columbo adventure with a well-written script that shrewdly fine-tunes the basic, well-established Columbo formula.

Donald Pleasence is magnificent as a wine fanatic who is horrified to learn that his impetuous and irresponsible brother (Gary Conway) is planning to sell off the family-owned vineyard. The sequence of increasingly antagonistic banter between the brothers, prior to the murder set-up, is powerful and ingenious. Pleasence renders Conway unconscious in a fit of rage in his office - does he immediately think of making it into a murder or does it become a gradual thought? In any case, the "eventual" murder is resourcefully constructed to be made to look like an accident; better than any other "made to look like an accident" scenario in the series.

Whilst there is not the typical plethora of circumstantial clues, the ones that are included are nicely inserted to achieve a decent impact.

The script-writer intriguingly develops the relationship between detective and murderer, as a mutual respect becomes apparent, especially as Columbo starts demonstrating his new-found knowledge on the subject of wine. Without contradicting myself, this is a remarkably positive element to the whole proceedings, given that my usual personal preference is for the Columbo-villain relationship to be more fractious.

Several later scenes uphold the high standard of the episode, primarily, when the murderer's grip over his secretary is "turned on it's head"; in the restaurant, when the murderer ironically complains about the over-heated wine; at the beach cliff-top, when the murderer is forced to throw away all of his wine from the cellar etc.

There is hardly a dull moment in this Columbo adventure; the pacing of the story is not frenetic, rather it is all executed in a calm, controlled manner which is symbolic of its subtleties.

It is one of Peter Falk's favourite episodes and one of mine - highly recommended viewing and an episode that would be great for newcomers to the series (if there are any) to watch, in order to endear themselves to the Columbo character.