The Case of the Fifty Millionth Frenchman

I found this episode to be intriguing. This whole row about the French accents on this board is rather infantile.

Regardless, the players did a good job. And so did the production people. I enjoyed seeing a young David McCallum as I recalled how well he did on "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and many other series on television. Perhaps the plot could have been fleshed out but the end result was fine for my taste.

The title line, is the last line spoken by Raymund Burr. It elicited a smile and pleased feeling on my part. Good episode with interesting story.

I have said before on Perry Mason summaries that people really need to do some research before they start talking about the actors and actresses in the series. Too many of the reviewers have stated in this episode that the French accents were ridiculous or not at all what they should have been. Did they ever even look to see if the actor and actress who were the main French speakers were indeed French? In this episode yes the two were either French or French Canadian so the accents were authentic. Also there is one reviewer who completely messed up in the telling of the story because they said that the character of Ninette was the one who went to Perry Mason to get her friend out of trouble. She only did that after her friend did it first and this person who posted this review got this completely backwards. Also there was another poster who said that the line that had to do with the title was spoken by Perry Mason at the end. This is not true; it was David McCallum as Philippe who said it.

We have here another of the "ethnic" episodes (French in this case). I don't have any problem with the French dialects -- they are more than adequate (2 actors were French speakers, and David McCallum's is quite good). The plot is the same as we've seen before, so it's basically just the same dancer in a different costume. The direction is a bit ham-fisted, and the side-plots convoluted and uninteresting. The murderer is pretty apparent early on, so much of the suspense deflates rather quickly. It's more a matter of how the killer would be unmasked. Kind of a ho-hum episode, aside from the French dialects.

Oh dear. The previous episode was one of the best ever but this rather pedestrian episode features some bad acting with the supposed French all speaking wid zee accent. Strange to think David McCallum who guest stars here as an accused Frenchman (although his accent is as French as Dick Van Dyke's Cockney was English) probably got his Illya Kuryakin role on the back of this. And as for the story - I got the murderer before the case even got to court.

The awful accent and emotional stereotyping of the French woman was enough for me. She was a cheat and a manipulator and used David McCallum for her own ends. There are comedic scenes as McCallum is like a pinball going against forces much greater than he. He is also categorically stupid. This seemed endless and the promised ski lesson at the end was embarrassing to the writers.