Columbo Cries Wolf

On January 20th, 1990, Lieutenant Columbo wandered into the glossy, tacky, pager-beeping world of Bachelor’s World magazine in Columbo Cries Wolf, one of the more unusual episodes of the ABC revival era.

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This is a late-period Columbo that knows exactly what decade it has just stumbled into. There are stretch limos, helicopters, brick-sized mobile phones, security cameras, swimsuit shoots, shoulder pads, more swimsuit shoots, and enough hair product to threaten Southern California’s water supply.

And yet underneath all the 1990-ish surface noise is a pretty clever idea: what happens when Columbo is not merely misled, but publicly humiliated? Not by a genius surgeon, a chess master, a mystery writer, or an elegant old-money villain. By a smirking men’s-magazine publisher who looks like he learned human sincerity from a cologne commercial.

Meet Sean

Ian Buchanan plays Sean Brantley, co-founder and public face of Bachelor’s World, a Playboy-ish empire run out of an absurd mansion where models lounge by the pool and the line between business meeting and photo shoot is apparently very thin.

Sean is not one of those Columbo killers who earns our grudging admiration. He is not Adrian Carsini with better wine than judgment, or Abigail Mitchell with grief curdled into revenge. Sean is oily from the first frame. He is rich, vain, lecherous, childish, and almost constantly pleased with himself. Buchanan absolutely commits to the smarm, and the episode needs him to.

The fun is not in liking him. The fun is in waiting for Columbo to wipe that punchable grin off his face.

Bachelor’s World

The opening is one of the most aggressively “new Columbo” openings imaginable. The episode drops us straight into the Bachelor’s World lifestyle: cameras, poolside posing, interviews, flesh, flash, and music that immediately announces we are not in 1974 anymore.

It also features two revealing editing errors. Right from the start during the sequence of girls by the pool you'll see a familiar figure wandering around in the background.

You could be forgiven for missing him, given what's in the foreground, but there's the good Lieutenant...a wee bit early.

And just moments later, we get a shot of the chateau limo driving down the street, and a familiar Peugeot makes a u-turn down the street behind it.

Dian Hunter has had enough

Deidre Hall plays Dian Hunter, Sean’s business partner, and—crucially—the actual brains of the operation. She owns the controlling share of Bachelor’s World and is tired of Sean treating the company, the mansion, and the models as extensions of his ego.

It's not super clear what the nature of their relationship is. There's an undercurrent as if they were romantic at some point, and Dian acts as if she's upset about Sean's sexual shenanigans, but if so it's strange that Dian (who is clearly the brains and the stronger of the two partners) would put up with Sean and his nymphs for so long.

When Sean announces his engagement to Tina, the current “Nymph of the Month,” Dian decides she is finished. She plans to sell her majority stake to British media tycoon Sir Harry Matthews. For Sean, this is not merely a business problem. It is an extinction event. Without Bachelor’s World, he is just a handsome man with an expensive haircut and nowhere to hold court.

Tina enters the chat

Rebecca Staab’s Tina is an interesting piece of the machinery. At first she seems like the standard younger girlfriend, there to show us how awful Sean is and how thoroughly Dian has been replaced in his attention span.

But the episode gradually gives Tina more importance. She is not just scenery. She is central to the illusion that Columbo builds in his head, and to the illusion Sean and Dian want everyone to believe. 

A shot, some salmon, and a limousine

Dian leaves the mansion in a limousine, apparently bound for London. Her driver, Cosner, stops at her favorite restaurant to pick up smoked salmon for the flight. While he is inside, there is what sounds like a gunshot. When he returns, Dian is still in the back seat, bundled up in hat, scarf, and sunglasses.

This is exactly the kind of detail Columbo loves. A small interruption. A witness who saw something, but not quite enough. A woman who is visible, but not really identifiable. A gunshot that may or may not mean anything. A limousine with lots of hiding places.

Continuity goof?

One thing that stood out for me here, Cosner turns right at the corner for the restaurant, then turns right again into the alley behind the restaurant. But somehow when he parks the limo the restaurant is on the left side of the car.

Cosner is key

Cosner, played by Mark Margolis, is one of those supporting witnesses who gives the episode texture. He plays a key role in the episode even though I thought the performance was maybe a little flat.

Not quite the Olympics

While Cosner is picking up salmon, Sean and the girls are having the most superficial swim race in history - across what looks to be only a bit bigger than a large hot tub.

Extra funny that he gives his nymph a watch to "time them" as if some kind of record might be at stake.

Chief Superintendent Durk calls back

One nice continuity treat: Columbo is drawn into the case through Chief Superintendent Durk of Scotland Yard, a callback to Dagger of the Mind. Since Dian supposedly arrives in London and then vanishes, Durk asks Columbo to look into the Los Angeles end.

That is a neat way to get Columbo involved without forcing the premise. It also gives longtime fans a rare revival-era nod to the NBC years. 

It's a shame we didn't get to see Bernard Fox.

Sean is also the photographer?

It's interesting that Sean, who is the public face of Batchelor's World is also the photographer? I could be mistaken, but I doubt Hugh Hefner (who the Sean role was clearly modeled after) did his own photography, especially once Playboy was an established brand.

She's shy?

When Columbo arrives at the chateau, Sean is doing a photo shoot with one of the nymphs. When she notices Columbo enter the room she exclaims and covers up quickly. I guess that's a normal reaction, but she is in the middle of taking topless photos that she hopes millions of people are going to see. Curious that she's suddenly shy.

Sir Harry by helicopter

Alan Scarfe’s Sir Harry Matthews arrives as the rich outside buyer who is absolutely certain Sean is behind Dian’s disappearance. He is right about Sean’s character, if not yet right about the facts.

His helicopter summons Columbo into the air, which is fun if you remember the Lieutenant’s long history of not enjoying planes, boats, heights, or really any transportation that isn't his Peugeot. The episode doesn't play that fear as strongly as the old series might have.

I do like the bit when Sir Harry is insisting Columbo take a fistful of the expensive cigars, though, it's a nice moment.

Columbo builds the wrong case beautifully

This is where Columbo Cries Wolf gets interesting. Columbo begins assembling what looks like a solid theory. The gunshot outside the restaurant. Sean’s recently fired .25 automatic. The airport video showing “Dian” putting cream in her coffee even though the real Dian takes it black. Tina’s suspiciously blank whereabouts. A possible body hidden somewhere on Sean’s sprawling estate.

In a normal episode, we would be watching the Lieutenant close the trap. Here, we're watching him walk into one.

That is a brave structural choice. Columbo’s reputation is the series’ central promise. The killer may underestimate him, the police may roll their eyes at him, and the audience may enjoy his apparent confusion, but we know he is always several steps ahead. Columbo Cries Wolf dares to make him wrong—not a little wrong, not temporarily puzzled, but globally, publicly, news-camera wrong.

The search

The estate search is the episode’s comic humiliation machine. Columbo convinces the department to dig through the mansion grounds looking for Dian’s body, and Sean turns it into a media circus. Reporters descend. Cameras roll. The mayor gets involved. The police chief sweats. Sean performs innocence for the world.

It is painful because Columbo is doing exactly what he usually does: following the details, ignoring the obvious public narrative, and trusting his instincts.

I did think it was a little silly that Columbo would look in the chimney though. Not likely Sean was going to haul her body up there, at night, unobserved.

I'm not super familiar with LAPD police procedure, but it also struck me as odd that they had uniformed patrol officers digging and dredging to look for the body.

The coffee clue

The coffee clue is good. The woman at the airport putting cream in the coffee seems like one of those classic small Columbo observations—trivial to everyone else, decisive to him. Dian takes her coffee black, so the woman in the video must not be Dian.

Except, of course, Dian knows this too. That is what makes the clue sting. It is not bad detective work. It is excellent detective work applied to planted evidence. The episode’s trick is not that Columbo misses something obvious. The trick is that he sees exactly what the conspirators want him to see.

The question I have is that they're gambling that Columbo would check the camera footage and spot that clue. Seems like a long shot, but I guess it was a low-cost effort for Dian.

Dian returns

Then Dian gets out of the taxi.

It is one of the best “wait, what?” moments in the series. Not because the audience had no chance to question the premise—we never actually saw her die—but because Columbo’s confidence pulls us along. If he thinks there was a murder, we tend to think there was a murder.

For a moment, Sean has won. Dian has won. Sir Harry has been played. 

But Dian is the real operator

The delicious part is that Dian is not simply Sean’s partner in the hoax. She is also playing Sean. Sir Harry responds to the publicity by increasing his offer, and Dian is suddenly interested again. Sean realizes, too late, that the stunt he thought would protect his lifestyle has made the company even more attractive to a buyer.

This is the moment when the episode quietly reveals that Sean is not the mastermind he thinks he is. Dian is manipulative, vain, and coldblooded and she understands the business better than he does. Sean is the face. Dian is the strategy.

Unfortunately for Dian, Sean is also the sort of man who reacts to losing control by getting violent.

Now we finally get the murder

In most Columbo episodes, the murder happens first and the investigation follows. Here the fake murder comes first, and the real murder arrives surprisingly late. Sean goes to Dian’s room and kills her by snapping her neck.

It is abrupt and nasty, and it changes the temperature of the episode. Up to this point, Columbo Cries Wolf has been flashy and slightly ridiculous. Suddenly it becomes grim. Dian’s hoax was cynical, but Sean’s response is brutal.

The episode then repeats the earlier visual idea: a woman dressed as Dian leaves the property, fooling the security guards. This time, though, Columbo knows what it feels like to be played. He is not going to be played twice.

The missing pager

The final clue turns on Dian’s watch/pager, one of the episode’s perfect period details. On the security footage, “Dian” leaves without the device she always wears. The pager is also missing from her jewelry area. Columbo puts together that Sean has hidden her body while forgetting the pager remained on her wrist.

As late-era clues go, this is a good one because it belongs to the episode’s world. Columbo Cries Wolf is fascinated by the new toys of 1990: pagers, CCTV, mobile phones, media technology. So it is fitting that Sean is undone by a gadget he thinks he controls.

A very 1990 episode

Part of the charm of Columbo Cries Wolf is that it has aged into a time capsule. The clothes, the music, the mansion culture, the magazine empire, the technology, the obsession with publicity—it all feels deeply late-80s/early-90s.

The classic Columbo villains often lived in elegant, insulated worlds: publishing, wine, surgery, theater, politics, classical music. Sean Brantley lives in a media aquarium. He wants to be seen. He wants cameras around. He wants scandal, provided he can direct it.

That makes him an unusually modern Columbo villain. Many killers in the series try to hide a crime inside respectability. Sean tries to hide a crime inside spectacle.

Peter Falk in the revival mode

Falk is in good form here. He lets Columbo be funny without turning him into a clown, which is not always guaranteed in the revival run. There are broad moments, yes, especially with the mansion’s models, but the investigation itself has an edge.

The returning faces

John Finnegan and Bruce Kirby showing up gives the episode a little old-series comfort food. Kirby’s Sergeant Kramer is especially welcome, even if the revival does not always know how to use these returning characters beyond “Look, it’s him!”

A few small quibbles

The episode’s main weakness is that the final act has to move fast. After spending so much time on the fake murder, the real murder and solution are compressed. Columbo’s deduction is satisfying, but it happens with a speed that feels slightly convenient.

Sean also makes a fairly foolish mistake in leaving Dian’s pager on her wrist. You can argue that this fits the character: he is impulsive, arrogant, and not as smart as Dian. But compared with the elaborate first deception, the actual murder is clumsy.

Then again, maybe that is the point. Sean can perform brilliance when Dian is helping him stage-manage the hoax. Alone, under pressure, he is just a panicked narcissist with access to a renovation crew.

Another editing goof?

In the opening sequence we see the nymphs (and, inadvertently, Columbo) in a poolside photo shoot. Around the 41 minute mark we see what appears to be the exact same photo shoot again, except this time reversed. The camera is now panning right to left (instead of left to right) but the chateau building behind them, and the model poses, seem to be reversed.

And speaking of resused

A couple of those nymphs spend nearly the entire episode in what appears to be the same bathing suits across multiple days. I hope they're doing laundry at night.

But didn't he say...

Back in Troubled Waters Columbo gently scolded the ship's captain for putting a pencil in the barrel of the murder weapon because it can "disturb the grooves" making a ballistic comparison harder.

But here in Columbo Cries Wolf we see the Lieutenant examine Sean's 25 automatic by doing exactly that - holding it with a pencil he inserted in the barrel.

Why are their lights on?

At City Hall we see the mob of reporters literally running down the hall to ask the chief questions about the case. But why do the camera men have their lights on when they're 100 feet away and still running to get to the interview?

Ignore the hygiene issue

The police chief, Columbo and crew duck into a mens room to talk away from the reporters. Pay no attention to the fact that the random guy who comes out of the stall just walks out without washing his hands. 🤢

The title actually matters

Columbo Cries Wolf is a great title because it works twice. First, Columbo is made to look like the boy who cried wolf, insisting on a murder where none occurred. Then, when the real murder happens, Sean assumes no one will believe the Lieutenant the second time around.

Just a couple more things...

It was kinda weird that Dian used a fax machine as her phone/intercom.

Sean Brantley may be one of the most punchable Columbo villains, which is not the same thing as being one of the best—but it does make his downfall very satisfying.

Dian Hunter is not a sympathetic victim in the usual sense, but she is a compelling one. She is sharper than Sean and nearly as ruthless, which makes their partnership feel toxic but believable.

Hall rarely makes the list from Columbo fans but I think she really is one of the more beautiful Columbo guest stars.

They spent some money on music. 

This is one of the few episodes I can remember with a recognizeable song - "She Drives Me Crazy" by Fine Young Cannibals - on the soundtrack, unlike their usual generic tunes. They had to spend a little money to license that.

Sean hiding the body in the wall has some issues. 

The wall must have been done already otherwise when the workmen came in they'd have wondered who finished that part of the job when they were away. So Sean tore open the wall, put Dian in it, then RE-did the work to finish the wall? He doesn't really seem like a guy who gets his hands dirty.

The wall reveal is also creepier than the episode’s glossy exterior prepares you for. Dian’s body hidden in the coat bag behind the bathroom panel is a sharp reminder that, beneath all the satire and flash, this is still a murder story.

Final verdict

Columbo Cries Wolf is not classic Columbo in the old NBC sense. It is louder, flashier, tackier, and more self-consciously modern. But it also has one of the revival era’s more unique premises, a terrific mid-episode reversal, and a villain whose smugness makes the eventual payoff genuinely enjoyable.

It is an episode about media, ego, credibility, and manipulation—and about how dangerous it is to mistake Columbo’s embarrassment for defeat.

I've always had this episode rated fairly low, however, and on rewatch I think I've realized why. Nobody in this episode (except for Columbo) is likeable. Even the eventual victim, Dian, is a conniving co-conspirator and you're not really that sad to see her go. Sir Harry is probably the closest thing to a likeable co-star and he doesn't really have much to do in this episode.

One more thing, Mr. Brantley: you probably should have checked the pager.