Uneasy Lies the Crown

On April 28th, 1990, Columbo went to the dentist, which sounds like the set-up for a very bad joke but is actually the set-up for Uneasy Lies the Crown.

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James Read plays Dr. Wesley Corman, a smooth, handsome, deeply indebted dentist who works in a practice owned by his father-in-law, Horace Sherwin. Wesley’s wife Lydia is unhappy, fragile, and having an affair with action star Adam Evans. Wesley’s solution is pure Columbo villain logic: kill the lover, frame the wife, look noble while “protecting” her, and get himself back into Horace’s good graces.

All he needs is a dental crown, some digitalis, and a patient who trusts him.

Meet Wesley

Wesley Corman is not one of the flamboyant Columbo murderers. He’s not a roaring ham like Dale Kingston, a chilly intellectual like Adrian Carsini, or a sweaty panic machine like Roger Stanford.

He’s worse in a quieter way.

He’s a man who smiles professionally for a living, which makes him a surprisingly good fit for murder. He’s all bedside manner and no conscience. James Read plays him as charming enough that you can believe people around him keep giving him one more chance, but not charming enough that you ever want him to get away with anything.

He's also one of the few Columbo murderer's that Mrs. Columbo isn't a fan of.

The worst son-in-law in Los Angeles

The opening scene wastes very little time in telling us that Horace Sherwin has had enough of Wesley. Wesley owes him money, Wesley is a bad husband, and Wesley is apparently not the dream dentist Horace had in mind when he let him into the family business.

Wesley has married into money and security, but now he’s in danger of losing both. And that’s the key to Wesley. He doesn’t kill out of rage, even though his wife is having an affair with the victim. He kills because the gravy train is leaving the station.

Lydia’s affair

Lydia’s lover is Adam Evans, a movie star and one of Wesley’s patients. This is very convenient for Wesley and very unfortunate for Adam.

Marshall R. Teague has the right physical presence for Adam. He looks like a guy who would be on the poster for a movie with a helicopter explosion in it. He also seems genuinely fond of Lydia, at least in the limited time the story gives him. That matters a little, because the episode needs Adam to be more than just a slab of muscle with a doomed molar.

Better known as a bad guy?

If Teague looks familiar that's because the year before this episode he featured in the Patrick Swayze movie Road House...as the bad guy's thug who fights Swayze.

The crime

The murder method is the thing everyone remembers from this episode, and rightly so.

Wesley gets Adam into the chair for dental work. He makes sure the appointment is unofficial enough that his receptionist won’t be able to place Adam there. Then he hides digitalis inside a temporary crown, sealed in a way that will delay the release of the poison until later.

That’s a pretty good Columbo murder idea.

Not a perfect one, maybe, but definitely the kind of idea that could have come from the classic run. It’s specific, it uses the murderer’s profession, and it gives Columbo a real puzzle to solve. “How did the poison get into him?” is a much better question than “Which of these guest stars did it?”

Open wide

One of the reasons the murder works dramatically is that it weaponizes trust. Most of us don’t know what a dentist is doing once the drill starts and the mirror goes in. We are just lying there, helpless, trying not to think about the bill.

It also helps that Wesley doesn’t have to be anywhere near Adam when Adam dies. Columbo killers love a tidy alibi, and this one gives Wesley a very good one: he’s at a poker game with witnesses while Adam is having his fatal evening with Lydia.

The frame-up

Wesley’s plan isn’t just to murder Adam. It’s to make Lydia look responsible for poisoning him.

This is where the episode makes Wesley especially nasty. Lydia is already emotionally vulnerable. Wesley knows that, and he uses it. He counts on the family’s panic after Adam dies in Lydia’s presence. He counts on David helping move the body to avoid scandal. He counts on everyone else being too compromised and too embarrassed to look clearly at what actually happened.

In other words, Wesley doesn’t just frame his wife. He frames the whole family into protecting him.

Body moving is a bad idea, but necessary in this case

After Adam dies, the Sherwin family decides to make things worse by moving the body and staging a car accident.

This is one of those moments where Columbo families create a whole new set of legal problems for themselves because they are trying to avoid the first one. It’s not enough that Adam is dead. Now there’s a fake accident scene, a pushed car, a hidden connection to Lydia, and a dead man whose body is in a place where it clearly didn’t die.

But of course this is Wesley's plan. He NEEDS the cover-up to be sloppy, to raise suspicion, to ultimately lead back to Lydia while he pretends to be helping her.

Columbo arrives

The car is found at the bottom of a hill, and Columbo starts noticing the little things.

The gear shift is wrong. The scene doesn’t feel right. The victim had a matchbook that points back to the Corman house, but why would he have taken it? And if the death was tied to margaritas, why does the evidence around the drinks not quite behave the way everyone says it should?

This is where the episode starts to feel like Columbo again.

The matchbook

The monogrammed matches are a very Columbo clue because they seem useful to the killer but too useful to the detective.

Wesley wants the matchbook to connect Adam to Lydia. But Columbo sees the problem: Adam has a lighter. The matches look planted. It’s not a case-breaker by itself, but it’s enough to make Columbo’s ears go up.

And once Columbo’s ears go up, you may as well start packing for prison.

And a procedure problem

Here's also where we get into the kind of procedure problems that are pretty common in Columbo episodes. Why would the paramedic have pocketed a book of matches off the victim?

Like eating the cheese at the crime scene, or cracking an egg on the murder weapon...it just feels like sloppy evidence procedure.

The margarita problem

The margarita clue is stronger. If the poison was in the blender or glass the way Wesley wants everyone to believe, the timing of Adam’s death becomes strange. The scene has to support the idea that Adam drank, became ill, and died during a romantic evening with Lydia. But the amount of drink and the sequence of events don’t quite add up.

This is the kind of practical, kitchen-counter reasoning that Columbo is great at.

The celebrity poker game

Then there is the poker game.

Nancy Walker, Dick Sargent, and Ron Cey appear as themselves, which is sort of a delightful time capsule.

I understand why the scene exists. Wesley needs an alibi, and a poker game full of recognizable faces makes that alibi more colorful. It also gives Columbo the chance to act mildly starstruck, which is usually fun.

The sequence has that late-80s/early-90s variety-show energy that some of the revival episodes can’t quite resist. In a classic-era episode, you might expect the alibi to come from a club, a lecture, a rehearsal, a dinner party, or something that deepens the murderer’s world. Here it’s “look, it’s the guy from Bewitched and a Dodger!”

Speaking of Ron Cey

Ron Cey was a six-time All-Star third baseman, best remembered by many baseball fans for his years with the Los Angeles Dodgers. His presence makes sense geographically and culturally: if your Columbo episode is going to have a celebrity poker table in Los Angeles in 1990, a Dodger feels right at home.

Does the scene need him? No.

Am I glad he’s there? Yeah.

A little too much John Roark?

The poker scenes are dominated a bit by John Roark's jokes and impressions. And he's good, don't get me wrong, but it almost feels like some of those scenes were written to feature him.

Steven Bochco’s old script

One of the most interesting things about Uneasy Lies the Crown is that it feels old because, in a sense, it is old.

The credited writer is Steven Bochco, which immediately gets a Columbo fan’s attention because Bochco wrote Murder by the Book. That episode helped launch the regular series and remains one of the most important hours in the show’s history.

But Uneasy Lies the Crown has a peculiar production history. The story had been developed years earlier and later appeared in altered form as the 1977 McMillan and Wife episode Affair of the Heart. The Columbo version finally aired in 1990, long after the classic era had ended.

The central murder idea feels like it belongs to 1970s Columbo.

Murder by the Book this isn’t

It’s probably unfair to compare any Bochco episode to Murder by the Book. Almost nothing is going to win that fight.

Still, the comparison is unavoidable. Murder by the Book is lean, stylish, and psychologically sharp. Uneasy Lies the Crown has a clever murder device, but it also has a lot of padding and a gotcha that depends on a stage-managed trick rather than the clean inevitability of the best Columbo endings.

That doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it uneven.

Horace Sherwin

Paul Burke gives the episode some welcome bite as Horace Sherwin. Horace is not especially lovable, but he is useful.

He’s angry. He’s proud. He’s protective of Lydia. And he brings an authority to the dental scenes. He’s maybe the only person Wesley is actually afraid of.

Horace’s shift toward Wesley after Wesley appears to be “protecting” Lydia is one of the more interesting parts of the plot. Wesley understands Horace well enough to know that if he seems loyal to the family in a crisis, Horace may forgive almost anything that came before.

David, please stop helping

David Sherwin, Lydia’s brother, is another matter.

He’s not evil. He’s just one of those Columbo supporting characters who should probably not be given responsibility for a flashlight, much less a corpse. His primary function is to panic and make bad decisions, which he accomplishes with impressive consistency.

Every time David tries to help, you can almost hear Columbo’s future questions multiplying.

Columbo at the dentist

One of the best ideas in the episode is sending Columbo to his own dentist.

Any time the show can put Columbo in a situation where he is both comic and observant, it’s usually worth doing. The dentist’s chair is perfect for him. He’s uncomfortable, he’s chatty, he’s asking questions at the wrong time, and he’s slowly turning a professional detail into a murder theory.

Raymond Singer plays Columbo’s dentist, and he gives Falk someone relaxed to bounce off. These scenes are not the whole case, but they help the audience understand the mechanics without turning the episode into a lecture.

If you want to know something like that, you’ll need a better dentist than me.

The bite mark

The idea that Adam bit the inside of his cheek is a nice clue. It suggests something happened during the dental procedure, and it gives Columbo a physical path back to the mouth rather than just the margarita glass.

The race track

The race track scene is one of the better Columbo-versus-killer stretches in the episode.

Wesley is a gambler, so putting him at the track is a smart way to bring his weakness into the open. Columbo pesters him in public, keeps circling back to the same inconvenient questions, and slowly tightens the screws while Wesley tries to look amused.

This is where James Read’s performance works best. Wesley is not explosive. He doesn’t unravel loudly. He stiffens. He blinks. He smiles a little too hard. That’s the correct setting for this character.

Gambling problem, murder problem

The episode never quite makes Wesley’s gambling addiction as central as it could be. It’s there in the background, and Horace’s anger about money helps motivate the plot, but the actual murder is more about preserving status than paying a bookie.

Still, the gambling detail is important because it tells us how Wesley thinks. He’s always playing odds. He thinks he can manage risk. He thinks he can bluff. He thinks the table will eventually turn his way.

Unfortunately for him, Columbo is the house.

The gotcha

The final trap involves Columbo claiming that digitalis will stain a porcelain crown blue. Wesley believes this, or at least believes it enough to stop the extraction of the tooth and effectively give himself away.

Then comes the reveal: digitalis would not turn the crown blue. Laundry bluing would. Columbo has used a trick to make Wesley think the evidence is about to expose him.

This is a very Columbo-ish idea in theory. The Lieutenant has bluffed killers before. He understands that a guilty person reacts differently from an innocent one.

But the execution is not completely satisfying.

The blue tooth

The problem is that Wesley collapses too easily.

For a man who designed a delayed-release poison crown, planted evidence, manipulated his in-laws, and maintained an alibi through a celebrity poker game, he gives up very quickly at the end. He had nothing to lose by simply letting Dr. Sherwin pull the crown and let the chips fall. He’d have inadvertently called Columbo’s bluff and won (at least for the moment).

The title

The title comes from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

That’s a solid Columbo title. It has the old literary wordplay the series often enjoyed, and it works on multiple levels. There’s the dental crown, obviously. There’s also Wesley’s borrowed “kingdom” inside Horace’s family and practice. He wants the status of a prince without the responsibility of a decent husband, a competent son-in-law, or a non-murderous dentist.

Uneasy lies the crown, indeed.

Just a couple more things...

• Wesley’s office has that perfect television-dentist look: too clean, too calm, and absolutely not a place where you want to discover your dentist has motive, opportunity, and access to poison.
• Columbo’s discomfort in the dental chair is funny because it’s so ordinary. He can face murderers all day, but nobody likes dental work.
• Lydia is more plot function than fully developed character, which is a shame. The episode would be stronger if her relationship with Adam felt more textured.

Final diagnosis

Uneasy Lies the Crown is not one of the great Columbo episodes but it's watchable.

It has problems: the supporting characters are thin, the poker scene goes on too long, and the final bluff is clever in concept but shaky in execution. But the core idea is good, James Read makes Wesley easy to dislike, and there are enough genuine Columbo moments to keep the episode from needing a full extraction.

Maybe the best way to put it is this: Uneasy Lies the Crown has cavities, but the tooth can be saved.