The script for this episode was written by Steven Bochco who also wrote the 1990 episode of Columbo called 'Uneasy Lies the Crown'. It seems he just took an old script and almost verbatim re-used it, down to the poker game with celebrities playing themselves.
shareCould you describe it in a little more detail? I recognize the title, and i was a big Columbo fan, but also liked Mac and Wife...the only thing I ever really liked Rock Hudson in...
You're sleepin' on your feet like a horse
I haven't looked up the details of MacMillan and Columbo, but I do remember that in the early '90s there was a writers' union strike.
So, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" ran episodes like "The Child," which had been written for the aborted "Star Trek: Phase Two" in the late '70s. A "Mission: Impossible" remake reused stories from the '60s.
It may be that the producers of the new "Columbo" episodes did what others did during that period: Take scripts they already owned and change the character names to fit the current production.
Affair of the Heart-Trivia
Many people erroneously accuse the TV series "Columbo" of stealing the story for this episode. In fact Steven Bochco originally wrote a virtually identical episode for "Columbo" in 1973. However, Peter Falk did not feel the script was good enough and, as a result, it did not get made at the time. Bochco then used the story for this series. Years later, Falk changed his mind and made the original Bochco script into a Columbo movie in Columbo: Uneasy Lies the Crown
Ironically wasn't Nancy Walker (of McMillan and Wife) one of the celebrities playing poker in the "Uneasy Lies the Crown" episode of Columbo?
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