A Crisis of Identity!

        After Patrick McGoohan left Switzerland for America he finally settled down in California, where he lived unil his death in 2013. In 1975 he appeared in a Columbo episode entitled Identity Crisis in which he plays Nelson Brenner a top operative for the CIA, but who is also a double agent who commits murder on a beach beneath a pier, killing a fellow operative and making it look like a mugging, but inadvertently leaves several clues for Detective Inspector Columbo to follow, well clues which no one but Columbo would pick up on. The two halves of a broken poker chip, a photograph taken of Brenner and "Geronimo" an operative Brenner was meeting under the pier and the fact that the victims jacket had been removed!

    Nelson Brenner has a cover approved by the CIA as a speech writing consultant, and a successful one at that.  Needless to say Columbo confronts Nelson Brenner at his mansion home, whilst enjoying fine wine, food and a Cuban cigar to Madame Butterfly, which incidentally is Mrs. Columbo's favourite music.

    In my humble opinion ‘Identity Crisis’ is by far and away the best of the Columbo episodes featuring Patrick McGoohan, probably because of the Prisoner connection. Because it seems, even by 1975 Patrick McGoohan still hasn't managed to get the Prisoner out of his system, little things like wearing deck shoes in certain scenes, a blue zip up anorak as of the type No.6 wore during The Chimes of Big Ben and the frequent use of the phrase "I'll be seeing you" "Be seeing you" "Well, I'll be seeing you."

    Indeed Identity Crisis enjoys an unmistakable Prisoner feel to it, and that has to be laid at the feet of McGoohan himself. So he's only got himself to blame when the Prisoner won't go away!

Be seeing you