Unless designed to poke fun at Hollywood stereotypes of the UK, this "Daggers" episode is, apart from Falk's usual charisma and convincing ham acting from Blackman, an unmitigated disaster. As a Brit, I find it tiring, even insulting, to see and hear notions of the UK, England in particular, reduced to the level of Dick van Dyke's pseudo-cockney, with the action running in upper-class environments that may have flourished before P G Wodehouse moved to the USA in the 1920s or in Agatha Christie's 1930s heyday, but which had virtually disappeared by the 1950s, not to mention the 1970s. Even Dick de Benedictis, famous for effective TV underscoring (e.g. Perry Mason Returns), descends to producing pastiches of time warped Georgian classicalness, as if the Hollywood view of Britain were incapable of advancing beyond the time of George Washington. "Daggers" is an embarrassing exception to an otherwise remarkable run of Columbo productions.