To Kill in Plain Sight
Quincy

The mob frames a Senator and simultaneously has a contract on him, to secure the presidential nomination for a rival they control.

The main action takes place during a Western Governors Conference at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Fritz Weaver plays the Senator, and Rafer Johnson his right-hand man.

The rival is Gov. Kanen (William Prince), whose campaign manager (John Ireland) obtains a fraudulent videotape of the Senator accepting a $50,000 bribe to get a man through immigration, in exchange for the release of an elderly boss from prison by Gov. Kanen.

Among the highlights of a detailed teleplay is the assassin’s weapon, a reporter’s microphone that fires a poison dart. An advance man photographs the hotel, files a report on possible lines of attack, and is blown up with a package bomb to silence him.

The Senator locates, with the help of the FBI, the “two-bit actor” hired to portray him, and Quincy foils the assassination plot with a bit of good sleuthing.

A patent allusion to Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination is almost humorously reflected in the double identity of William Casey and Garrison Lane.

The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood

What makes the adventures zany is they are viewed from a twentieth-century perspective. The usurper Prince John is described as a “neurotic” whose Merlin-like analyst (Michael Hordern) listens to his frightful recriminations of his parents because his own parents are in the dungeon. They commiserate, after a fashion.

Lady Marian is a Morgan Fairchild original, the fairest girl in England and as low-minded as Robin himself, but given to certain chivalric expectations. Queen Eleanor is beautifully played to the mark by Janet Suzman, the way Robert Hardy plays King Richard, in a surprising test of style. The recondite harmony of Suzman and Fairchild makes for a Tosca allusion.

George Segal opens this with a burst of furious bravura in travesty, brought to Prince John’s banquet table to read a scurrilous lampoon in verse, but the ultimate joke goes to Hardy, restored to the throne, beset by clamorings for women’s rights and so on, calling for the Prince’s return.