Another good try of the 70s' TV 'Ellery Queen' team to reconstruct the original atmosphere of the 40s in which the stories were set; the settings, the cars, the clothes, the hairstyles are about as close as they can get, and the 'double' episode of 2 hours running time keeps us entertained and our 'little gray cells' working throughout all the duration - which is not an easy thing to accomplish...
But Jim Hutton, as always, amuses us with his absent-mindedness, his dry humor and his endless 'quarrels' with his Dad, the police detective - and keeps reminding us to keep our eyes open and our brains working in order to be able to pick out the right one among the 'too many suspects'. The supporting cast consists of some very fine and well-known TV and movie actors of the time, every one of whom does his very best to keep up the suspense and the entertainment - but unfortunately, the scriptwriters weren't quite faithful to the original novel, and that makes it not only PRETTY difficult for us to guess the solution, but also makes the whole story a little bit implausible...
Now, WHY should a dying woman drag herself to the TV set and clock plug, with the only hope that someone might bother to find out what was on TV exactly at that hour (but which Ellery did, of course...), in order to give us a clue to the murderer's identity? And since the episode picked up the games with words and anagrams, which in the novel at last reveals the murderer's name, they could have gone through with that, leaving this silly TV program hokum aside... It's a shame, because otherwise the episode is an almost perfect murder mystery!