In Columbo: Fade in to Murder, William Shatner guest stars as an egotistical TV detective hero who engages Lt. Columbo in an unusual cat-and-mouse game.

Debonnaire actor Ward Fowler tires of his producer and one-time lover Claire Daley (Lois Albright), who has been blackmailing him. He decides to lift a page from one of his own scripts and carries out her homicide, which he disguises as a fatal shooting at an armed robbery. With an apparent air tight alibi supplied by his “go-for”, Mark Davis (Bert Ramsen), Fowler humours himself by dueling with Columbo on who did it and how.

This episode originally aired as the September 1976 network season premiere.