AllMovie

Filmed in black-and-white, this episode is both an homage to and a spoof of The Maltese Falcon and other "hard-boiled detective" movies of its ilk. In 1941 San Francisco, cynical gumshoe Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) tries to solve the murder of the much-despite publishing baron William Tyler Maxfield. Along the way, he meets the other Magnum, P.I. regulars, recast as "film noir" stereotypes. The story comes to a climax with obligatory revelation scene, in which Magnum gathers all the suspects together in the same room--and is HE surprised by the outcome! Only at the very end do we discover precisely why and how Magnum has been transplanted to another time and another place.