"The Laughing Corpse" is the first episode of "Furuhata Ninzaburô" which I didn't particularly like. The set-up of a woman tricking her lover into pretending to be a burglar and then killing him is interesting on paper but the execution here is quite shoddy. The woman, a supposed highly-intelligent psychiatrist, makes so many rudimentary mistakes that Furuhata had more than enough evidence to arrest her before the halfway point. Compared to all the clues he finds upon his arrival on the scene, the final twist is hugely underwhelming and circumstantial.
Keita Kôno is back in the director's chair and his bland, televisual direction brings the episode even further down. There's a distinctly cheap quality to some of this production with its overlit sets and unimaginative camera set-ups. It feels rushed.
Nevertheless, the actors really do carry the production and because of them "The Laughing Corpse" is watchable. Underwhelming but watchable. Especially good is the scene in which Furuhata and his suspect cook dinner together. Tamura Masakazu and Yûko Kotegawa play this scene for all its comedic potential outdoing even the similar scene in the "Columbo" episode "Murder Under the Glass".