EDITOR’S NOTE: See China and Die was on the CBS Late Movie on March 4, 1984 and June 6, 1985.

Larry Cohen can really do no wrong.

Even with a TV movie budget, he turned this pilot for the TV show Momma the Detective into something great.

Momma Sykes (Esther Rolle) is the momma — you see, right? — of a cop, Sgt. Alvin Sykers (Kene Holliday) and she can’t help but get mixed up in his cases. She reads detective novels all the time and soon finds herself in one, as one of her employers — she’s a maid — was killed soon after coming back to China. Seeing as how she always figures out the killer in her books, she thinks she can do the same now.

She makes her way through the building, getting fired when she pries too much and then getting hired right next door, because finding a cleaning lady as good as her is hard in New York City.

I loved Ames Prescott (Paul Dooley), a cowboy singer in New York who was also a juggler, a magician and anything that would get him on the stage. There’s also a villain of sorts in former NYPD chief Edwin Forbes (Andrew Duggan), who threatens Alvin’s job.

Also: Laurence Luckinbill shows up and he was Sybok, so you should be pretty excited about that. And Estelle Evans and Rosanna Carter also show up as maids; they’re the real-life sisters of Rolle.

You can watch this on YouTube.