There’s never been a better time to watch Columbo
Poker Face. Glass Onion. The Menu: These days, it seems like everything's coming up Columbo
TV Features Columbo
When it comes to concepts, style, and format, one man’s fingerprints are all over today’s entertainment landscape: Peter Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo. The blue-collar homicide detective from the eponymous NBC series Columbo has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the past year, particularly among a younger audience. It’s not older viewers reminiscing about the series, which began in 1971, who are making Columbo fan art and running Columbo-centric Twitter accounts. Rather, it’s a tidal wave of new fans who’ve found comfort in the methods of an unassuming Los Angeles police lieutenant.
Columbo’s newfound fame may be a head-scratcher for some, but in many ways the detective procedural taps into the desires of a contemporary audience, who now clamor for more murder mysteries that skewer the rich in the investigation process. Just look at Rian Johnson’s 2019 outing Knives Out. Like Benoit Blanc, Lieutenant Columbo is a singular, lovable yet enigmatic character centering an ensemble cast. That, along with the show’s accessibility on the streaming platform Peacock, has led to a Columbo comeback.
So whether you grew up watching the show on cable or have never heard of it until now, there’s no better time to dig into Richard Levinson and William Link’s series. Let’s get into why.
Columbo’s unique approach
Spanning 69 episodes and nearly four decades, Columbo remains a hallmark of the detective genre. Though noirs and police procedurals were by no means new when Columbo initially premiered as a one-off made-for-TV movie in 1968, Levinson and Link’s show offered a mix of tried and true tropes of the genre, along with intriguing twists. Primarily, every Columbo episode starts with the murder, showing the viewer exactly who’s guilty and how they committed the crime. It’s then Columbo’s task to target any discrepancies and trace the clues back to the guilty party—and he always gets his man.
The heart of the show—Emmy-winner Falk’s Columbo, of course—is remarkable in his normalcy. In every episode, he’s simply a guy trying to do his job, without the heroic fanfare or inflated self-importance often seen in detective series. His primary investigation tactic does not involve intimidation (in fact, despite his role on the police force, we never see Columbo so much as fire a gun) or a myriad of forensic techniques. Mostly, Columbo relies on being an absolute nuisance to a suspect, slowly wearing them down. His lack of a tidy uniform and weapon make him appear unassuming to most, with many not even realizing he’s a cop, something that helps him earn the trust and lower the defenses of those he’s investigating.
Columbo’s strengths are his empathy, attention to detail, and his relentlessness. He loves his dog—aptly named Dog—eating chili, and smoking cigars. We know he’s afraid of heights, gets seasick easily, and digs cooking at home. All in all, he’s a short king with a deep devotion to his never-seen-on-camera wife. His rugged masculinity never teeters on threatening or imposing and it’s balanced in every episode with Columbo’s softheartedness and sensitivity. He understands, and sometimes even respects, the perpetrators of the crimes, putting compassion in the foreground. Falk’s humanistic approach to playing Columbo garnered adoration around the world, making him synonymous with the charming yet goofy investigator. And his take on Columbo kept the door open for more stories for nearly 40 years.
Falk’s Columbo is surrounded by an ever-changing cast of characters, a revolving door of guest stars, including William Shatner, Faye Dunaway, John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Leonard Nimoy, Janet Leigh, Jessica Walter, Vincent Price, Dick Van Dyke, Kim Cattrall, Don Ameche, Myrna Loy, and Johnny Cash. Columbo served as a vehicle for the stars of Old Hollywood, big names of the time, and Falk’s personal friends, while also jump-starting the careers of many now-household names.
Why Columbo stands the test of time
Columbo has managed to stand the test of time because of, among other things, its lack of reliance on the sort of “tough cop” archetype, its overt criticism of the wealthy, and the sheer quality of its writing and direction.
The figures in Columbo are not downtrodden people who have been victimized by a brutal incarceration system, but people who by all accounts sit on the top of the world. The vast majority of the perpetrators are selfish, rich goons looking to maintain their power and status. They want more money, a better job, to keep their mistress, to get revenge on their spouse or parent, or they just don’t want to answer to anyone else. Most of them commit acts of violence to maintain their picture-perfect lifestyles, without moral quandaries to debate or tragic backstories to garner sympathy.
Columbo is excellent when it’s using the elite’s own classism against them, as they undermine and underestimate the shabby lieutenant time and time again. With his well-worn raincoat and tendency to babble, suspects think they can outwit Columbo, but only end up telling on themselves. Often, their fatal flaw is their ego and the little voice in their head that tells them, “You’re better than this working-class detective with his shitty car. He’s simply too dumb to figure you out.”
How Columbo avoids copaganda
In many ways, cop-driven procedurals and even workplace sitcoms (see the final season of NBC sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine) no longer feel appropriate at a time when the American public is acutely aware of police brutality and the prevalence of unethical practices. Watching representations of cops on the job now often feels–for lack of a better word—icky, as we know that cops are just as likely to pin a crime on an innocent person, plant evidence, or intimidate suspects into confessions. Cop shows prefer to position those in uniform as heroes, and the only ones capable of solving a crime. Columbo, despite the show’s unorthodox approaches, is not absent of this quality.
But within the world of Columbo, it helps greatly that his suspicions are always correct. The conscious is freed up when we know that in the end, Columbo will always get the guilty party. While we’d like to believe that all homicide detectives act with such responsibility and accuracy, we know that Columbo is a near-fantastical figure of justice, with little bearing on our actual justice system. With this in mind, the show avoids the pitfalls of copaganda.
All the modern takes on Columbo
If you look at shows and movies now, Columbo feels as timely as ever, an overflowing source of inspiration. Its overt disdain for the upper class channeled through sly mockery fits right in among a slate of recent works (Glass Onion, The Menu, Triangle Of Sadness, The White Lotus) that seek to undermine the authority and intelligence of rich people. It’s a theme that’s just as refreshing—and necessary—today as it was in the ’60s. (And maybe more so.)
Speaking of Rian Johnson, the writer-director cites Columbo as the primary inspiration behind his new series Poker Face, which boasts Natasha Lyonne taking on the role of a rugged, astute pseudo-detective who cannot help but dig for the truth among a barrage of lies and misdirection. It doesn’t take an expert to see Columbo’s direct influences on this new show, from the exact same font in the title sequences to the format (opening with the murder, then following with the investigation).
With Poker Face, Johnson calls back to an era of television gone by, one that highlights flashy special guest stars as well as directors, with one lead character centering the narrative. Johnson hit the jackpot with Lyonne as Charlie Cale, as few other actors would be able to carry the torch once held by Falk. While the establishment of Cale’s lie-detecting skills made this writer cringe (sorry, there’s just no way to tell for certain someone is lying), it does foster a level of trust between the viewer and Cale. She’s taking no bullshit, and she’s only interested in the truth. This near-supernatural ability also allows the show to circumvent giving Cale a job on the police force, copaganda be damned.
Just one more thing
A final case for checking out Columbo: Since the show doesn’t feature cross-episode plotlines, you really can begin your watch anywhere in the series. However, starting with the season-one premiere (“Murder By The Book,” directed by none other than a 24-year-old Steven Spielberg) is a great place to kick off.
132 Comments
I know he’d be in his mid 90s now if he was alive, but I sure wish Peter Falk were, so we could close the circle and have Columbo make a cameo in Poker Face.
He did want to make one more Columbo and they had a script called Columbo’s Last Case which he wanted to do but alas.Also, he had dementia at the end of his life, possibly accelerated by anaesthesia from a dental procedure.I guess at least we have this:
I’ve never seen this before!
It’s funny that they refer to in the article as never seen on camera since she had her own spin-off but I guess they meant never seen in the main show. Or else they didn’t know about it either.(1) The First Scenes of Mrs. Columbo | Mrs. Columbo – YouTube
Actually, there has been a better time to watch Columbo: when it was new.
I don’t know. Having to wait several weeks between episodes as the NBC Mystery Movie wheel instead came up with McCloud or McMillan & Wife would be kind of depressing.
Most of the non-Columbo NBC Mystery Movie offerings were middling, but Banacek was easily the best of the non-Columbo offerings. Gotta love the bogus Polish proverbs like “The truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.”
Loved Banacek!!!
I think I liked Hec Ramsey and Madigan. Maybe Cool Million as well. Lanigan’s Rabbi and The Snoop Sisters I think my mom liked.
Actaully, on the cable network CoziTV (owned by Universal), on Saturdays they run ‘’Columbo’’, ‘’McCloud’’, McMillan and Wife’’, ‘’Banacek’’, and “Quincy, M.D.”, the last one which was part if the ‘mystery wheel’ for only one season, and then became a separate show on its own.As for ‘’Banacek’’, George Peppard was not a Polish-American, nor is there any indiacetion that the seriees creator, Anthony Wislon, was. And franly I thought that was the most annoying and stupid aspects if the show. They wasted more time on that then necessary, and sorry, but those fake proberbas were stupid.Also Banack was really shown be a true male chauvinist, and as such it is not at all surprising that before a third season could start, Peppard quit the show to prevent his ex-wife Elizabeth Ashley from receiving a larger percentage of his earnings as part of their divorce settlement.I never liked him as Hannibal Smith in “The A-Team’’, and having seen him again in ‘’Banacek’’, I know why.
Spanning 69 episodes and nearly four decadesI wonder if making fewer episodes a year helped the quality.Personally, I found Columbo annoying after awhile.
After a while it seems like a parody of itself.
Eh, it’s probably nothing, but… now there’s no commercials and you can pause it and you can watch any episode at any time and the picture quality is much better. Otherwise…
I wish Universal would bring that Columbo Blu-Ray set to the U.S. Not really sure about the “Japan-only” logic.
To be fair, there’s people college-age or older that weren’t even born when Columbo was initially airing. We shouldn’t forbid people from consuming media that’s older than they are.
When I was a teen, it was “Perry Mason”, mostly because it was on at noon and we’d all get stoned out our minds and watch it during school lunch hour, since it was the “open campus” era.
Telling people where they can watch the show (https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/columbo) seems like the most obvious, basic, mandatory piece of information to include here.
I mean, Columbo also has a super power. He’s always onto the murderer from the get-go.
Well, it is easy for him. He just has to watch the beginning of the episode and the whole crime is laid out for him.
If you look for it, there’s almost always a moment in those first scenes where Columbo knows who the culprit is. Sometimes he explains it at the end, “You never should’ve let me read your palm . . .”, other times he doesn’t, but if you’ve seen these episodes as much as I have, Falk gives a couple of little tells that show that he’s figured it out, “Okay, THIS is the guy, now I’ve just got to needle at him until he is so annoyed and tangled up that he gives himself away.”
Also MONK. another great detective that bumbles into the solution
“Little things.”Most Columbo episodes position Columbo as being bothered by small inconsistencies. Usually, Columbo picks his horse when the killer slips up in a very small way that bothers Columbo, like claiming to be in shock when they called the police but Columbo notices that they were reading their mail at the same time.
It’s the guest star. It’s always the guest star.
unless you’re Don Ameche or Vincent Price, which was very surprising!
True, but sometimes there’s more than one! I would have loved to see Vincent Price as a Columbo murderer.
“You made one simple mistake: You’re Donald Pleasance.”
People also like fun. Colombo was fun. Knives Out was fun. L&O is not fun.
Traditional Jerry Orbach era L&O was fun mostly. This SVU recent stuff not so much — it’s hard to be light-hearted about a sex crime but you can about a murder.
Yup the min Jesse L. Martin left it went downhill.
Martin and Orbach were the dream-team of ‘Law & Order’ detectives. Bratt and Orbach a close second.
Fair enough. Meanwhile sitting down for a SVU marathon is like repeatedly punching yourself in the balls for an afternoon.
Jerry Orbach was the king of the one liner and a brilliant song and dance man. Show was never the same without him.
Many people do not know that he was in the original off-Broadway cxast of ‘’The Fantastiks’’ and he sang the original version of of very famous ‘’Try to Remember’’ (the time of September, etc.). Easily the best L&O character ever, also.To hell with SVU
Also the best singing French candle ever. He’s so good in Beauty and the Beast.
I’m fine with the Poker Face “human lie detector” angle specifically because it’s unexplained. They don’t try to “science” it, they don’t do the “people have specific tells . . .” bit (his eyes went up to the left, what that means is he’s accessing a different part of the brain . . . blah, blah, blah), or even have her know how she knows, she just knows and she’s always right. It’s just a weird, unexplainable thing specific to her. It’s the right way to do it because, as you say, there’s no actual way to know a lie from the truth, just a bunch of things vaguely adjacent (like stress level) that may or may not indicate deception. By just saying, “yeah, she can do this, it’s an inherent ability rather than a skill she learned, and it’s 100% accurate,” with no other justification keeps them well away from the all the lie detection theories out there and why they’re mostly nonsense.
I noticed that in the heavy metal episode, her gift lets her down a little bit: there’s the awkward guy trying to buy drugs who she thinks is a narc, and he truthfully claims not to be but she doesn’t believe him. Maybe if you’re squirrelly enough you can futz with Charlie’s bullshit detector.
Or she could tie them up with her golden Lasso of Truth!
I don’t remember which episode it’s in, but I remember a scene where Columbo does the least cop thing ever. Some guy who’s adjacent to the case (but not THE guy) is talking to Columbo, tying himself in knots trying to hide an affair with the victim, and Columbo says something to the effect of, “Let me stop you right there. Before you say anything else I really suggest you get an attorney, because I don’t want you to get yourself into too much trouble with this.”
Was that the golf pro/instructor who was guilty and torn up about the death of his lover (who was killed, I believe, by Robert Culp’s character)? I remember Columbo gently telling that character that because he already knew it was someone else.
THAT’S the one.
(I’m not some Columbo savant, by the way. The show’s YouTube channel just — as in, within the past 3-4 days — posted that exact clip as a vertical Short and I happened to watch it.)
Oh, and speaking of “least cop thing ever”: In one, a killer police captain/higher-up (Richard Widmark) kills his wife and starts to frame it on a wanted burglar/jewel thief. Columbo not only finds the thief, but gets his help to nail the captain.
Richard Kiley, not Widmark
Thanks, Rancer! You are correct.
Spared no expense!
That’s an unexpectedly sexy twist.
That episode is “Death Lends a Hand”, one of several guest-starring Robert Culp. He also appeared in “Double Exposure”, as well as an episode with Dean Stockwell (RIP).
But within the world of Columbo, it helps greatly that his suspicions are always correct.That’s…. basically every cop show. They never plant evidence or intimidate suspects (if they do, they’re the villains), and their hunches are always ultimately right, because how else would the case get solved in an hour? Colombo being right isn’t unique (it’s one of Jack Bauer’s superpowers) and wouldn’t absolve the show of any copaganda.
Columbo “episodes” range from 70 to 98 minutes so they do have a little more room to stretch out. They originally aired as part of the “NBC Mystery Movie” series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_NBC_Mystery_Movie#:~:text=Although%20the%20Mystery%20Movie%20series,NBC%20cancelled%20Columbo%20as%20well.
Most cop shows are an hour long.
I have a vague memory of an episode of 21 Jump Street where one of our cop heroes gets a guy into interrogation and wears him down until he confesses, then the guy turns out to be completely innocent. We know it’s fiction since the cop hero is despondent over it, but it was still pretty bold for a cop show to show a cop being REALLY fucking wrong and railroading an innocent person who would have gone to jail if not for some completely random exculpatory evidence.
There was an episode of ‘Cagney and Lacey’ where Cagney talked Lacey into lying to cover a mistake Cagney made.
But then they both got off because they’re ‘good cops’.
It’s always copaganda, even on the pretty good shows.
Cagney and Lacey also had an infamous episode where angry lesbians liked killing people. It hasn’t aged well.
It makes things simpler to deal in absolutes like that, FOR CERTAIN
Theres also the episode where Ioke was confronted by a kid who he’d convinced to turn his drug dealing family. This bust was just a feather in Ioke’s cap but it ruined the lives of this kid’s entire family. There’s room for good cop dramas in a polite society, a good tv show only has to be *interesting*
They never plant evidence or intimidate suspects (if they do, they’re the villains)Except for the Wire, where some of our “heroes” were seen doing this, and occasionally roughing up suspects too.
It feels so weird calling The Wire a cop show, but you’re right.
I might print this out and show my girlfriend as proof that it does happen occasionally.
The first season of The Wire has Daniels coach Prez on how to lie his way out of trouble after he freakin blinds a kid in a fight his unit picked and Prez is still written to be very likable after that. It is still hard for me to imagine thing the cops must be the bad guys in that show so I agree, the villains claim is tricky but I get that no one looks especially great in The Wire.
The Wire is an outlier in cop shows anyway.
Raylan Givens did some of this shit too but we weren’t usually supposed to find it appealing. Or at the very least the people he was roughing up had it coming. (Plus he also got his ass kicked a lot, usually during fights he took on completely outside his job duties, ha.) He was also seen as a shitty marshal by just about everyone, and a giant headache to have around. I’m curious how the Justified revival will address it though and I feel confident it will.
They never plant evidence or intimidate suspects Columbo planted evidence in at least one episode: Dagger of the Mind, where (hey, spoiler) he flicks a pearl into an umbrella, after explaining that he THOUGHT it would be there, and would prove the murderer did it. It wasn’t there, originally, but it could have been, so.. justified, I guess?
That wasn’t evidence. Their reaction to the pearl in the umbrella was the evidence. A dirty trick, but not planting evidence.Columbo certainly wasn’t above using tricks to trap his prey. Which is one reason why at least half of the cases would be iffy if they got before a jury.
Nah, I know it wasn’t really evidence – the pearl wouldn’t hold up in courts, but Richard Basehart’s going pretty crazy and confessing at the sight of it might.(Anyway I think it was Basehart, and I think that’s what happened. Damn Peacock for abolishing their free tier.)
They wouldn’t introduce the pearl in courts. They introduce the reaction. They get the reaction through trickery, but you couldn’t object to its introduction on the grounds the police planted evidence.
While NYPD BLUE never had its main detective, Andy Sipowicz, planting evidence to secure a conviction (OTOH, he often planted evidence to protect a fellow officer or friend), he was perfectly happy to verbally and physically abuse suspects to coerce a confession out of them. Initially the series presented him as a morally ambiguous character, but as it went on and he became the main character they started softening the interpretation by having him backslide on his alcoholism twice, lose his son Andy Jr. from his first marriage, have two partners die on him, and lose his second wife Sylvia to a crazed-with-grief father who was aiming for a wealthy sadist but shot her instead. A generous interpretation would say Sipowicz was growing as a character, but it’s also likely David Milch always wanted him as the hero anyway.
Columbo is NOT always correct.In one of the first episodes, “Murder By The Book” (the Spielberg directed episode with Jack Cassidy’s first appearance), Columbo is able to corner Cassidy, but his reasoning is shown to be wrong.He basically pieces together that the murder plan was originally a plot for a book, and that since Cassidy is a hack writer his writing partner (the victim) must have written down the idea in the office. However, at the very end it’s revealed that, yes, the victim wrote it down, but Cassidy’s murder plan was his idea originally, “the only good one he ever had.”
I’m pretty sure the cops on Law & Order were often wrong initially. I remember at least one episode where they more or less verbally threatened a confession out of the suspect, who turned out to be innocent after the trial.
Yeah, this isn’t the only kind of copaganda there is, but it’s definitely a common kind, and very odd for them to suggest it’s the opposite. Propagating the idea that there are super-observant detectives out there who don’t give up until they’re sure they’ve got the right guy is one of the core problems of the whole genre. Doesn’t mean it can’t be an enjoyable show, I know.
You’ve obviously never watched Columbo. It’s the complete opposite of the copaganda shows that currently proliferate TV.
I never claimed to. How is it the opposite? Because Columbo’s hunches always being right doesn’t make it unique, nor does it somehow make the show not copaganda.
One of the reasons I stopped watching SVU is that they were wrong – at least initially – all the time. Find the most obvious suspect, knock him around and beat him up, plot twist shows it wasn’t him, move on to the next, rinse and repeat.
I mean, you’re not wrong, but also since we never see the crime, even when it’s obvious that the [insert cop show here] guys have nailed the suspect, for some people there’s always a touch of suspicion of stuff like “what led them [the criminal I mean] to this? Maybe they don’t deserve the kind of sentence they’re definitely getting?”, etc. Colombo shows the murder right from the get-go and generally makes it very clear that the murderer is an asshole who did it for (typically) very selfish reasons, so when they get pinned, the audience can rejoice with an easy conscience in the fact that they’ve been caught. It doesn’t hurt that, like the article notes, pretty much every Colombo villain is already rich or from high society. These days we get mad because we know cops unfairly target neighborhoods that are predominantly lived in by poor people and/or POCs. Colombo doesn’t do that, he’s the one that gets the wealthy out in cuffs, which is something we can only dream about in the real world.
I’ve always thought that one of the hallmarks of copaganda is that it leads viewers to believe that the cops are competent, compassionate, and genuinely care about solving crimes (as opposed to just closing cases). And then when most people are put in the position where they need to come in contact with the police as a victim, they realize that the police are pretty goddamn useless. They can write a report to show your insurance company if your house gets robbed or your car gets stolen, and they might even arrest someone, but you’re probably never going to get your stuff back. To say nothing of what victims of violent crimes go through when reporting their assaults to the police. In other words, any show that depicts the police showing compassion to victims, much less solving a crime in an hour is something we can only dream about in the real world.I’m not saying there isn’t value in Colombo going after the wealthy, but that reads to me like a shield for enjoying Colombo. I think the underlying implication in both the article we’re commenting on and conversations about media in general is that you’re not allowed to find value or entertainment in copaganda, or else you’re pro-police. Whereas I believe we should defund the police, and that the depiction of police in the overwhelming majority of scripted television is woefully out of touch with reality in a way that reinforces positive perception of the police… but I still enjoy things like Brooklyn 99, 24, and Lucifer.
It really depends on the show. The cops on Dragnet or Castle would never plant evidence. But the cop who wonders whether it’s okay to plant evidence or to beat a confession out of a suspect when they’re sure he did it is a cliche at this point. Plenty of the cops on The Shield planted evidence. And even shows like the Law and Order franchise specify that even if our heroes the series regulars would not plant evidence (or at least wouldn’t plant evidence at this point in their lives and careers), plenty of cops would.
I remember MAD MAGAZINES “satire” of the COLUMBO series had his character annoying suspects until they confessed—only he was always wrong, and didn’t care that a few of them committed suicide just to not have to hear him any more!
In fact, that’s what makes it copaganda. You avoid the pitfalls of copaganda by acknowledging that the institution of policing is fucked up, that cops often aren’t right, that self-interest and corruption are rife, that they circle the wagons instead of weeding out bad apples (but do the opposite for whistleblowers)…
Poker Face actually does seem to be sliding more and more into copaganda as it goes on. The first episode has all the cops in Las Vegas on the casino’s payroll, so they can’t be any help, but in the following three episodes they’re consistently portrayed as a reliable cavalry that can be brought in once Charlie’s found enough evidence. And then the most recent one just straight up has her go against cartoon evil lefties with the full support of the heroic FBI. Her saying at the episode’s end that she doesn’t want to be “the man” by joining the agency comes off as pretty darn hypocritical.
The thing with copaganda is that it’s aspirational. These are the cops we wish we had. Check out some true crime stories and you find out about actual cops, who more often than not possess a lethal combination of stupidity, laziness, and unearned confidence.
But I don’t personally really see how having aspiritional stories about what cops should be, especially when they are like Columbo, is copaganda. Or perhaps rather that not only do I not agree that it is that, but I think it is actively harmful to any kind of discussion.I mean, I know those true crime stories and the actual cops in them and by the way I can actually name some real cops who weren’t those combinations. Aware of both, I nevertheless do harbor distrust in just accepting what the police force says in several situations. However, at the same time, I’d be glad if there were police officers who were more like Columbo and did their job properly in a manner that withstood the extra scrutiny. Those two things do not exclude each other.It’s a similar reason why I roll my eyes at statements mocking James Gordon being a good cop in Batman stories.
“How will you deal with rising crime in Gotham City, Commissioner?” “My plan is to outsource policing to a man who likes to dress up like a bat and punch mentally ill people who routinely escape from the local asylum!”
They have to be about the cops we wish we had or the cops we do have would make it very difficult for shows to film on location.
Columbo is great. With the exception of the one with Billy Connolly (‘Murder With Too Many Notes’ which is a terrible title befitting a shit episode) and also the one which breaks the format with no murder and just a kidnapping instead: ‘No Time To Die’. I saw this for the first time ever last year. The joy of discovering a ‘new’ Columbo episode was swiftly tempered by the godawful quality of the thing. It’s an aberration.
I’m also quite sure there’s a couple of other stories, one where we don’t see the murder and Columbo exposes them at the end (involving a parking meter) and another which starts with the immediate aftermath of a murder with Robert Vaughn walking around the crime scene before it was discovered but he didn’t do it.
I’m 4 episodes into Poker Face, but one major difference I’ve noticed between Columbo and Poker Face is the power imbalance and Columbo being a fish out of water.Every single murderer in Columbo is either very wealthy, very famous, or very connected to powerful people, putting Columbo at some form of disadvantage while also setting up the circumstances for him to be underestimated. Half the fun of a Columbo episode is watching some rich asshole sneer at Columbo, thinking he’s so much smarter and better, only for Columbo to be setting him up the entire time.The murderer in episode 2 of Poker Face is just some dipshit working at a garage. So you never really get that Columbo dynamic with Charlie’s position relative to the killers.
Since we’re talking copaganda — I adore Psych. It’s my comfort food show. And I love the cop characters and accept them as they were designed to be seen. But wow, is ammosexual Lassiter a relic. At one point, there’s actually a line where he jokes about a suspect saying he can’t breathe. As I said, it’s one of my all time favorites, but as much as I want to spread the love, some of the cop stuff makes it a nonstarter for some new viewers.They seem to be progressing him in the movies they’ve done since the series. The first movie would have taken it head on, it seems, except Omundson had a stroke and they shifted his plot to Juliet, where it made no sense, just sullied her as a bad cop, too.Anyway, wanted to get that off my chest. Show I love has cop issues.
I just started watching it. Got maybe 4 episodes in and bloody Now TV have removed it. I can’t find anywhere to watch it in the UK now.
a podcast to go with your rewatch:https://columbopodcast.com/
Odd Columbo factoid: the character was created for a stage play and the role was originated on stage by Thomas Mitchell (best known as Scarlett O’Hara’s dad and Uncle Billy from It’s a Wonderful Life). When it was sold to series, Bing Crosby was nearly cast as the lead, but he didn’t want the grind of a TV series, leading to Falk being cast.
Did I create this in my mind, or was there a cross-over Columbo/Murder She Wrote Episode? Or at least, did Peter Falk guest star as an unrelated character?
Are you perhaps thinking of the Ruth Gordon episode? She plays a mystery writer who kills her niece’s husband because he murdered her niece. One of the episodes where Columbo clearly liked and sympathized with the murderer.
Murder She Wrote did a crossover with Magnum PI…
No this did happen according to Wikipedia. I have never seen it. I very much want to, Angela Lansbury and Peter Falk were pure delights.
I started watch Columbo for the first time in January and I really love it. The aesthetic, the quiet, the reliance on environment sounds but not a cinematic soundtrack cluttering everything … everything modern tv overwhelms ya with this show downplays. I love it. And now I’m wandering around the house in my robe with my hand on my head trying to remember that one last thing…
I was actually, like so many others, thinking about the Columbo reboot and what Johnson could do with that character. Naturally ignoring the grim reality that the current rights issue makes it a non-starter in reality, but one can dream.Even more than with Benoit Blanc and Charlie Cale, it would be really interesting to see what Johnson et co would do with Columbo. Especially since while those two characters and their stories are clear throwbacks to the old mystery shows, you would almost have to update and modernize Columbo. Not the character, but the setting as what we as the public see as the power wielded by the powerful and the elite has changed so much. You couldn’t really ignore the police force pressures, the media games and the protections of wealth in that manner as otherwise it would ended up feeling hollow.However, I don’t think it’s impossible and would be really excited to see what that attempt looked like.
I’ve seen the entire original run, but I haven’t seen any of the later episodes from the 80s and the 90s. Are they worth watching? I have been told that they’re not that good
Something I find weirdly jarring about the seventies episodes is they so often run into what was new technology. There was an episode where an answering machine was an important clue, and Columbo spends two or three minutes of screen time asking how an answering machine works, and what an answering machine is. And I was alive then but even I can’t remember a time where I’d have to have that explained to me. On the other hand I also remember I couldn’t afford one until the eighties.
There’s another one where a fancy new electric typewriter’s “white-out” ribbon gives away the killer’s secret messages.
I wonder if something like that was stealth product placement.
I was watching a clip from an episode of ‘Monk’ on YouTube which featured someone hacking a car’s GPS by, get this, replacing the CD the thing ran on with a doctored one that gave the wrong directions. I wonder how many years existed between that technology not exisiting and it being replaced by something connected to a wireless network.
I like that his beat only covers Fancy Murders. Never a drug deal gone wrong, or a dickhead ex husband. Just novelists killing heiresses. (Edit, well ex husbands, but you know. The well bred ones)Also, almost never has to deal with other cops who doubt him and question his methods. Possibly because of his lifetime 517-0 record.
“You made one mistake: you’re a black teen and my captain wants this case wrapped up by the end of the day.”
“Just one more question” [plants baggie of heroin on scene]
Levinson, Link, et al, introduced Colombo in a black and white episodic series I cannot recall in the late ‘50’s. For maybe five scenes.
As time goes by the more I’m impressed by Perry Mason, a show where the cops always arrested the wrong person and the DA was a weasel who got prickly when things weren’t going their own way. The show definitely has its issues but it’s nice there was a show that depicted a criminal defence lawyer as someone doing a necessary job.(And yeah, I do believe there are more good lawyers than there are good cops.)
Villian: “Would you like a drink, Columbo?”
Columbo: “No thanks. I just had a root beer.”
Excellent.
“The conscious is freed up when we know that in the end, Columbo will always get the guilty party.”Yes, it’s easy to stay awake for Falk’s shenanigans, but I don’t think that’s what you meant.
“Columbo is excellent when it’s using the elite’s own classism
against them, as they undermine and underestimate the shabby lieutenant
time and time again.”Wait, who’s doing the undermining here?
Actually there WAS a better time to watch Columbo – it was a few weeks ago when Peacock had that free tier….
If you have cable it is on CoziTV (owned by Universal, like Peacrap) every Saturday (on right now)…
When Gen Z ask me what were the 80’s really like. I send them this video. This is the most 80’s thing ever. The way they talk is how everyone I knew in NYC and NJ talked when I was growing up lol
“Spanning 69 episodes”.Nice.
No list of Columbo guest stars is complete without Robert Culp and especially Jack Cassidy, both of whom appeared multiple times and were adept at portraying the “I’m way smarter than you” smugness that was key to any Columbo killer
Patrick McGoohan as well, he and Falk chew up the local scenery together in several episodes.
It’s funny to see Kim Catrall’s name listed with Hollywood legends.
every Columbo episode starts with the murder, showing the viewer exactly who’s guilty and how they committed the crime. It’s then Columbo’s task to target any discrepancies and trace the clues back to the guilty party—and he always gets his man.That wasn’t unique to Colombo even in 1968 when Prescription: Murder was produced. In 1955 Henri-Georges Clouzot directed Les Diaboliques (Diabolique in the U.S.), based loosely on the 1952 psychological suspense novel Celle qui n’était plus (She Who Was No More). In the movie (but not the book), a former senior policeman turned private detective named “Alfred Fichet” seemingly bumbles around the periphery of the action, but always manages to show up whenever the perpetrators are engaged in somehow covering up their crime or talking about it. In the climax where the full extent of the crime is revealed and the killers are celebrating having pulled it off, Fichet casually walks in, looks around, and observes that if they surrender to the police now they’ll probably get a 15-20 year sentence depending on the judge, with the implication being that if they try to flee or kill him to cover it up it’ll be a death penalty crime. A lot of people talk about Diabolique for its thriller elements and big shock scene, but Fichet is almost never mentioned as being a major inspiration for Lt. Columbo.
Alright…I took this article’s advice and watched the entire first season of Columbo. And I found it to be just OK.The acting is certainly top-notch and it is fun to see older actors featured on an episode-to-episode basis. But I find the formula of the episodes a bit annoying. I don’t mind seeing the murder at the start but it would be nice if they didn’t also reveal the murderer’s motivation as often as they do. It makes Columbo’s investigative work not that interesting as you already know most of what he finds out, so you’re basically watching to enjoy his quirks alone. Maybe I just need to not binge this show. It would probably be more enjoyable watching an episode a week or so.But I will say – this show definitely seems like copaganda. Like its a poster child for it. A detective who always follows his hunch with steadfast determination and doggedness and is always proven right, who never does anything bad? That’s the exact type of portrayal that leads to people thinking that the cops who abuse and beat people are just bad apples and that there aren’t systemtic problems with police departments.
Meanwhile the last episode of Poker Face faceplants into copaganda and makes Charlie a full on narc (yes, despite her insistence that she doesn’t like to work for the man). Yikes