Columbo was the best American television show of the 1970s – a consistently solid ten-year run of TV movies in which the dishevelled detective – played to perfection by Peter Falk – outsmarted a series of rich, arrogant and irritated murderers as he slowly unravelled their alibis and got to the truth of the matter.
In a world of whodunnits, Columbo did things differently. We know from the off who the guilty party is – we watch them carrying out their cunning plans to kill a rival, a partner or a colleague during the first part of the show, with Columbo sometimes not even appearing until midway through the show. There is no mystery here – the fun comes from seeing how Columbo slowly breaks them down, even though he almost always knows from the beginning that they are the guilty party. Admittedly, some of his methods might not hold up in court, but let’s not split hairs.
With a stream of impressive guest villains – often actors playing against type – and a no-nonsense style that sticks to the formula without ever letting it get old, Columbo in the 1970s – from the 1968 pilot (based on a stage play that was itself adapted from a 1960 TV play) to the final 1978 season, the show rarely put a foot wrong. Sure some episodes were better than others, but even the low points of the show remain eminently watchable. There is a consistency of style in the show that is rarely found in other 1970s shows, all of which have aged much more than this.
Columbo was revived in 1989 for three more seasons, which tend to be a bit more hit-and-miss, especially with the later episodes where the formula is needlessly tampered with. A couple of episodes even crowbar Columbo into Ed McBain stories that are regular police dramas and the results are not simply disappointing, they feel like a betrayal of the show. Unsurprisingly, many of the box set editions – including the new Blu-ray collection – leave these seasons out.
We’ve done a video on the new release that further goes into the joys of Columbo. Watch it below.
BUY COLUMBO ON BLU-RAY (UK)
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