When Good Shows Get Better: Columbo

[TMC]

http://www.wewantinsanity.com/am2/pu..._Columbo.shtml

The History:

In 1960 William Link (Murder, She Wrote) created a character known as detective Columbo, who first appeared in The Chevy Mystery Series as a one-off character in the drama of the week Enough Rope. The character was then brought into the play Prescription: Murder, which first ran in 1962 and involved Richard Levinson, who had Link's writing partner. In 1968 the play was adapted into a TV movie of the week, and after finding success the character was given his own program. In 1971 Columbo began airing as a part of the NBC Mystery Movie wheel series (a series of shows that rotate into the timeslot, thus one week it's one show and the next it's another, on a constant rotation), alongside programs such as McMillan & Wife and McCloud. The run ended on NBC in 1978, but ABC picked it up in 1989 and aired new infrequent specials until 2003. In total there are 69 episodes or TV movies of Columbo, seven seasons with NBC and 3 with ABC as well as specials.

The Show:

Whodunnit? Oh, wait, it's the person we see committing the crime, right there. Wait, we know who did it, but how are they going to get caught? Yes, Columbo is a Reverse Whodunnit (not technically speaking the first to do it but the one who popularized it), in which the viewers know who the killer is. A good chunk of an episode's first act can be events leading up to the murder. The game thus becomes a battle of wits between the killer and Lieutenant Columbo (the late great Peter Falk) in a game of 'howcatchum' (a term the producers used). The investigation ends up being very much like an Agatha Christie story, but with Columbo often taking steps to put the killer at ease by acting incompetent and being generally a schlub, making them think they have nothing to worry about. In the end however Columbo makes the killer weave a web of lies to complex he's easily able to find the weakness and pounce, having it all fall apart and the perpetrator effectively incriminate themselves. There are some shake-ups to the formula, but in general that is how the story goes.

The Good:

I cannot praise enough how much the formula works. Quite a few Whodunnits tend to rely upon misdirecting the audience, throwing out a bunch of possible candidates (nowadays the guest actor you recognize is usually the killer, even if its someone like freaking Richard Kind) before almost inevitably going to either the one person they never suspected or the insidious character met in the first act who is almost never seen again. Columbo gives you the story more or less from the start, so you already know what's going on, and even if you don't the show is happy to help you since the killers are usually not very subtle (you'll be shocked they don't kill anyone with their weaponized smug). This really plays on reality since your average killer isn't generally a mastermind, thus weaving their liar's webs (good name for a band, Liar's Webs) becoming their undoing rather than managing to act normally except when confronted with a piece of evidence they failed to dispose of properly. Classic game of wits, pure and simple, and since you already know the story the clue that breaks the camel's back usually isn't seemingly pulled out of one's ass.

Before I get into the character, which is really the main highlight of the show besides the format, lets talk about the idea of the TV movie formula in general. One of the best shows on TV right now is Sherlock, which has three episodes a season, each one ninety minutes long. Each episode is thus a TV movie, and gives the mystery and adventure time to breathe. Columbo benefits from the same strengths, as with the run-time of over an hour the mystery can properly grow and not feel confirmed. While I do still watch more than a couple of US police procedural programs which use the Whodunnit motif the longer runtime, when exploited properly, can help better flesh out the killer and their world. You'd be surprised what an extra ten, twenty minutes can do.

Now then, on to Columbo himself. Columbo is a simple man, always wearing a suit and a beat-up raincoat while chomping on cheap cigars. Columbo's natural intelligence level is questionable, and he's been known to rarely carry a gun (he's either bad with it or flat out doesn't like using it) despite some scrapes he has gotten into. When speaking to suspects or witnesses Columbo will often compliment them, address them respectfully and seem quite forgetful. More than once Columbo's asked someone he's trying to interrogate for a pencil and seemed distracted when getting answers. These mannerisms, however, are almost all likely a part of a deception so Columbo can have his opponents off-guard, negating the intelligence gap. Columbo isn't brilliant, he's just an extremely hard-worker and a clever hunter, soon picking his suspect and luring them into a trap of words.

The Bad:

That length advantage I praised? When the show went to two-hours more frequently in the third and fourth seasons, padding emerged. The problem was early Columbo didn't have much to it, the character's full biography a bit of a mystery and while he had a wife we never saw her, so filling in time with images such as his home life didn't really work. As a result Columbo would sometimes sit and mull, sometimes with his dog (named Dog), and basically just recap what people already knew. This form of padding could be useful for people who might have missed part of the episode back before repeats were a big thing but modern audiences gain little from it. Thankfully this wasn't a constant problem, just most noticeable in some of the earlier seasons.

The other big problem was some of the later ABC episodes. Basically everything from 1993 onwards had some problem with it. A glaring problem was that Columbo was getting very old, as by 1993 Peter Falk was well into his sixties, and it just kept going. By the final episode Peter Falk was over 70. Another problem was the later episodes seemed keen to destroy Columbo's mystique. A couple of times during the later era Columbo visibly had a gun and even threatened a man with it at one point. A 1997 episode confirmed that, like Peter Falk himself, Columbo had only one eye (writer and comedian Frank Skinner, who apparently hates Aaron Wood as per a book he wrote, claims to have had a long argument with a friend over the eye question). Much like seeing too much of a monster can make it boring in a horror film, knowing too much about Columbo makes him less of an enigma and thus less fun. None the less Columbo still had his wits and the plots worked fine.

The Blame:

William Link seems to be the guy to mention here. While the padding problem is really down to the writers of the episodes, Link seemed to be the guy who really wanted to keep Columbo going. Peter Falk was clearly game, though it is known that thanks to the fact that he only had one eye his acting options were often limited, but he also cited the role as being a lot of fun. Really if not for Falk's diagnosis of dementia in 2007 (rumoured to be because of a dentist complication, sleep well!) they may have kept going up until Falk died. Falk loved the character, he made him his own, and Link was happy to profit. It's kind of hard to fault people if they're still enjoying themselves, even if it may have hurt the product they were making.

[Steve_uk]

I have to admit Columbo is one of the series I miss the most, along with actor Peter Falk. They could never remake them with another actor: he was inimitable. https://youtu.be/ZMDE9-jwTKI