Columbo
DVD cover art for the first season
Genre	Crime drama Detective fiction Neo-noir
Created by	Richard Levinson William Link
Starring	Peter Falk
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	10
No. of episodes	69 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer	Philip Saltzman[1]
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	73–98 minutes
Production companies	Universal Television (1968–1978, 1989–1997) Studios USA (1998–2001) Universal Network Television (2003)
Original release
Network	NBC (1968–1978) ABC (1989–2003)
Release	February 20, 1968 (1968-02-20) – January 30, 2003 (2003-01-30)
Related
Mrs. Columbo (1979–1980)

Columbo (/kəˈlʌmboʊ/) is an American crime drama television series starring Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.^[2][3] After two pilot episodes in 1968 and 1971, the show originally aired on NBC from 1971 to 1978 as one of the rotating programs of The NBC Mystery Movie. Columbo then aired less frequently on ABC from 1989 to 2003.

Columbo is a shrewd and intelligent blue-collar homicide detective whose trademarks include his rumpled beige raincoat, unassuming demeanor, cigar, old Peugeot 403 car,^[4][5][6] love of chili, and unseen wife (whom he mentions frequently). He often leaves a room only to return with the catchphrase "Just one more thing" to ask a critical question.

The character and show, created by Richard Levinson and William Link, popularized the inverted detective story format (sometimes referred to as a "howcatchem"). This genre begins by showing the commission of the crime and its perpetrator; the plot therefore usually has no "whodunit" element of determining which of several suspects committed the crime. It instead revolves around how a perpetrator known to the audience will finally be caught and exposed. The clues Columbo finds to help him solve the case are sometimes revealed to the audience beforehand, but often not until the episode's end.

The series' homicide suspects are often affluent members of high society; it has led some critics to see class conflict as an element of each story.^[7] Suspects carefully cover their tracks and are initially dismissive of Columbo's circumstantial speech and apparent ineptitude. They become increasingly unsettled as his superficially pestering behavior teases out incriminating evidence.^[7] His relentless approach often leads to self-incrimination or outright confession.

Episodes of Columbo are between 70 and 98 minutes long, and they have been broadcast in 44 countries. The show has been described by the BBC as "timeless" and remains popular today.^[8]

Episodes

After two pilot episodes, the show originally aired on NBC from 1971 to 1978 as one of the rotating programs of The NBC Mystery Movie. Columbo then aired less regularly on ABC beginning in 1989 under the umbrella of The ABC Mystery Movie.^[9] The last episode was broadcast in 2003 as part of ABC Thursday Night at the Movies.^[10]

In almost every episode, the audience sees the crime unfold at the beginning and knows the identity of the culprit, typically an affluent member of society. Once Columbo enters the story (he rarely appears in the first act), viewers watch him solve the case by sifting through the contradictions between the truth and the version presented to him by the killer(s). This style of mystery is sometimes referred to as a "howcatchem", in contrast to the traditional whodunit. In structural analysis terms, the majority of the narrative is therefore dénouement, a feature normally reserved for the very end of a story. Episodes tend to be driven by their characters, the audience observing the criminal's reactions to Columbo's increasingly intrusive presence.

When Columbo first appears in an episode, his genius is hidden from the viewer by his frumpy, friendly, and disarming demeanor. While the details, and eventually the motivations, of the murderers' actions are always shown to the viewer, Columbo's true thoughts and intentions are sometimes concealed until the end of the episode. He occasionally begins to whistle the tune "This Old Man" as the pieces begin to fall into place.

Columbo generally maintains a friendly relationship with the murderer until the end, and sometimes even after their confession or incrimination, despite both characters being aware of their adversarial positions. The detective usually suspects the murderer within moments of their meeting, or even earlier, often based on their reaction to the news of the victim's death. The murderer in turn almost always immediately sees through Columbo's scruffy and absent-minded manner to his underlying investigative intellect, and accordingly takes steps to divert his efforts by disguising evidence, manipulating witnesses, manufacturing evidence to lead Columbo towards a different suspect, and/or feigning irritation as an excuse for declining requests for searches and interrogations. In some cases the murderer will even taunt Columbo over his inability to prove their guilt. There are two sides to Columbo's character: the disarming and unkempt detective and the hidden genius sleuth. The genius sometimes starkly manifests itself through his eyes, as when the magician The Great Santini escapes from police handcuffs that Columbo coyly presents him during Santini's show ("Now You See Him..."). In some instances, such as the avenging elderly mystery writer in "Try and Catch Me" and the terminally ill and deluded actress in "Forgotten Lady", many viewers find the killer more sympathetic than the victim.^[11]

Each episode is generally concluded with Columbo proving the killer's guilt, though some episodes, such as "Swan Song", go on to show the killer confessing or quietly submitting to arrest. There are few attempts to deceive the viewer or provide a twist in the tale. One exception is "Last Salute to the Commodore", where Robert Vaughn is seen elaborately disposing of a body, but is proved later to have been covering for his alcoholic wife, whom he mistakenly thought to be the murderer. Sometimes, Columbo sets up the murderer with a trick designed to elicit a confession. An example occurs in "Dagger of the Mind", in which Columbo flips an evidentiary pearl into the victim's umbrella, bringing about incriminating activity from Nicholas Frame and Lillian Stanhope.

Development and character profile

The character of Columbo was created by the writing team of Richard Levinson and William Link, who said that Columbo was partially inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment character Porfiry Petrovich,^[12][13] as well as G. K. Chesterton's humble cleric-detective Father Brown. Other sources claim Columbo's character is also influenced by Inspector Fichet from the French suspense-thriller film Les Diaboliques (1955).^[14]

The character first appeared in a 1960 episode of the television-anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show, titled "Enough Rope". This was adapted by Levinson and Link from their short story "May I Come In", which had been published as "Dear Corpus Delicti" in an issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. The short story featured a police lieutenant then named Fisher.^[15] The first actor to portray Columbo, character actor Bert Freed, was a stocky character actor with a thatch of gray hair.^[16]

Freed's Columbo wore a rumpled suit and smoked a cigar; he otherwise had few of the other now-familiar Columbo mannerisms. The character is still recognizably Columbo and uses some of the same methods of misdirecting and distracting his suspects. During the course of the show, the increasingly frightened murderer brings pressure from the district attorney's office to have Columbo taken off the case, but the detective fights back with his own contacts.

Although Freed received third billing, he wound up with almost as much screen time as the killer and appeared immediately after the first commercial. This delayed entry of the character into the narrative of the screenplay became a defining characteristic of the structure of the Columbo series. This teleplay is available for viewing in the archives of the Paley Center for Media in New York City and Los Angeles.

Levinson and Link then adapted the TV drama into the stage play Prescription: Murder. This was first performed at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco on January 2, 1962, with Oscar-winning character actor Thomas Mitchell in the role of Columbo. Mitchell was 70 years old at the time. The stage production starred Joseph Cotten as the murderer and Agnes Moorehead as the victim. Mitchell died of cancer while the play was touring in out-of-town tryouts; Columbo was his last role.

In 1968, the same play was made into a two-hour television movie that aired on NBC. The writers suggested Lee J. Cobb and Bing Crosby for the role of Columbo, but Cobb was unavailable and Crosby turned it down because he felt it would take too much time away from the golf links. Director Richard Irving convinced Levinson and Link that Falk, who excitedly said he "would kill to play that cop", could pull it off even though he was much younger than the writers had in mind.^[17]

Originally a one-off movie of the week, Prescription: Murder has Falk's Columbo pitted against a psychiatrist (Gene Barry). In this movie, the psychiatrist gives the new audience a perfect description of Columbo's character. Due to the success of this film, NBC requested that a pilot for a potential series be made to see if the character could be sustained on a regular basis, leading to the 1971 ninety-minute television production, Ransom for a Dead Man, with Lee Grant playing the killer. The popularity of the second film prompted the creation of a regular series on NBC, that premiered in September 1971 as part of The NBC Mystery Movie wheel series rotation: McCloud, McMillan & Wife, and other whodunits.

According to TV Guide, the original plan was that a new Columbo episode would air every week. However, Falk refused to commit to such a busy schedule given his steady work in motion pictures. The network arranged for the Columbo segments to air once a month on Wednesday nights. The high quality of Columbo, McMillan & Wife, and McCloud was due in large part to the extra time spent on each episode. The term wheel show had been previously coined to describe this format, but no previous or subsequent wheel show achieved the longevity or success of The NBC Mystery Movie.

Columbo was an immediate hit in the Nielsen ratings and Falk won an Emmy Award for his role in the show's first season. In its second year the Mystery Movie series was moved to Sunday nights, where it then remained during its seven-season run. The show became the anchor of NBC's Sunday night lineup. Columbo aired regularly from 1971 to 1978. After NBC canceled it in 1978, Columbo was revived on ABC between 1989 and 2003 in several new seasons and a few made-for-TV movie "specials".

Columbo's wardrobe was provided by Falk; they were his clothes, including the high-topped shoes and the shabby raincoat, which made its first appearance in Prescription: Murder.^[18] Falk said of the raincoat, "I just felt comfortable in it."^[19] Falk often ad libbed his character's idiosyncrasies (fumbling through his pockets for a piece of evidence and discovering a grocery list, asking to borrow a pencil, becoming distracted by something irrelevant in the room at a dramatic point in a conversation with a suspect, etc.), inserting these into his performance as a way to keep his fellow actors off-balance. He felt it helped to make their confused and impatient reactions to Columbo's antics more genuine.^[18] According to Levinson, the catchphrase "one more thing" was conceived when he and Link were writing the play: "we had a scene that was too short, and we had already had Columbo make his exit. We were too lazy to retype the scene, so we had him come back and say, 'Oh, just one more thing.' It was never planned."^[17]

A few years before his death, Falk expressed interest in returning to the role. In 2007, he claimed he had chosen a script for one last Columbo episode, "Columbo: Hear No Evil". The script was renamed "Columbo's Last Case". ABC declined the project. In response, producers for the series announced that they were attempting to shop the project to foreign production companies.^[20][21] Falk was diagnosed with dementia in late 2007. During a 2009 trial over his care, physician Stephen Read stated that Falk's condition had deteriorated so badly that he could no longer remember playing a character named Columbo, nor could he identify Columbo. Falk died on June 23, 2011, aged 83.^[22][23][24]

Contributors

Guest stars

The series featured many guest stars as murderers and in other roles.

Some actors appeared more than once, playing a different character each time; among those actors are Jack Cassidy, Robert Culp, Tyne Daly, George Hamilton, Patrick McGoohan, Leslie Nielsen, Dick Van Dyke, and William Shatner.

Directors and writers

The first season première "Murder by the Book" was written by Steven Bochco and directed by Steven Spielberg. Jonathan Demme directed the seventh-season episode "Murder Under Glass". Jonathan Latimer was also a writer. Actor Ben Gazzara, a friend of Falk's, directed the episodes "A Friend in Deed" (1974) and "Troubled Waters" (1975).

Falk himself directed the last episode of the first season, "Blueprint for Murder," and wrote the episode entitled "It's All in the Game" in season 10. Actor Nicholas Colasanto, best known for playing Coach on Cheers, directed two episodes, "Swan Song" with Johnny Cash, and "Étude in Black".

Patrick McGoohan directed five episodes (including three of the four in which he played the murderer) and wrote and produced two. Vincent McEveety was a frequent director, and homage was paid to him by a humorous mention of a character with his surname in the episode "Undercover" (which he directed).

Two episodes, "No Time to Die" and "Undercover", were based on the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain,^[25] and thus do not strictly follow the standard Columbo/inverted detective story format.

Score composers

Columbo episodes contain a variety of music that contributes to the uniqueness of each. The score becomes of particular importance during turning points of the plots. "The Mystery Movie Theme" by Henry Mancini, written for The NBC Mystery Movie series, was used extensively in the whole of 38 episodes, from 1971 to 1977. Unlike the other elements of the Mystery Movie wheel, Columbo never had an official theme as such, although some composers, such as Dick DeBenedictis and Gil Mellé, did write their own signature pieces. Several composers created original music for the series, which was often used along with "The Mystery Movie Theme":

Series Music department included:

• Quincy Jones—composer: "Mystery Movie" theme / "Wednesday Mystery Movie" theme (8 episodes, 1972–1973)
• Henry Mancini – composer: "Mystery Movie" theme / "Sunday Mystery Movie" theme (38 episodes, 1971–1977)
• Hal Mooney – music supervisor (27 episodes, 1972–1976)
• Mike Post – composer: "Mystery Movie" theme (9 episodes, 1989–1990)

Patrick Williams received two Emmys nominations for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series in 1978 (for "Try and Catch Me") and 1989 (for "Murder, Smoke and Shadows"). Billy Goldenberg was nominated in the same category in 1972 for "Lady in Waiting".

Columbo also featured an unofficial signature tune, the British children's song "This Old Man". It was introduced in the episode "Any Old Port in a Storm" in 1973 and the detective can be heard humming or whistling it often in subsequent films. Falk said it was a melody he personally enjoyed and one day it became a part of his character.^[26] The tune was also used in various score arrangements throughout the three decades of the series, including opening and closing credits. A version of it, titled "Columbo", was created by Patrick Williams.^[27]

Reception

Awards and nominations

Columbo received numerous awards and nominations from 1971 to 2005, including 13 Emmys, two Golden Globe Awards, two Edgar Awards and a TV Land Award nomination in 2005 for Peter Falk.

The 1971 episode "Murder by the Book", directed by Steven Spielberg, was ranked No. 16 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time^[28] and in 1999, the magazine ranked Lt. Columbo No. 7 on its 50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time list.^[29][30] In 2012, the program was ranked the third-best cop or legal show on Best in TV: The Greatest TV Shows of Our Time.^[31] In 2013, TV Guide included it in its list of The 60 Greatest Dramas of All Time^[32] and ranked it 33rd on its list of the 60 Best Series.^[33] Also in 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it 57th on its list of 101 Best Written TV Series.^[34] In December 2023, Variety ranked Columbo #85 on its list of the 100 greatest TV shows of all time.^[35]

International reception

Columbo was an international success during its initial run and was syndicated in 44 countries.^[36]

According to a 1989 article in the Chicago Tribune, when production of Columbo stopped and no new episodes could be broadcast in Romania, the government feared that riots could break out, and Falk was asked by the U.S. State Department to record a special announcement to be broadcast on Romanian television.^[37] The story was repeated by Falk in an appearance on Late Show with David Letterman in 1995, and in Falk's memoir Just One More Thing. While the cable containing Falk's speech was released as part of the United States diplomatic cables leak, it is disputed whether riots or any kind of mass protest were imminent due to the cancellation of Columbo.^[38][39]

A statue of Lieutenant Columbo and his dog was unveiled in 2014 on Miksa Falk Street in Budapest, Hungary.^[40] According to Antal Rogán, then-district mayor of the city, Peter Falk may have been related to Hungarian writer and politician Miksa Falk, although there is no evidence yet to prove it.^[41]

Renewed popularity in 2020s

In the 2020s, the renewed popularity of Columbo with much younger audiences has been noted by several media publications.^[42] Slate quoted a Columbo fan page on Tumblr as saying that the titular character "represents a kind of masculinity that is very attractive to a lot of queer people".^[43] Collider and the BBC emphasized the timeless nature of Peter Falk's performance.^[44][45] GameRant suggested that the show is "comfort viewing" and that its repetitive nature easily engenders Internet memes.^[46]

Home media

VHS

On August 3, 1994, MCA/Universal released the episode "Murder by the Book" on VHS.^[47]

DVD

As of January 10, 2012, Universal Studios had released all 69 episodes of Columbo on DVD.^[48] The episodes are released in the same chronological order as they were originally broadcast. On October 16, 2012, Universal released Columbo—The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1.^[49]

Because the Columbo episodes from 1989 to 2003 were aired very infrequently, different DVD sets have been released around the world. In many Region 2 and Region 4 countries, all episodes have now been released as 10 seasons, with the 10th comprising the last 14 episodes, from "Columbo Goes to College" (1990) to "Columbo Likes the Nightlife" (2003). In France and The Netherlands (also Region 2), the DVDs were grouped differently and released as 12 seasons.

In Region 1, all episodes from seasons 8 on are grouped differently; the episodes that originally aired on ABC were released under the title COLUMBO: The Mystery Movie Collection.