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The brilliance of Columbo, in 5 great episodes
19.12.2023 - 17:42 / polygon.com / Steven Spielberg
Lieutenant Columbo, played with average Joe charm and unshowy, easy-to-miss dexterity by Peter Falk, is more than meets the eye — to the bad guys, not us, because we know how things will turn out.
They look at him, at the way he putters about with his brows furrowed beneath an unkempt thatch of graying hair and a cockeyed bit of mouth, and they don’t see anything formidable. He looks like a nobody, just another schlub.
And then, the moment comes, as it always does: the humble revelation. Garbed slovenly in rumpled beige, with a stub of a cigar and eyes agleam, the loquacious, polite guy apologizes to the killer for his intrusions. He even makes the variations of his catchphrase — “Just one more thing” (give or take a “just”) — genial as he explains the crime, tells us about the vital clue that everyone else missed, watches the cops cuff that week’s guest star, and goes home to eat dinner with Mrs. Columbo. This odd little man always bests the upper-crust killers. Ah, murder in the home, as Hitchcock said it should be with his Columbo precursor Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
The character Columbo, inspired by Porfiry in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, was created by Richard Levinson and William Link. Columbofirst appeared in a 1960 episode of The Chevy Mystery Hour, played by Bert Freed. But it would be Peter Falk who would make the shaggy and sapiential sleuth a pop culture icon.
Columbo aired on Sunday nights as part of The NBC Mystery Movie umbrella program that ran from 1971 to 1977. In that glorious run, Columbo only grows irate once. That would be in “A Stitch in Crime,” opposite Leonard Nimoy, a man known for playing the stoical, logical Spock, who never yells and never wavers from his incorruptible morals. Otherwise, Columbo remains calm and careful. He catches you with kindness.
In honor of Kino Lorber’s monumental Blu-ray release of the first seven seasons, which have never looked or sounded better, here are five excellent episodes of Columbo (though by no means the best episodes; there are too many great ones). In addition to the physical release, all the episodes are available to watch on Peacock or for free with ads on Tubi and Freevee.
From the first shot of the Steven Spielberg-directed season 1 premiere, “Murder by the Book” — a virtuosic pull, zoom, pan, focus-changing shot from an office gazing attentively at a car through the glinting lucidity of the squeaky-clean window — Columbo was obviously unlike anything else on television, a serious work that deserves to be taken as seriously as any film from the New Hollywood age.
Spielberg, the boy raised by television, gives us the amiable detective as a frumpy, unassuming genius. He is the slattern sleuth, a man who is neither
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