Not to mention the aversion some people have to listening to voice mail. They just call you back. “Listen to my message, moron. I told you everything there that you’re wasting my time asking me now.”
I do recall that happening now. He could be quite clever in his questioning, a couple of steps ahead of the murderer. As noted above it’s not a whodunnit mystery, it’s a …
Yes, that should be declared a crime!
For me, the biggest mystery in every Columbo is which of his eyes is fake. I always forget which one it is and end up devoting most of my attention to trying to spot it, to the detriment of the actual murder plot. Come to think of it, does Columbo, the character, actually have a fake eye, or is it only the monocular Peter Falk, who is playing a fully sighted detective? As it happens, today I came across this delightful mock-up for an animated cartoon version of Columbo that definitively answers both questions. I absolutely love what the artist has done and would eagerly pay to watch such a series!
There’s at least one episode (from the '90s) in which Columbo alludes to having an artificial eye. I don’t remember which one, but he says “Three eyes are better than one” when it comes to examining evidence.
Speaking of technology…
I was watching “Murder by the Book” the other day (the first episode shot in regular production, one of Jack Cassidy’s three). It started with the victim (Martin Milner) hard at work in his office pounding away on an IBM Selectric typewriter.
Well, not pounding—the Selectric was top-flight back in 1971. You could actually measure the number of calories not burned by using it, as opposed to an old manual typewriter.
However, I was actually taken aback by the amount of noise the thing made. I’m so used to hearing almost nothing when writing or printing out a document, I found the clatter of an electric typewriter positively jarring.
I’m sure I heard it often back in the day, but I’m sensitive to it now. How times have changed!
Sundance channel is running a New Years Eve and New Years Columbo marathon.
Doesn’t end until late Sunday tonight.
I plan to watch several episodes Sat and Sun.
I’ve watched three favorites so far. They seem to be showing them without cuts, given the lengthy run times—in other words, back when created the shows might have run in a 90-minute or 120-minute slot but the number of commercials shoe-horned into each typical half-hour was much lower in the 1970s than it is now. So now they’re putting the longer shows into 150-minutes slots (more or less).
I hope the marathon wins the show some new fans!
Wow, you get a lot of breaks if that is the case! The actual run time for them is either roughly 75 mins or 98, I know this because I recently watched the entire 1970s original run on Prime (not in one go!). Ok so these had advert breaks too but the timer doesn’t run during those so shows the net time. Which episodes have been your favourites so far?
I just can’t get into it. I try.
Damn near every episode I’m “Just SHUT UP! You’ll never get convicted.”
The one with Laurence Harvey didn’t make sense from Columbo’s analysis. “Only a deaf person wouldn’t know the machine shut off!” Aha! Unless…it really was an accident.
And Johnny Cash should have offed Columbo in the desert. In for two murders, in for three. And he had the perfect “tarp” to move the body to anywhere. “I knew you were ready to confess” was not only weak, it wasn’t even implied in the rest of the episode.
eta: when you start rooting for the killer, I think that’s a failure of the episode.
I just finished the Monk episode with Malcolm McDowell. I was thinking, there should have been a Columbo epsode with MM as the killer. He would have made a great foil. Alas, there will be no revival without Falk.
But still…
…just one more episode.
I thought Columbo was decent, but a bit too formulaic for me.
You always knew the murderer before Columbo showed up. That was dictated by its structure: Columbo had no real reason to latch on to the killer and, if we didn’t know he was the killer, we’d wonder why he picked that particular person to harass. It only works because we know he’s guilty.
Levinson and Link did a lot of TV, but probably their best work was the made-for-TV movie, Rehearsal for Murder. Clever whodunnit with a great cast. William Daniels was especially good playing a non-actor who was forced to act. His awkward line readings were perfect.
Some of them do, though, have Columbo noticing an item right from ‘go’ that’d probably be useless in court, but that signals oh, yeah; it’s him.
(Take, say, Louis Jourdan being willing to smoothly answer questions after the guy he was dining with keeled over from poison; Columbo figures, shouldn’t he be worried that he’s poisoned, too? Unless—)
Yes, Sundance was grabbing a LOT of commercial cash during this marathon. (Not that I watched the commercials!)
This time I happened to catch “Any Old Port in a Storm,” “Make Me a Perfect Murder,” and “By Dawn’s Early Light.” Also parts of “Publish or Perish” and “Double Shock.” All enjoyable for the performances, even if not perfectly-plotted.
Oh I HATE Rehearsal For Murder.
The whole plan is to get the actual killer to go for the flashlight in the drawer.
If he didn’t, then the whole escapade would be for naught. What if he didn’t know it was there? What if he forgot? What if he had his own? All that effort, and …nothing.
Not to mention: so, you’re an out of work actor that murdered a woman. And then a year later, your victim’s husband comes to YOU and wants your help to expose the killer. Would you “help”?
If I were sufficiently arrogant, I might think that I could hinder rather than help.
That’s the Columbo way!
I just watched the first Columbo, “Prescription: Murder”
So good. And even though its only three years apart from the second ‘pilot’. Its so 60’s as much as the rest of Columbo is 70’s. You really go through the episode in the killer’s shoes. Thinking he should act like this or say that if he wants to keep up the pretense and the writing and Gene Barry is so good it all holds up almost completely. For most of the ep Gene Barry does and says everything he should. It falls away eventually of course and we get the “I know that you know that I know,etc,” But its not cheesy. Its not forced.
As fun as Columbo eps are, the vast majority of the bad guys are stammering, sweaty idiots. But the writing and the plot in the very first ep are top notch. And as Columbo says:
“The killers. They’re amateurs. They get one shot to pull it off. We’ve seen hundreds of cases.”
And sure enough, it just takes one slip-up and its over for Gene Barry.
the creators of columbo also were responsible for murder she wrote (if they were on the same network that could of been a decent crossover especially jerry orbachs character was a parody of columbo) and they lampshade a lot of stuff they did in Colombo… like the fake clue to the point that in one episode the sheriff says Mrs.F you get more mileage out of a blank piece of paper than anyone he’s ever seen
In between, she posed as the councilwoman for a district in Boston. 
