The funky techno-style BGM sorta caught my ear, and the final confrontation… Man, what suspense!
Unfortunately, I missed the first fifteen minutes, which I guess I’ll have to wait quite a while for. But still, I always enjoy a new Columbo, especially since the A&E reruns are relatively few and far between (not to mention they’re in the ABC realm at the moment, and probably won’t get back to the older, regular series eps for quite a while). Very nice overall.
There was a new Columbo? A brand new Columbo? And I MISSED IT?
deep breath
F–
organ
birds fly away
people in the Pit comment on the volume of the profanity
It was good, but not great.
It occurred to me toward the end how completely direct it had all been. Columbo just homed in directly on the killer from the moment the case started. There weren’t any blind alleys, any extraneous clues, nothing that he was stumped on and had to think about. The writers made the crime too convoluted, so there wasn’t any time for him to pick away at people and build up any tension.
One of the finest television characters ever. That’s right, I said ever bitch!
Leaper, did you know Bravo shows some of the original 1970s episodes during the weekdays? Unfortunately they seem to cycle through the same 10 episodes or so.
I especially liked the reactions of the uniformed officer to Columbo’s techniques.
I thought is was sad.
Peter Falk is now way too long in the tooth to be believable. He would be way past retirement age. His voice sounded like his health would have forced him to retire as well.
The plot was gimmicky, like many of the latter day Colombo revisits. The old fish out of water… “let’s have him deal with ravers, that’ll bring in some younger demos!” There was none of the old cat & mouse, chess match that he had with the guest stars of the heyday. These murderers were clearly not in Colombo’s league.
Also, the mobster character was too gratuitous. He didn’t really add anything to the plot.
But still I watched.
Jennifer Sky was a guest star, so of course I watched.
The bit at the end with the fish tank was a bit farfetched (isn’t it always), but I’ll forgive him just because he wore that pink boa. Priceless.
Just out of curiosity, am I the only person who managed to watch the series for years and only find out a few months ago that he has a glass eye? (This is comingf rom someone who didn’t notice a guy who had a hook for a hand- even after chatting him up at the cash and watching him count out money. Sigh).
For some weird reason, I always used to have trouble remembering who was Columbo and who was Baretta. Now I have a handy mantra: “Columbo will NOT hurt you. Columbo will NOT hurt you.”
Here in the UK our Channel 5 are running the entire series of Columbo from the pilots and series 1 onwards, 1 per day. If you’re a fan, and I am, it’s (a) great because it’s a chance to watch again some dimly-remembered episodes or catch a few I missed and it’s also (b) bad because finding 80 minutes a day to watch Columbo is not easy!
Oh, and at weekends BBC2 are showing some of the newer ones. Can’t get enough of the ‘one more thing…’ guy.
One thing I actually love about the show is just how variable it can be. The one with the research scientist using a ‘Robbie the Robot’ to run his war-game and thereby establish his alibi was just silly however you sliced it. But there was another one this week about a guy whose house was fitted with all kinds of ‘modern’ gadgets including CC TV cameras, who did a very clever trick with the tapes from his own security system to ‘shift’ the apparent time of the murder. The pivotal clue that destroyed his alibi was shown very clearly in the episode, yet I would imagine every viewer (self included) missed it entirely.