I have the Columbo series on DVD and I watch one episode every other Sunday (alternating with another show). However, I skip the ones that come from Ed McBain stories (No Time to Die and Undercover). I like Ed McBain but it doesn’t fit for Columbo.
… And James Gregory (“Dr Adams” in ST:TOS “Dagger of the Mind”) played his uncle/murder victim.
No offense @terentii; I always enjoy your old TV show observations and trivia, but that’s one of my least favorite eps, precisely for that reason: since she doesn’t even remember killing her husband, we don’t get to see her squirm while Columbo moves in for the checkmate, and then he lets her go. Very anticlimactic.
Another one of my least favorites is another mold-breaking episode, “Columbo Cries Wolf” in which
a Hugh Hefner-style owner of a girlie magazine appears to have killed his business partner, and Columbo is made to look like a fool after Columbo publicly leans hard on him as the killer, and then she shows up alive. It was just a publicity stunt! Except, it was also a murder plot because he then murders his business partner for real, thinking Columbo will be afraid to be fooled twice. Of course, Columbo will not be fooled twice. But Columbo should not be fooled at all; he needs to be one step ahead always, dammit! He should never be fooled by fake clues. He can be in temporary doubt about being able to get the proper evidence, but not about what is actually happening.
Also in this episode is Francine York, another baddie from Batman. Hubba-hubba! 
Columbo also lets Claudia Christian get away in “It’s All in the Game,” though he does nail Faye Dunaway. As to whether or not he lets Mariette Hartley get away in “Try and Catch Me,” we don’t know
I recently did a rewatch myself. Favorite episode: “A Friend in Need”. Best killer, best “gotcha moment”. BTW, Dick Van Dyke played a killer in the Matlock episode: “The Judge”. The killer in the last Columbo was Matthew Rhys, who hangs a man and leaves a faked suicide note, a tactic he would repeat in an episode of “The Americans”.
That’s been answered already. But the reason it was long was that it was originally part of The NBC Mystery Movie lineup. Movies are longer than TV shows even when they’re TV shows.
I don’t know the actual answer, but dramatically I’d expect it to be new-ish technology, but old enough to be understood by anyone working in an office. It wouldn’t fit the befuddled-by-new-technology theme otherwise.
Who else even remembers the other Mystery Movies in the lineup off the top of their head without looking it up? I remember ‘McMillan and Wife’ and that’s about it.
In A Trace of Murder, the murderer is a member of Columbo’s forensics lab. He was having an affair with a woman, and they conspired to murder her husband’s business rival and frame the husband. At one point, Columbo is in a restaurant with the woman and the forensics guy, and is suddenly struck by the realization that those two knew each other. He immediately got up and excued himself and walked off in mid-conversation to process the new information, which naturally struck the others as extremely odd. But the forensics guy reassured the woman that there was nothing to worry about, and that Columbo was just a bit nuts.
Wasn’t Banecek one?
IIRC, Falk’s take on the character was that, when Columbo seems absent-minded and bumbling even when no suspect is around, it’s because the guy isn’t giving his full attention to the non-detectiving matter du jour; to the extent he can get away with it, he’s constantly pondering this or that odd detail of this or that homicide case.
Here’s a useful site:
Just popping in to say Falk/Columbo fans should watch the excellent Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire (1987). Peter falk plays himself, and there are lots of Columbo references. The show was apparently popular in Germany. Or at least, West Germany.
I vaguely remember that there were three Mystery Movies, and I remember McMillan and Wife. Was the other on McCloud? Now I have to go look it up.
Yes, I believe it was McCloud.
I remember “The Snoop Sisters” (and I kind of think that “Quincy” premiered as part of the Mystery Movie series before going out on its own)
Yes! At least at the beginning [it was McCloud]. Wikipedia says that when Columbo was more popular than the others, it was spun out into its own show and replaced by Hec Ramsey.
I’d recommend a fun murder mystery movie called Murder by Death. It’s a bit of a parody of the whodunit theme but it has an all-star cast. Peter Falk is among great names like David Niven, Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, Maggie Smith and others. The characters are spoofs of famous fictional detectives. Peter Falk plays Sam Diamond who is a spoof of Sam Spade of The Maltese Falcon.
And Peter reprised that for The Cheap Detective.
The Mystery “wheel”.
Don’t forget Cool Million, Tenafly, Madigan, Farraday and Company. Lannigan’s Rabbi (with Art Carney!), and Amy Prentiss aka the Chief. Most people do. I watched them all, I ate that stuff up.
And McCoy, with Tony Curtis. Even I forgot that one!
I kept hoping Cool Million would come out on DVD. Then I find it was only FIVE episodes! Seemed there should be more. I guess that’s the Wheel format for you.
I think the only ones on DVD are Colombo, McMillian with or without Wife, Banacek and McCloud, I loved McClod when he was new, and while the others available do hold up, McClod is insufferably stupid!