Just one more thing...
A beige crumpled mac, creased shirt, ruffled hair, foul-smelling cigar and a basset hound called Dog. It doesn’t take a Sherlock to work out we’re talking about the ever popular TV detective Columbo
Columbo arrived on our screens in the late 1960s as an unassuming maverick Los Angeles Police Lieutenant known only by his Italian-roots surname.
This tour de force of a show has been hailed as one of the most popular television crime shows of all time and its success stems from the unusual format for a whodunit. We always knew who had ‘dunnit’ from the first twenty minutes of each show! The thrill was watching how the smug, rich, often influential killer would be brought to his or her knees by the unassuming and humble Columbo.
Actor Peter Falk found the shabby raincoat a perfect fit and the thought of someone else in the role now seems unimaginable. However, the creators Richard Levinson and William Link, had their eyes on crooner Bing Crosby for the detective role as they considered Peter Falk too young for the part.
Did you know
Levinson and Link helped create another TV signature mystery character in Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher.
They said they modeled Columbo on Petrovich, the detective in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. They did not create the role for a continuing series character.Lt Columbo first appeared in a 1960 script Enough Rope. Columbo reappeared in a stage play based on that script and then renamed Prescription Murder.
The birth of the two-hour TV movie meant that Levinson and Link went back to their old script and hired Burke’s Law actor Gene Barry to be the killer psychiatrist who would mentally duel with Columbo. It was a successful outing for the sleuth but its writers turned down appeals to write a weekly episode of Columbo which halted proceedings for three years.
American company NBC announced the arrival of the Mystery Movie which alternated Columbo with McMillan and Wife and McCloud.
The Columbo pilot was Ransom for a Dead Man with actress Lee Grant playing a lawyer who shoots her husband and tries to make it appear like a kidnapping until the inevitable happens and the killer has to admit defeat. Sometimes you could even feel sorry for the murderer especially if they felt they were handing out a punishment the police had been unable to do.
Columbo didn’t detect in the traditional way. He never appeared part of an investigative team or to rely on lab tests. He disliked guns and would never carry one. His way of getting to the truth was by pushing and probing with an apologetic ‘Just one more little thing’ or ‘There’s something I don’t quite understand’. The fun was seeing the inevitable happen and just how the killer would fall into the trap Columbo had set.
Only Peter Falk’s character returned each episode to face a new criminal although there was always reference to Mrs Columbo and extended members of his family. The famous raincoat actually belonged to Peter Falk and he wore it regardless of the weather in each episode. The guest stars changed each time with several actors donning a new role to try and outwit the detective.
Actor Jack Cassidy appeared as the villain in three separate shows along with Robert Culp who also took three cracks at outsmarting the Lieutenant starting with the second show Death Lends a Hand.
Another multi-episode killer was Patrick McGoohan who went on to win an Emmy as the commandant of a military academy in By Dawn’s Early Light.
Escape the modern world and take a walk down memory lane instead…