Initially dismissive of Columbo's circumstantial speech and apparent ineptitude, they become increasingly unsettled as his pestering behavior and formidable eye for detail lead him to tease out incriminating evidence. His suspects are often affluent members of high society who try to carefully cover their tracks. The character and show, created by Richard Levinson and William Link, popularized the inverted detective story format, which begins by showing the commission of the crime and its perpetrator the plot therefore usually has no "whodunit" element, and instead revolves around how a perpetrator known to the audience will finally be caught and exposed (sometimes referred to as a "howcatchem").Ĭolumbo is a shrewd but inelegant blue-collar homicide detective whose trademarks include his rumpled beige raincoat, unassuming demeanor, and frequent cigar smoking. Just one more thing: for a sleuth who delighted in bamboozling his quarry, this might actually have been the perfect absurdist full stop.Columbo () is an American television series starring Peter Falk as Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. There is a genuine sense that this berserk episode might actually have undone Columbo. Last Salute to the Commodore, though, ends on a weird visual flourish, with the aqua-phobic lieutenant pushing off in a tiny rowing boat, seemingly abandoning his car, seemingly abandoning everything. Director Patrick McGoohan has gleefully scuttled the formula his great friend Falk even seems a willing accomplice.ĭue to Columbo’s non-serialised nature – helping it remain a random Sunday afternoon schedule-filler even today – the classic narrative blueprint was quietly restored for season six and the series returned to an even keel. It feels like a Columbo-related cheese dream. Eventually, all the suspects are assembled in a room so the murderer can be revealed Agatha Christie-style, making a mockery of the show’s signature device. The lieutenant has his head turned by transcendental meditation, attempting a lotus pose on a marina boardwalk. Then Vaughn turns up dead, and the format disintegrates. When we witness son-in-law Robert Vaughn disposing of the commodore’s body at sea, it seems obvious he is the murderer. In the fifth season finale, Last Salute to the Commodore, set among the yachting set, the victim is a crotchety, self-regarding millionaire who resents his drunken coterie and grasping family. If classic Columbo is good and late-era Columbo is bad, then the lieutenant must have jumped the shark with the 1989 return of the mac? In truth, you have to go further back – to 1976. This modern phase veered towards outlandish plots and slapstick, to the extent that hardcore fans cannot quite agree on its most heinous crime: was it Columbo parping away on a tuba or unexpectedly wielding a gun? It made him beloved.Īfter a pilot in 1968 – featuring the odd sight of a slicker, slightly more aggressive Columbo – the series ran from 1971 to 2003, albeit with a decade-long break from 1979 until the character was relaunched in 1989. He was justice incarnate: rumpled of the Bailey. The snooty maestro, the chess grandmaster, the crooked politician … all were undone by Columbo. Wealth and influence could not dissuade the little guy in the shabby raincoat. Columbo would identify the culprit seemingly through intuition alone, then patiently chip away at their alibi with his sly mantra of “just one more thing” until they incriminated themselves or begged for jail simply to escape him. Yet underneath the slovenly suit was fierce cunning. To look at his clapped-out Peugeot, you might suspect this shambling lieutenant would be late for his own funeral. The headline star, embodied by Peter Falk, would only amble in after an ad break or two. Here was a murder mystery where the key eyewitness was the audience, made complicit by watching the killer execute their foul deed at the top of each episode. The Columbo character-type is so familiar – paving the way for gun-shy, cerebral TV tecs such as Morse or Fitz from Cracker – that it’s easy to forget how revolutionary it was when the series became a global smash in the early 1970s.
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