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bbc.com
Why the world still loves 1970s detective show Columbo
It was clear from the outset that Lieutenant Columbo was the anthesis of a TV cop. He wasn't tall or macho; he didn't have a sidekick or squadron. He didn't carry a gun, and wasn't violent; he was squeamish at the sight of blood. In fact, aside from the occasional flashing of his badge – which showed to eagle-eyed fans that Columbo's never-revealed first name was in fact Frank – you'd barely notice he was a policeman at all: there were no shootouts or high-speed car chases, he was hardly seen in the office or at the police station. He didn't chase women – his devotion to his never-seen but constantly referenced-to wife Mrs Columbo, and the never-ending (no doubt exaggerated) stories about his extended family, presented a man of morals and virtue. "There was nobody or nothing like Columbo at all before him," Koenig says. "All the detectives were these hardboiled, emotionless, tough guys. And he was the opposite of that in every way. He hated guns and violence."
Instead, with distinctive posture, exaggerated hand gesticulations and a contrived forgetfulness – his habit of leaving a room, only to return having remembered "just one more thing" became his trademark – Columbo stumbled his way around LA's mansions with the dishevelled air of a confused gardener. Yet as Lee Grant tells him in the 1971 episode Ransom for a Dead Man, it was always the jugular he was after.
At any crime scene, he'd spot a little "detail" that bothered him – an out-of-place newspaper, a car-tyre track, a nightgown, an unsmoked cigarette – that would set his suspicions alight. Investigations into the murderer, always duped into inadvertently helping by Columbo's humble ways, were slow-building, cerebral, dialogue-based encounters that saw Columbo eventually wear the criminal down with a mixture of astute perception and dogged persistence: not so much death by a thousand cuts as mildly irritating prods on the arm. His unfailing politeness meant he often sympathised with the murderer, and in some cases even likes them ( as he tells Ruth Gordon in 1978's Catch Me If You Can).
It was the humanity of Falk's performance that gave Columbo such a universal appeal. "One ought to take one's hat off to the extraordinary acting skills of Peter Falk," says broadcaster, actor and writer Stephen Fry, a Columbo connoisseur who believes it is the greatest television series of all time. "It's a beautiful, brilliant performance. He becomes the character, but he never loses the kind of technique that he learned with his fellow young actors with John Cassavetes. And I think anyone who's ever tried film or television acting will just bow their head at the sheer skill, the concealed artistry. He’s so natural. There's such a warmth to it".
Falk embraced the character to the point that where he ended and Lt Columbo started was increasingly difficult to ascertain. He wore his own clothes – a tatty old raincoat, a very 70s-coloured suit and tie – to give an appearance so shabby, Columbo is once mistaken for a homeless man in a soup kitchen. The comedy capers that provide such a light touch – the relationship with his dog, escapades in his beaten-up old Peugeot, the constant misplacing of items (pads, pencils, lighters, bags of evidence) – were as much a Falk trait as Columbo's.
"The thing that surprised me most about researching the book was how much Peter Falk was Columbo," Koenig says. "Almost everyone who knew him and worked with him loved him, because imagine hanging out with Columbo, how fun that would be? But also how infuriating he could be because, you know, just imagine hanging out with Columbo."
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