Anyone Here Watch Columbo?

[VulcanJedi]

wonderful show---classic detective...one of a kind--rivals Sherlock Holmes. Iconic character.

 

[TRON JA307020]

wonderful show---classic detective...one of a kind--rivals Sherlock Holmes. Iconic character.

Agreed. Excellent show and it holds up great for modern times.

 

[Kail]

I wrote a thesis on Columbo versus Sherlock Holmes. Got an A. Love them both.

 

[MacLeod]

Watched an episode last night "Publish or Perish" , don't recall seeing that particualr episode before.

 

[LadyT'Anna]

That was a must-see in my family. I still remember the episode in which William Shatner played the murderer, and what little detail tripped him up so Columbo figured out he was guilty.

Indeed! Did you notice how Shatner sounded more and more like Kirk as the episode progressed? Score one for RP!

I do wish that TPTB hadn't cast Nimoy as the bad guy. And I really wish they hadn't outed him as such in the trailer! Mercy!

I never thought I'd see Joanne Linville cast as the wife of a politician. I wanted her to play the politician herself, seeing as she'd already commanded a Romulan flagship.

And let's not forget Mariette Hartley and Julie Newmar, both of whom were lovely as always. It was nifty to see so much of the TOS Trek cast!

Pubert, as you'll surely have guessed by now, I watched the 1970s episodes and loved them. I might just rewatch them one of these weeks.

Edit: Yikes! How could I have left out William Windom? (And why couldn't we have seen more of him in TOS?)

 

[Christopher]

I do wish that TPTB hadn't cast Nimoy as the bad guy. And I really wish they hadn't outed him as such in the trailer! Mercy!

But that's how Columbo always worked -- we knew up front who the killer was. And the bad guy was always the most important role in the story, other than Columbo himself. Arguably including Columbo himself. In the original play and movie, the killer was the protagonist and Columbo was the antagonist trying to foil the killer's plans; and most of the episodes followed that same formula. So it would've been unworthy of Nimoy to be cast as anything less than the bad guy.

 

[LadyT'Anna]

I do wish that TPTB hadn't cast Nimoy as the bad guy. And I really wish they hadn't outed him as such in the trailer! Mercy!

But that's how Columbo always worked -- we knew up front who the killer was. And the bad guy was always the most important role in the story, other than Columbo himself. Arguably including Columbo himself. In the original play and movie, the killer was the protagonist and Columbo was the antagonist trying to foil the killer's plans; and most of the episodes followed that same formula. So it would've been unworthy of Nimoy to be cast as anything less than the bad guy.

I know. I guess I'm just old-fashioned enough to like my heroes to stay good and stay put. I never cared for Trek's mirror universes either, heretical as that may sound.

 

[MacLeod]

And in the case of Columbo aren't we really seeing the story from the killers perspective rather than Columbo's?

 

[ihno]

It must say it's really hard to ignore Shatner's toupet in his first Columbo.

 

[LadyT'Anna]

And in the case of Columbo aren't we really seeing the story from the killers perspective rather than Columbo's?

Got it in one.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

I know Columbo was played by other actors before but the early takes on the character just weren't as good.

But that doesn't mean nobody else should ever try. For every Jeremy Brett or Benedict Cumberbatch, there have been a bunch of forgettable or ill-conceived casting choices for Sherlock Holmes (Roger Moore? Matt Frewer??). We had to get through the mediocre ones to get to the great ones, as is true of anything. But if people had just given up trying, we wouldn't have gotten those later great ones.

The quirky detective trope is rather well entrenched on TV. Most of those shows don't do gunfights and car chases.

Good point. There was a lot of Columbo in Vincent D'Onofrio's Bobby Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

What makes 70s detective shows different from current ones is that starting with CSI there's been a focus on forensics. Colombo just mindf***ed the killers into revealing themselves, and that's far more compelling.

Well, strictly speaking, the first forensic-scientist detective in fiction was Sherlock Holmes himself. He pioneered the field, not only in fiction but in real life, since the stories popularized detection techniques that real police departments would later adopt, often inspired by the Holmes stories. All modern forensic police work is following Holmes's lead, essentially. (Which is why it can be tricky to make Holmes work in a modern setting where every police department already uses his methods. Sherlock and Elementary have to focus more on his exceptional observation skills and leaps of insight in order to justify why he's needed as a police consultant, since his scientific and analytical techniques per se are routine now.)

Quincy, M.E. was also a CSI forerunner, in that its detective was a medical examiner and investigated based on his autopsy results and lab work. (Well, at least until he gave up hunting murderers in favor of social activism. I always loved listening to Jack Klugman give a speech, but man, did that show get preachy.) I suppose the same might go for other doctor-detectives like Dick Van Dyke in Diagnosis: Murder, but I don't think the medical/scientific side was stressed that much in that show.

And though it's not really a mystery show, there's a surprising amount of forensic science in Batman '66. I realized a while back that Batman and Robin in that show were basically the Gotham City PD's unpaid CSI division, always taking clues back to the Batcave to run lab tests on them with Commissioner Gordon's blessing.

There was also Hec Ramsey, who was doing forensics while fighting crime, but in the American West of the late 1800's-early 1900's.

As to somebody else doing Columbo, that's happened already: Dirk Benedict played him in a 2010 stage production of Prescription: Murder (the play that introduced Columbo to the world.) Plus, the first Columbo was Thomas Mitchell in the original 1961 play.

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[Rincewiend]

Yeah, i own all the Dutch DVD releases...
Still a good show...

I also like a lot of British police shows like A Touch Of Frost...

 

[TRON JA307020]

It must say it's really hard to ignore Shatner's toupet in his first Columbo.

LOL! Yeah it was. I think Shatner was really getting self conscious about his thinning hair so he used a extra large toupee(Like in TJ Hooker). It seems he either got a hair transplant in recent years or a much better toupee that looks more realistic.

 

[Christopher]

Oh, I can think of at least two Shatner toupees far worse than his Columbo look. One is in the "Burning Bright" episode of The Six Million Dollar Man (really scraggly-looking and unflattering), the other in the first TekWar movie (blatantly mismatched with the color of his hair).

 

[TRON JA307020]

Oh, I can think of at least two Shatner toupees far worse than his Columbo look. One is in the "Burning Bright" episode of The Six Million Dollar Man (really scraggly-looking and unflattering), the other in the first TekWar movie (blatantly mismatched with the color of his hair).

I haven't seen that ep of TSMDM in years but I don't recall the toup being that bad. The Tek War toup looks close to his hair now maybe a bit thicker. I do think he got a transplant a few years ago or he got a very good hair replacement cap with simulated scalp and all.

 

[arthur2sheds]

All this talk of Columbo makes me want to want to watch an episode fortunatly I have the comple box set the question is which to watch.

Quite a problem. I would guess anyone you pick will be a great watch. Even the lesser episodes of Columbo were great.

Pick one with a guest star you really like!

Any of the episodes that feature Patrick McGoohan (he did 3 or 4 I think) They are all pretty damn good, but the dialogue with McGoohan just sparkles.
At the moment in the UK, Channel 5 shows a Columbo double bill at the weekends.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Quite a problem. I would guess anyone you pick will be a great watch. Even the lesser episodes of Columbo were great.

Pick one with a guest star you really like!

Any of the episodes that feature Patrick McGoohan (he did 3 or 4 I think) They are all pretty damn good, but the dialogue with McGoohan just sparkles.
At the moment in the UK, Channel 5 shows a Columbo double bill at the weekends.

Yeah the McGoohan episodes were spectacular.