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Why the world still loves Columbo
- romwell 5y agoIt was massively popular in Ukraine and Russia in the 1990s. I still remember the overcoat, the dog, and Culombo's wife, which has always been mentioned, but never shown. I guess that's all I have to say for now starts to leave. Opens the door back again Now, just one more thing...
- MikeDelta 5y agoI seem to remember that that one more thing often turned out to be the thing that unravelled into solving the crime.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoThat was his "schtick." He'd come back and say "You see, I guess maybe I missed it, but I just can't figure out how..." Whoever he was talking to, was about to get new jewelry. He'd also have a couple of uniforms handy, with stainless steel bracelets. He was doing it before Steve Jobs.
- mbg721 5y agoJust as often, he would already know how the crime happened, and the "one more thing" was just to unnerve the suspect.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dasil003 5y agoOh my god, I never connected the through-line from Columbo (which I often watched re-runs with my family as a kid) to Steve Jobs keynotes.
- dogma1138 5y agoThe wife got a spin-off series Mrs. Columbo.
- mbg721 5y agoIn case you find yourself among Columbo corners of the Internet, Mrs. Columbo is emphatically considered non-canonical.
- themadturk 5y agoI read recently that the “just one more thing” originated when the writers discovered they’d forgotten to have Colombo ask a question during the scene and tacked it onto the end to avoid having the rewrite the scene.
- loonster 5y agoColumbo, CHIPS, MASH, all old shows that still appealed to me as a boy in the 90s.
- romwell 5y agoThrow in Nash Bridges there too
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sn41 5y agoThere was a German detective series whose translation was called "The Old Fox" - I used to like it in the 80s. I haven't been able to find it online much.
- Someone 5y agoI think that’s “Der Alte”. https://www.fernsehserien.de/der-alte/episodenguide https://www.fernsehserien.de/der-alte/episodenguide. Available on Amazon, iTunes, and magenta tv.de (all possibly only in Germany and/or Austria)
- 95014_refugee 5y agoThat’s a nice nod to Wings of Desire in there.
- raffraffraff 5y agoFrom across the pond... Yes Minister and the follow up series Yes Prime Minister are the most rewtchable TV shows I've ever seen. When it was originally on air, it's said that the prime minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher, loved it. And it's still absolutely relevant and witty today.
- JimTheMan 5y agoI second that. The Yes Minister series is brilliant.
- throw0101a 5y ago> When it was originally on air, it's said that the prime minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher, loved it. And it's still absolutely relevant and witty today. Thatcher loved because it suited her ideology: > Adam Curtis, in his three-part TV documentary The Trap, criticised the series as "ideological propaganda for a political movement",[16] and claimed that Yes Minister is indicative of a larger movement of criticism of government and bureaucracy, centred upon public choice economics. Jay himself supported this: >> The fallacy that public choice economics took on was the fallacy that government is working entirely for the benefit of the citizen; and this was reflected by showing that in any [episode] in the programme, in Yes Minister, we showed that almost everything that the government has to decide is a conflict between two lots of private interest – that of the politicians and that of the civil servants trying to advance their own careers and improve their own lives. And that's why public choice economics, which explains why all this was going on, was at the root of almost every episode of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.[17] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister#Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister#Politics > There is a division of opinions by political scientists. Some of them cite the series for their accurate and sophisticated portrayal of the relationships between civil servants and politicians,[40] and are quoted in some textbooks on British politics.[6] However, other political scientists considered it a reflection of the public choice model, which encouraged a "conservative agenda of balanced budgets and reduced government spending".[41] The Washington Post considered its "ideas were at the center of the Thatcher and Ronald Reagan administrations in Britain and the United States, which favored cutting government and shifting its functions to the private sector".[42] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister#Reception
- tyingq 5y agoI did like Columbo, but I liked "The Rockford Files" better.
- mc32 5y agoCannon!
- muzster 5y agoPeter Falk really was a fallen angel. Wings of Desires https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2-26rb7S38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2-26rb7S38
- itronitron 5y agoColumbo!
- dogma1138 5y agoI kinda miss the older syndication friendly shows. Everything today is trying too hard to have a season or a multi season epic story arc and the shows today are often so damn grim.
- gremloni 5y agoI completely agree. I’ve completely gravitated lately towards irreverent, silly, almost B-movies. Yesterday I watched Men at Work and it was amazing. That’s something I would have never watched a decade ago.
- yodon 5y agoColombo always had a such hilarious proletariat vs bourgeois "Marxist" class struggle element hidden just below the surface of a major Hollywood series whose pilot was directed by a promising new young kid named Steven Spielberg. The criminals were always rich, powerful, famous. Columbo was an unimpressive civil servant dressed in a shabby overcoat and driving an equally unimpressive old Peugeot. Every episode contained some bit of banter in which he or the villain called out explicitly the huge gulf in class between them, generally including some mention of Mrs. Columbo, who was never seen in the real series but was always held up by Columbo as cultured, intellectual, and wise in all the ways he professed to be ignorant (yes, they did eventually spin off a series about her, but it was terrible in as many ways as Columbo was great). At the end of every episode, the honorable masses would triumph over the evil bourgeois as Columbo caught and humiliated yet another arrogant villain just before viewers were advised what brand of products to buy to look better than their neighbors.
- drfuchs 5y agoFun fact: In the first few seasons, Colombo had continuing problems with his car, which was always an excuse for being late or showing up unexpectedly. But, like his wife, the car never showed up on screen. By the later seasons, they wanted to do scenes where you see him arrive at a golf course, or whatever, and the prop department had to create a car that looked like an old clunker, and they made it out of unidentifiable pieces of various different real automobiles of different manufacturers, all so that no car company would complain that their cars were being maligned as unreliable.
- yodon 5y agoThis is a wonderful story but I'm sorry to have to report that the car Columbo drove wasn't built by the props department, it was a 1959 Peugeot 403[0]. [0]https://www.cartalk.com/blogs/jim-motavalli/columbos-car-it-was-rare-and-ratty-1959-peugeot-403-cabriolet https://www.cartalk.com/blogs/jim-motavalli/columbos-car-it-...
- drfuchs 5y agoHuh. I thought I'd heard the story in an interview with Peter Falk, or one of the producers. Oh, well.
- goodJobWalrus 5y agoWas Peugeot ever sold in th US?
- banana_giraffe 5y agoYep https://www.periodpaper.com/products/1959-ad-peugeot-403-station-wagon-vintage-mpg-pricing-original-advertising-058752-tm3-1227 https://www.periodpaper.com/products/1959-ad-peugeot-403-sta... There were a few hundred Peugeot dealers in North America.
- svat 5y agoAlso, Columbo's Peugeot 403 Cabriolet shows up in each of the first-season episodes (according to imcdb.org the "Internet Movie Cars Database" that I just discovered the existence of): • 1. "Murder by the Book" https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_147439-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-1960.html https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_147439-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-1... • 2. "Death Lends a Hand" https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_88435-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-1960.html https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_88435-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-19... • 3. "Dead Weight" https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_66108-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-1960.html https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_66108-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-19... • 4. "Suitable for Framing" https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_94005-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-1960.html https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_94005-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-19... • 5. "Lady in Waiting" https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_71913-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-1960.html https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_71913-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-19... • 6. "Short Fuse" https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_36906-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-1960.html https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_36906-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-19... • 7. "Blueprint for Murder" https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_75558-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-1960.html https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_75558-Peugeot-403-Cabriolet-19... But there were two TV movies (the second one made as a "pilot") before it became a TV series, and in the first one Columbo is briefly shown with a different car, a Chevrolet C-Series: "Prescription: Murder" https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_876671-Chevrolet-C-Series-1967.html https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_876671-Chevrolet-C-Series-1967... (He doesn't seem to complain about his car in either of them though, so by the time he's complained about it, the car has already been shown on screen, including multiple times in the first episode.)
- JohnFen 5y agoUmmm... because great shows stay great forever?
- mbg721 5y agoColumbo plots were oddly fixed on telephone technology in particular, in a way that might not have aged well if the acting weren't as good as it was.
- chrisseaton 5y agoI don’t understand why being set in a particular period would cause a program to not age well? Does Sherlock Holmes not age well because now we have DNA to solve crimes more easily?
- mbg721 5y agoJust that things like answering machines or phone records for long-distance but not local calls are less familiar and relatable, so plot points that would have been obvious to the audience at the time can't be taken for granted.
- chrisseaton 5y agoI don’t get it - do you think people watch films set in medieval times and get confused that people are using horses rather than cars? People can understand that things used to be different. It’s not a barrier.
- mbg721 5y agoSome of the better episodes and their guest murderers: "Swan Song" features Johnny Cash as a gospel singer with an unconventional murder weapon, "Any Old Port In A Storm" has Donald Pleasence as a wine aficionado, "Double Shock" has Martin Landau playing a pair of twins and Columbo harassed by their uncle's fastidious housekeeper, "Columbo Goes To College" is one of the best of the 90s-era revival episodes, and features a couple of cocky frat-boys murdering their criminology professor.
- thunderbong 5y agoWhat a coincidence! I think I got to watch a single Columbo episode when it aired originally and had become a fan. So, over the past few weeks, I've been watching the entire series. It's a really down-to-earth and charming series with some real laugh-out-loud lines. Here's one when Columbo is visited by a girl whose fiance has disappeared right before the wedding - Columbo: [to Ric's fiance] You two didn't have a fight or anything, did yuh? Joan Stacey: No, but... Columbo: Maybe he got cold feet. That's been known to happen. Was he married before? Joan Stacey: Three times. Columbo: Three times. I guess his feet are warm enough by now.
- jwalton 5y agoSo many memories of watching this and Murder She Wrote with my mom.
- jerriep 5y agoAnother popular detective series from that time was German detective series Derrick. Growing up in the 70s and 80s in South Africa, watching Derrick was one of my weekly highlights.