Why Columbo Is So Beloved As A Detective Show, According To Peter Falk

There’s a lot to love about the classic detective series “Columbo,” and over the years, people have tried to figure out exactly what has made it so darn watchable. Seriously, it’s incredibly easy to turn on an episode of the series on streaming and end up losing a whole afternoon to hanging out with television’s comfiest-dressed and most comforting police detective, Lieutenant Columbo. Played by Peter Falk, Columbo spends each lengthy episode solving a crime that the audience is already privy to, as each episode begins with the murder itself. Sometimes these murder sequences can be rather extensive, setting up characters and backstories and running for up to 30 minutes before Columbo himself even appears. 

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In a retrospective from Peacock, archival interview footage with Falk reveals his opinion on why people loved “Columbo” so much, and it actually has more to do with those opening murders and less with Columbo or Falk. While the man is clearly being modest because “Columbo” quite simply does not work without Falk’s performance, there is something to be said for the format because the audience isn’t actively trying to solve the mystery and instead gets invested in how Columbo solves it, which is pretty different from most police procedurals. 

While discussing why he took the role of Lieutenant Columbo and how reading that first script really impressed him, Falk elaborated on why he felt people became so enamored with the series, saying: 

“No, you know … I actually, I think one of the reasons that people enjoy ‘Columbo’ is that we go into such detail in terms of explaining to the audience exactly how the crime is committed so you bury them right here right into that tank with the fishes as they say.”

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The very best episodes of “Columbo” feature a good mix of letting Falk do his thing as the eccentric detective, guest stars hamming it up as murderers, and some wild bits of storytelling. By having the crime appear in the beginning, the audience has full context and can focus on what’s actually happening instead of trying to solve the murder mystery themselves. Sure, it can be fun to try and outwit the writers or TV detective, but there’s something deeply comforting about simply enjoying Columbo’s investigation and eventual arrest of some rich ne’er-do-well who thought murder was the answer to their problems. The best part of “Columbo” is the incredibly imitable Columbo, and it seems like the people behind the series recognized that pretty quickly. 

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Procedurals like “Law & Order” and “NCIS” have some great characters but don’t give much detail on the murders they’re solving at the beginning, usually carefully handing out one or two little clues (often red herrings) to hook the viewer. On “Columbo,” we know full well who the murderer is because they’re the guest star of the week, so getting to see the full crime makes a lot of sense since there’s no real “mystery” to solve for viewers. There are some truly amazing guest stars on “Columbo,” ranging from horror legend Vincent Price to several major “Star Trek” actors, and giving them a bit more time to chew the scenery is always a good thing. 

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The best of “Columbo,” however, is Lieutenant Columbo, because he’s a kind of magical chaos gremlin who exists purely to ruin the days of the powerful and corrupt, using only his powers of acute observation and being a weird little guy. There’s just no one quite like Columbo and nothing like his show, although Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale on Rian Johnson’s “Poker Face” does come awfully close.