1. In Columbo, things are not as they seem. A murder is committed, almost always with premeditation. Sometimes, but not always, the death is made to look like an accident. Either way, things are arranged so that the person who committed the murder appears to be the one with the least opportunity and the best possible alibi.
2. The object of Columbo is not to figure out the identity of the murderer – a banal fact that is almost always revealed to the audience in the opening act of each episode – but rather to examine how circumstances of the murder were dissembled, and finally to uncover the single piece of evidence that can be used to bring the murderer to justice.
4. The clue that sets the detective on the right track is a flaw in the story. An inconsistency. A man is strangled, and then his death is made to look like the result of an accident involving a piece of gym equipment. In the process of setting the scene, the murderer must remove the man’s business clothes and dress him in his gym clothes. But when it comes to tying his sneakers, he does it like a man who is tying another man’s shoelaces, not his own. That is what’s wrong with the picture. The detective notices it right away, and spends the rest of the episode turning the clue into an actual piece of evidence. That is the work of the detective.
5. Because Columbo is not interested in human motivation and the social causes of murder, but is concerned rather with staging and representation, in one respect the work of the detective comes to resemble that of a reverse script supervisor or continuity clerk. Sometimes this is literally true, like when Columbo discovers that a security tape was doctored by the fact that a hedge in the earlier portion of the tape appears to have been pruned, whereas later it is shown in a non-pruned state; or when, in one of my all-time favourite endings, he notices that an audio-recording purported to have been made in the murderer’s office is missing the sound of a mechanical clock chiming the hour.
6. As a consequence, finding continuity errors or inconsistencies in Columbo-the-show can be uniquely jarring. The episode in which Martin Landau plays two identical twins, for instance, was spoiled for me by the clumsy choice of the extra who played the other twin when both of them appeared in the same scene.
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| Not what Martin Landau looks like from behind |
Or the long speech that Columbo delivers with his back to the camera in Prescription: Murder.
Often this style calls attention to the artifice, in the manner of Alfred Hitchcock, like this shot from Lady in Waiting.
8. So Columbo is both about the staging of murder and also of a TV show about a detective. Hence the plethora of episodes set in the worlds of cinema, television, publishing, radio and theatre.
9. As well as being concerned with representation and dissimulation, Columbo is – just as importantly – a show about work. Playing opposite an eminent psychiatrist who murdered his own wife in Prescription: Murder, Columbo explains:
Cops, you know, we're not the brightest people in the world. Of course we've got one thing going for us: we're professionals. I mean, you take our friend here, the murderer. He's very smart, but he's an amateur. I mean, he's got just one time to learn. Just one. And with us, well, with us, it's – it's a business. You see, we do this a hundred times a year. I'll tell ya, Doc. That's a lot of practice.
11. As well as being good at his job – which he often admits to enjoying – Columbo is both temperamentally and professionally interested in other people’s work. For solving the murder often involves being taught the details of somebody’s else job, no matter how apparently menial. Like when he asks a cleaner to show him exactly how she cleaned the fridge in the victim’s apartment on the day he was killed in It's All in the Game. There are endless examples of this.
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| Another favourite ending: Columbo was wearing gloves the whole time |
13. The suspense in Columbo consists principally in the murderer coming to the realisation that Columbo is not an idiot.
14. Columbo has very little regard for morality. Its murderers aren’t monsters, even when their crimes are nefarious, and the detective often treats them with respect if not downright sympathy and comradery. In Try and Catch Me, he says to the character played by Ruth Gordon: ‘Sometimes I like the murderers that I meet, if they’re intelligent or funny or just nice.’ By which he obviously means to include her, even though he knows she left a man to slowly suffocate inside a vault.
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| Oh, Ruth |
15. Murder in Columbo is not an index of moral degradation or social malaise, either. And not only because the murderers are mostly the product of affluent Los Angeles society. Murder merely happens because people are sometimes motivated to kill other people, and also have the opportunity to do so.
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| A murder weapon |
17. Unlike in the CSI era, truth in Columbo is macroscopic, not microscopic.
18. There is very little darkness in Columbo, both metaphoric and actual. Every interior is thoroughly lit, every surface gleams, as if waiting for the detective to search it for clues. Outside, the Californian sun is always shining, making Columbo’s raincoat seem even more incongruous, and even the night scenes are often shot by day, such as in the climax of Any Old Port in a Storm.
19. Columbo doesn't get old. He always stays a lieutenant. Coming back from the series 11-year hiatus, he wears the same raincoat. His sergeant is still a sergeant. He drives the same car (a dilapidated 1959 Peugeot convertible). The dog is still alive.
20. Yes in spite of the detective’s infinite reserve of bonhomie and anecdotes about the wife, his love of food, the sun always shining, and time never passing, occasionally Columbo reveals a darker side. It’s when we’re allowed to see Columbo through the eyes of his suspect, as an almost demonic presence, or the unlikely incarnation of the narrative principle of detective fiction, whereby the truth will always out, no matter how carefully one might try to disguise it.
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| You can't get away from Columbo |
In lieu of an ending: a random gallery of what people look like right after Columbo has left the room.
Oh, and one more thing...
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