Columbo

Why we still like Peter Falk's wrinkled investigator, Columbo turns 50

All the best for the fiftieth anniversaries, Lieutenant Columbo. The first assassin to play the apparently chaotic Genie of Columbo in Prescription was Gene Barry: During all this period, the good lieutenant had seldom disappeared from our monitors, keep repeating cases that still show most weekend if you want to search them. Wherefore are we so ready to return for "just one more episode"?

These are the main reason why Columbo is still the television industry' ultimative crimesolver: It' s great wasOrchestra Dirigenten, bestseller writers, Millionär actor, heart surgeon - all have got the carpet out from under them by the allegedly submissive, sycophantic and modest Lieutenant Columbo. Columbo not only always gets his husband (or wife), he is also a road connoisseur when it comes to reduce complacent refinements to gibberish.

The Columbo itself is a mysteryWhat do we really know about Columbo? He' s got a woman we never see (and no, Kate Mulgrew's Mrs. Columbo spin-off doesn't count), he never uses his first name (he's on a fleeting arrest record ) and his work is rare. If we know how Columbo enchants the killer with flatteries and flatteries, can we accept that everything else about him is a construction?

"but maybe she doesn't really exists? How much of what we see is the genuine Columbo? That man is the true secret. While Hitchcock may have played with "open secrets" in films like Dial M for Murder and Rope, it was Columbo who turned the imagination into an artistic one.

Every weekly we see the imaginary assassin perform the felony with meticulous attention to detail in the opening act, while Columbo walks a third of the way through an episode to gradually but certainly pluck gaps in the killer's feat. Subsequent brain wrestling between the lieutenant and his loot is highly addictive and is a crucial element in the game.

Shatner, McGoohan, Nimoy, Cassidy.... The shortlist of guys lining up to act as Columbo Killer is like a Who's Who of Hollywood talent. A-Liste Regisseure und AutorenUnd not only in front of the cameras we get master at work: top-class filmmakers like Steven Spielberg (Murder By the Book) and Jonathan Demme (Murder Under Glass) have bitten their teeth out at Columbo, while Steven Bochco - who later created the Hill Street Blues - gets an author's loan in several editions.

In fact, the complexity of the plot led to Columbo being shown with far greater frequency than contemporary artists such as McMillan & Wife, McCloud and Kojak. Thus we achieve perhaps the most well-known part of Columbo: his "just one more thing" buzzword that confuses an opponent when he thinks a meet is over.

When Columbo leaves, one of his apparently trivial questions emerges that drives the killer further into the swamp. There is a man here who doesn't have to swing a gun (Columbo mainly hates guns) or scream his tires - the grim lieutenant tears apart the villains one by one.

When Columbo packs his stubborn interrogation into counterfeit excuses, who needs an act? There is nothing more gratifying than what Peter Falk calls "pop", the instant in every story in which Columbo captures the murderer with one last indisputable item of proof. Well done and it's a true punch-the-air moment: the urban assassin annihilated by the surprisingly elegant conclusions of Columbo.