There’s no whodunit here. Columbo tells you exactly who did it, usually a wealthy, brilliant somebody, a symphony conductor, a chess champion, a mystery novelist, committing a nearly perfect murder in the opening act. Then a cigar-chewing LAPD lieutenant shuffles in, admires the drapes, mentions his wife, apologizes for the intrusion, and begins asking small questions that never quite end. The inverted format, watching the cat when you’ve already met the mouse, powered 69 feature-length episodes across the 1970s NBC run and later ABC revivals, and it remains the most perfected formula in television history.
Half a century on, its stature has somehow grown. New generations discovered the show during the streaming era and turned it into a genuine phenomenon of cozy viewing, memes and rewatch podcasts included, while mystery writers routinely cite it as the genre’s gold standard. Consensus separates the eras cleanly, the original 1971 through 1978 run treated as untouchable, the 1989 onward revival affectionately graded on a curve. Criticism beyond that mostly amounts to describing the formula and deciding if it delights you. Most people, it turns out, are.
Falk’s Lieutenant and the Art of Being Underestimated
Peter Falk doesn’t play Columbo so much as inhabit a strategy. The raincoat, the basset-hound squint, the departed-at-the-door question that returns like weather, every disheveled detail is a weapon aimed at the vanity of killers who cannot believe this man is a threat, and the show’s central joy is watching arrogance walk into the trap of condescension. Viewers have debated for decades how much of the bumbling is performance on the character’s part, and the show’s genius is keeping the answer ambiguous, letting each murderer’s slow-dawning horror, the realization that the idiot has been ahead of them for days, deliver the episode’s true climax. Falk’s warmth completes the trick. Columbo is unfailingly polite, apparently delighted by everyone he meets, and the show contains almost no violence beyond its inciting murder, which is precisely why it now functions as comfort television.
Structure does the rest. Because guilt is never in question, every episode becomes a duel of details, the killer’s single overlooked error, a wine bottle, a shoelace, a subscription card, meeting the lieutenant’s terrier persistence, and the final gotcha scenes rank among television’s most satisfying recurring rituals. Guest murderers gave the format its variety and its prestige, with repeat offenders like Jack Cassidy and Patrick McGoohan turning villainy into a recurring guest art form, and the parade of 1970s luminaries treating the role as an honor. Episodes like the one trapping a murder-obsessed mystery author, or the murderous maestro undone by a carnation, are canon entries any fan will list unprompted.
And the class warfare underneath is the secret sauce. Columbo’s victims of suspicion are almost uniformly rich, credentialed, and certain that intelligence tracks with income, and the show stages, week after week, the demolition of that assumption by a public servant who drives a collapsing Peugeot and never once raises his voice. Viewers describe the dynamic as eternally renewable satisfaction, and they’re right.
The Formula’s Price and the Revival Years
Honest criticism of Columbo begins with its sameness. One structure, repeated for decades, means the show offers variation rather than surprise, and viewers marathoning it report the rhythms becoming visible, the mid-episode stall while evidence accumulates, the convenient final slip, gotchas that occasionally hinge on inference a defense attorney would shred. Episode length compounds it, ninety-minute slots stretching some mysteries past their natural runtime, a padding most noticeable in the weaker entries.
The ABC revival, beginning in 1989 and running intermittently until 2003, is the standard asterisk. An older Falk remains a pleasure, and a handful of revival episodes earn real affection, but consensus finds the writing softer, the villains less formidable, and the production carrying a syrupy TV-movie sheen the taut 1970s episodes never had. A few revival experiments, straying from the inverted formula entirely, are politely unmentioned at fan gatherings.
Period texture supplies the rest, pacing from a slower medium, seventies attitudes preserved in amber, and a Los Angeles of ashtrays and answering services that modern viewers largely count as charm rather than flaw. Substantive objections, in truth, run out quickly. The show set out to do one thing perfectly and did it for thirty years.
One More Thing About Genius
Columbo endures because it inverted more than its mysteries. Television detectives before and since have been geniuses announced as geniuses, and the lieutenant’s brilliance is delivered entirely through humility, patience, and the strategic deployment of seeming harmless, a portrait of intelligence as attention rather than spectacle. That’s why the show reads so restfully now, in an era of maximalist antiheroes, there’s something almost medicinal about competence wrapped in courtesy, justice arriving via a man who compliments your garden while measuring you for handcuffs. The raincoat hangs in the Smithsonian of collective memory, and every rumpled, underestimated detective since owes it dry cleaning.
Should You Watch Columbo?
Watch it as the perfect entry into classic television, ideally starting with the celebrated 1970s seasons, and treat it as it’s best consumed, one episode at a time, preferably on a rainy evening. Mystery lovers owe it foundational respect, and burnout-era viewers will find it the gentlest great show ever made.
Skip it only if formula itself is disqualifying, or if 90-minute episodes from a slower broadcast age exceed your patience. Even then, watch two of the canonical entries before deciding. The lieutenant has a way of getting people to change their answers.
The Verdict on Columbo
Columbo is a fifty-year argument that perfection of formula beats variety of content, anchored by one of the greatest sustained performances in television. Falk’s lieutenant turned humility into the medium’s most lethal weapon, the inverted mystery made guilt the beginning rather than the answer, and the show’s parade of undone elites remains eternally, almost therapeutically satisfying. The revival years dilute without damaging, and the formula’s visibility is the tax on its brilliance. Oh, and one more thing. The rating up top is not a nostalgia bonus. It still plays exactly this well.