Review: Columbo Returns

When I think about my utter and complete disdain for the endless retreads and remakes and reboots going on in TV and film right now, I think about how there was a period where old shows were being revived as movies of the week and I try to comfort myself with the belief that it’s cyclical and this too shall pass.

(For the record I don’t entirely believe that, but also, we all believe some things we think might be false)

Anyway, in 1989 after 11 years, Columbo was revived with Peter Falk returning with his trench coat. And a few other people came along for the ride as well. Many of the early episodes were directed by people who worked on the original series (James Frawley, Leo Penn) and even some of the writers came back to pen episodes including Peter S. Fischer.

"Columbo Goes to the Guillotine". The first episode back and it’s directed by Leo Penn, who directed the final episode of the regular series. It’s written by William Read Woodfield, who was an acclaimed photographer and one of the big writer-producers of the Mission: Impossible TV series. It features Anthony Andrews as the murderer (who I kept trying to remember where I knew him from, and it he starred in Brideshead Revisited, among other things). Andrews plays a fake psychic with a colorful past and he comes up against a James Randi-like magician and debunker of psychic phenomenon. Clever on many fronts with some nice humorous moments. Not great but a welcome return.

"Murder, Smoke and Shadows". James Frawley returns after directing a batch of episodes in the final seasons in an episode that’s set on the Universal Studios Lot. Fisher Stevens plays a young director who kills an old college friend played by Jeff Perry. Molly Hagan has a small but memorable role. Stevens character is annoying but that was intentional. I feel like for the people involved, they were commenting on a type of director and it would be more entertaining for them than for most viewers. There are a few long digressions about the nature of film and filmmaking which were good. And Frawley is the man behind The Muppet Movie (one of the great movies about “the dream factory”) and the director of most of the tv show The Monkees (where producers cast people to play fake musicians on a tv show who then formed a real band - which says something about myth and illusion and Hollywood, but I don’t know what it is). Overall entertaining.

"Sex and the Married Detective". A thoroughly meh episode. Lindsay Crouse plays a sex therapist whose partner is cheating and she kills him in a pretty impressive way. Of course then the episode goes off the rails. I expected her to try and implicate her assistant, who was also sleeping with him, There were some amusing moments, and Peter Jurasik had a small role. It was also nice to see the Music Center and watch Falk play the tuba, but overall, too long and bland.

"Grand Deceptions". Robert Foxworth plays an ex-colonel working at a think tank that’s running guns to different countries and also training militia members. He kills someone to cover up all the things he’s doing while hiding behind his mentor, a former General who’s the ceremonial head off the think tank. It’s fine. In retrospect it’s very creepy. It’s about an ex soldier who works for a right wing foundation which helps to destroy the world by overthrowing governments and supporting the militia movement, undermining democracy at home and abroad. It’s that occasional episode where you have go, this is not a Columbo episode.

"Murder: A Self Portrait". I think this may have been my favorite of the recent ones. Patrick Bachau plays a wealthy artist living in Malibu with his wife and a young model - and his ex-wife lives next door. He ends up killing his ex to cover up an old murder. It’s mostly entertaining because Bachau plays such an entertaining and pompous character and watching him and Columbo go back and forth is fun. Especially as they’re doing it while he paints Columbo. Also, the final episode directed by James Frawley.

"Columbo Cries Wolf". I’ll admit that I forgot the title, which makes sense partway through the episode with a very impressive twist. And the ending and how he catches the murderer, so good. Essentially a Hugh Hefner sequence publisher fighting his co-owner who wants to sell her 51% of the company. The actors are just okay. I keep thinking about how some of my love for the old series was the guest stars and how the show used them and in the revival, a lot of the actors are all pretty forgettable.

"Agenda for Murder". Patrick McGoohan returns as star and director of this episode in the world of politics. McGoohan is great, managing to be overbearing, on top of everything as one would expect of a lawyer and politico, but the episode falls a little flat. Maybe because it’s reminiscent of other older episodes. It’s well done and I can’t fault any aspect of the episode – some of it’s quite dramatic, it has some funny lines, overall it’s very well done. But I can’t help think this was a sign that the show had overstayed its welcome. There’s so many moving parts that go into a show, capturing that magic is hard, and there’s something depressing about saying about a show that used to be: it’s fine. Better than most of what’s on the air, but a shadow of what it once was.

"Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo". Peter S. Fischer returns to Columbo (in the interim he was busy co-creating and writing and producing this little show called Murder, She Wrote) writing this episode starring Helen Shaver (Desert Hearts) as the murderer. On the one hand, she doesn’t cover her tracks well and makes little attempt to hide that she’s the killer. Columbo tells his sergeant pretty early on that she’s guilty. The episode also feels a little padded as there are multiple scenes establishing that she’s not quite there mentally. But Roscoe Lee Browne has a great cameo and he and Falk have a good scene together, and it’s a good ending.

"Uneasy Lies the Crown". When I saw Steven Bochco’s name in the credits, I was excited. The backstory turns out to be a bit more complicated as he originally wrote this back in the 70s, and it never got filmed and apparently it was pulled out of a drawer for the revival. Even still, it’s pretty good. The villain is a bit dull, and overall it’s just meh. Though I did enjoy how for the first 15 minutes or so, we’re completely unsure what’s going on and how it all connects. And then suddenly it does. Maybe if they had gotten some fabulous actors to guest star, it would have been more enjoyable. Not necessarily a better episode, but a more enjoyable one, but overall, just meh. The title, though - this is an episode about a dentist - just perfect!

"Murder in Malibu". Not a great episode. Jackson Gillis wrote some very good episodes of the series, but this was not one. Clearly they don’t think much of romance writers - or romance readers. The cast wasn’t that great. Falk is good and there are some nice touches. I mean, the dune buggy arriving to take Columbo from a suspect’s house to where the found a gun buried on the beach made me smile as did scenes with the medical examiner and various other moments. It ends on an amusing note from Falk but overall, meh.

"Columbo Goes to College". Two college students kill their professor. And do it in a clever way. But honestly both are so loathsome, you can’t wait for them to be caught. (Or for one to kill off the other so they’ll only be half as annoying and loathsome). Robert Culp appears as the father of one of them. You can see Falk leaning into the slow old man routine to try and catch them. Honestly both were so loathsome, you really want them caught. Overall just okay.

“Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health.” George Hamilton hosts an America’s Most Wanted type tv show and kills a rival newscaster who’s uncovered dirt about Hamilton’s past. Would his sordid past be an issue today? Hard to say. The result was fine.

“Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star.” Dabney Coleman plays a high profile lawyer who kills his long time partner, a former rock star, after learning that she’s having an affair. He uses his assistant to help him with his alibi, which she figures out, and blackmails him, with a contingency plan so she can’t be killed. Not a great twist tbh.

“Death Hits the Jackpot.” Rip Torn is a jeweler whose nephew has a winning lotto ticket. The man is also going through a divorce so Torn graciously claims the reward so that the ex-wife won’t get anything. And then he kills the nephew so he can keep it all. There’s also a chimpanzee. Despite Rip Torn chewing scenery and a chimp, it’s just okay.

“No Time To Die.” Horrible episode as Columbo is at his nephew’s wedding and the bride gets kidnapped by a psychopath. Poorly plotted, tonally different from the rest of the series, with multiple moments that don’t make sense. Adapted from an Ed McBain novel – though he doesn’t get credited. Even the bad episodes have good moments, whether it’s Falk having a good time, some banter, a good villain. This has absolutely nothing to recommend it.

“A Bird in the Hand…” A disappointingly flat episode from longtime Columbo writer Jackson Gillis. It features a number of little moments that are entertaining. It has as guest stars Tyne Daly and Greg Evigan, but it all just feels flat. In the way that made for TV movies are derided for being. The writing is good but not great. The acting is fine, but not too engaging. Maybe because it was rushed? But while I liked it, it’s hard not to watch it and feel throughout that it’s not as good as it could have been.

“It’s All in the Game.” Faye Dunaway and Claudia Christian plan a murder and while the episode is not a great one, it’s enjoyable to watch everyone work, and especially to watch Dunaway charm Falk. Also the only episode that Falk ever wrote - and it’s one of the only episodes where he lets a murderer go unpunished.

“Butterfly in Shades of Grey.” William Shatner plays a radio host with an uncomfortable relationship with his adopted daughter/producer (played by Molly Hagan). It’s not great but it has its moments. I do expect better from Peter S. Fischer.

“Undercover.” On the one hand this case opens with two men killing each other and an insurance investigator (played by Ed Begley) says that the two were ex-bank robbers involved in a famous heist where the money was never recovered. The result is an episode - scripted by the legendary Gerry Day (seriously, look her up) - that shifts from the usual Columbo format. To learn more Columbo goes undercover as two different characters, and on the one hand, it’s amusing to see Falk do this, but also it’s very half-assed. With like one scene for each character and Columbo learns one piece of information and then we move on.

The joy of Falk is watching him as an actor, which we don’t always see in the revival. And it’s fun to watch him here, because I grew up with him as that guy with the weird extended cameo in The Great Muppet Caper before seeing him in Cassavetes movies and Wings of Desire and all these other random roles and there’s a way in which he was both a character actor and a star. He so often played a very similar role, and yet, was able to do so many things that were comedic and dramatic, where he kept the audience and other characters in the scene off balance in a way that was exciting. He gets a few good lines or scenes in the revival of the show, but overall, he’s playing a fixed character and it becomes dull. I don’t know if that’s inevitable when playing the same character for so long. I don’t think it is. The strange rhythms of the show early on are lost. And the oddball detective is now more a serious of quirks than a character. And so there are moments where you can see Falk and the people behind the scenes actively trying to recapture that magic they had in the seventies. And they can’t.

“Strange Bedfellows.” George Wendt plays a race horse owner with a ne’er do well brother he bumps off. “Norm” does a good job playing a heavy in the episode, which also features Rod Stieger as a mob boss. The problem is the end, where Columbo and the mob boss set it up and threaten Wendt that either he confesses so Columbo can arrest him, or the mobster will have him killed. It’s distasteful. Especially for a cop. Well, maybe a typical for a lot of cops, but for Columbo, it’s a betrayal. He couldn’t outsmart the criminal, so he threatened to have him killed. It very much feels like the antithesis of Columbo.

Also maybe worth noting that while previously the movies would show up a few times a year, this episode aired a year after the previous one. After two airing in 1994, this aired in May 1995, and then the last four aired in 1997, 1998, 2001. and 2003.

“A Trace of Murder.” I like Barry Corbin and David Rasche, who have some fun, and the episode is reasonably clever, as a wife and her lover decide to kill her husband’s business rival and frame her husband. And the lover happens to be the head of the LAPD crime lab. And yet out doesn’t quite come together. Maybe because when done right, these episodes show how the murder happened and was covered up, and then we see how it gets solved by piecing elements and clues together. This is one episode that felt very had a hunch and didn’t really have any evidence.

“Ashes to Ashes.” Patrick McGoohan returns again for an episode he directs and stars in as a funeral director and murders Rue McClanahan, a gossip columnist, to cover up his tawdry past. It was solid, but not exceptional. It is notable for being written by Jeffrey Hatcher, who since then has written films like Stage Beauty, Casanova, The Duchess, Mr. Holmes, The Good Liar.

“Murder with Too Many Notes.” Billy Connolly is a composer who kills his proteges, who has been doing much of the work in recent years. I love Connolly, but very lukewarm on the whole production.

“Columbo Likes the Nightlife.” Matthew Rhys plays the murderer, who I don’t think was alive when the show first started, along with Jennifer Sky, Carmine Giovinazzo. And it’s fine. But the last couple episodes make it clear that the character and the show has run its course.

It’s sad that Falk and Columbo couldn’t find some way to conclude things. To let the character retire and go out with, well, a better episode than those last few were. To just remind people and mark the fact that this was a good show and a good character. Show those elbows and weird rhythms and strange moments that made the original series such a strange and entertaining and unique work. Or maybe the problem is me. Because I don’t want the end to be some mediocre episodes after which Falk gets dementia and spends his final years not knowing who he is or recognizing the people and places around him. Maybe the problem is that I prefer fiction to the reality of getting older. But can you blame me?

Columbo wasn’t deeply realistic. In the 70s when the show first aired and was at its peak, you had all these films about police work and crime that sought to portray the reality of it all. This was a different kind of show and I think one of the great pleasures of good crime fiction - and Columbo could be - was how they manage to craft something familiar and comforting, but when it comes right down it, either because of the murder or the murderer getting caught, it hurts. The personal private stakes of life and love and power. Reminding you that it’s not all comforting.

Go watch the originals. Set in the seventies in Los Angeles when life, well, it wasn’t simpler. Not at all simpler. But a little different. But then, we always like to remember people at their best. And Peter Falk in the seventies was at the top of his game.