Columbo

Just one more thing

Columbo starred Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. The show popularized the inverted detective story format; each episode began by showing the crime and the criminal and then goes onto show how the detectives genius solves the crime.

The character first appeared in an 1960 episode of the anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show A pilot movie was broadcast in 1968; the series aired regularly from 1971 to 1978, and later, sporadically from 1989 to 2003, when the last episode was broadcast.

The character of Columbo was created by Richard Levinson and William Link. Columbo seems to be a shabby “plod” of a police detective; but murderers and criminals end up learning that beneath the surface these is a steel trap of a mind working.  Columbo uses his absent-minded persona to lure the suspects into a false sense of security. He tends to solve his cases by paying close attention to tiny inconsistencies in a suspect's story and by hounding the suspect until he or she confesses.

One of Columbo's catch phrases is to begin to exit an interview and stop and ask "just one more thing" of a suspect. The "one more thing" always brings to light a key piece of evidence. Columbo's first name was never spoken aloud in the series. (In "Columbo: Undercover" when asked for a first name, he replies "Lieutenant".) However, recent DVD releases reveal that Columbo's first name may be shown on an ID badge he carries.

Unusually for the 70’s Columbo does not carry a gun, nor does he use physical force – when the final arrest comes, the killer always goes quietly. However, he's been known to drop his usual disarming act and become openly aggressive and intimidating when circumstances require it.

The episodes are movie-length, between 70 and 100 minutes long, excluding commercials. The series was and remains very popular throughout the world especially in the UK. During the first series, it was widely believed that Columbo's "wife" was a fictional ploy that he used for conversation with his prey and that the character actually lived alone. In fact Peter Falk is reported in magazine profiles to have believed this. But as the series developed other characters describe meeting and speaking to Mrs. Columbo,

She never appears on screen. Although there was a series pilot for a Mrs Columbo.