COLUMBO: The Return - Blu-ray (NBC/Universal, 1989-2003) Kino Lorber

When Peter Falk’s beloved Columbo bowed out on NBC in the fall of 1978, it wasn’t so much a cancellation as an enforced retirement by new network management, ambitiously plotting to end their ‘dead last’ decline and dry run in the Nielsens.  No doubt about it. NBC was in a bad way. And brass decided it needed to skew to a younger audience. So, Columbo, with its cameo focus on the resurrection of stars deemed Hollywood has-beens was left out in the cold. The exec’ brain trust at NBC might also have also grown weary of Falk’s yearly contract renewal demands, with Falk using the show’s popularity as leverage to chronically renegotiate a better salary for his services. Despite Falk’s protestations, often railing against his producers and the network while in harness, almost immediately after learning of the show’s cancellation, the actor began ambitiously plying his powers of persuasion to get Columbo back on the small screen. Alas, NBC wasn’t biting. Interestingly, Columbo did not go off the air altogether. Indeed, and mostly to fill dead air after midnight, fan favorite episodes of Falk’s endearing dick intermittently appeared on late night TV throughout the early 1980’s.

And then, in 1988, ABC came to the table with an offer Falk simply could not refuse, pitching Columbo’s return as part of a trifecta of detective shows to revolve around a new ‘mystery series’ - the other two to star, Louis Gossett Jr. and Burt Reynolds respectively.  For whatever reason, the Gossett/Reynold’s attempts failed, and by 1990 Columbo was the only part of this plan to carry on, seemingly in perpetuity, and mostly, out of nostalgia for the original series. But the Columbo who marked his comeback in 1989 was decidedly not the same man. Nor was the franchise. Realistically, it couldn’t be, as, in reviewing the original series today, one is immediately confronted by a faint whiff of formaldehyde emanating from the peripheries of the screen. Truly, the 70’s Columbo is more of a time capsule than newly unearthed ‘buried treasure’. That said, it remains excellent viewing for those able to get past the dated plots, and, sexual/racial stereotypes, focusing instead on Falk’s Teflon-coated portrait of the man of the hour.

Columbo’s return transplants Falk’s mid-70’s renaissance man into the slicker swag of late-eighties/early nineties’ television programming. Alas, the uprooting is not altogether successful. At intervals, it’s not even passable. The first notable change is in the roster of names to appear alongside Falk. In its heyday, Columbo attracted the aging crème de la crème of Hollywood’s waxworks: John Cassavetes, Nina Foch, Janet Leigh, Vincent Price, Ray Milland, Myrna Loy, Richard Basehart, Honor Blackman, Anne Baxter, Vera Miles, Louis Jourdan, Johnny Cash, etc. Realistically, most of these were too old to partake in Columbo – the return. And thus, producers here skew mostly to ‘B’ grade TV personalities, as presumably, no A-list movie star of more recent times would deign to appear in a movie of the week. Nevertheless, there are some fine talents here, including Andrew Stevens, George Wendt, Rip Torn, Robert Foxworth, and Rue McClanahan. But they are interpolated with hammy bits by the likes of Louise Barsini, Fisher Stevens, Lindsay Crouse and others.  In hindsight, it’s the camp that wears thin upon renewed viewing. And the camp here is rather heavy-handed.

Binge-watching Columbo’s return today also reveals the network’s cost-cutting measures. Sticking close to home, the Universal backlot gets a lot of use, while locations like The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion are as recycled as the plots. Despite such deficits, Falk’s return to the small screen was a resounding success with audiences at the time. We can chalk up some of this to ABC’s diligence in releasing a Columbo mystery only about every month or so, thus to build on the ‘nostalgia’ factor incrementally, rather than to flood the market all at once. When a character and/or series sails into the sunset on such beloved remembrances, we either mark such endurance with the passage of time as genuine art or critique it from the vantage of quaintly misguided wistfulness for another time. Yet, in Columbo’s case, it’s a little of both.

Is Columbo ‘reel’ art or just a relic? While there is little to debate its cut-rate production values, especially during its original run in the seventies, where props and scenery were so transparently a claptrap derived from Universal Studio’s formidable plywood-backed archives, and yes – some of the sexual/racial stereotypes of yore reveal a rather ruthless shortsightedness for their times, Columbo then, as well as the Columbo to reemerge in 1989, reminds us of another epoch in television history when it was, ostensibly, quite enough to give the audience a good guy doing good work with the resources at his disposal. So limited budgets and censor-driven supplication of storylines to advertising dollars, as well as the whims of the ‘then’ conservative bent in network execs aside, Columbo actually made out alright in the end.

The truth about Columbo is that what was ‘then’ considered breakthrough storytelling – giving us the murder and murderer at the outset, only to quietly observe as Falk’s meandering detective came into view, piecing together what was already known – somehow, though particularly in an age where nothing is as it first appears, seems more the gimmick than a revelation now. And the leisurely pace of Columbo’s sleuthing now too leans toward affectation. Once the initial momentum leading up to the crime is suspended, there are long stretches of contemplation. The genius in Falk’s calculating powers of deduction becomes the focus. Yet, occasionally, this is also the millstone by which plot points get weighted down, with diverting vignettes that are only marginally related to the storyline or crime-solving calculus. During the original series, the criminal element was generally portrayed in a flattering light.  Alas, in Columbo’s reboot we get well-intended ‘good folk’ painted into a corner from which most believe in murder as their only chance at escape. While Columbo’s skulking to cut through the subterfuge remains admirable, it feels marginally strained, sometimes silly, or even, shamefully self-aggrandizing as in ‘Murder, Smoke and Shadows’, where Columbo goes through an elaborately staged frame-up in a restaurant, merely to rub Hollywood wonder boy, Alex Brady’s (Fisher Stevens) nose in a big reveal of his studio-bound trickery on a sound stage several scenes later.

And there is something else to consider here; chiefly, how Falk’s detective, to debut mostly as a straight-forward officer of the law in two pilots – 1969’s Prescription Murder, and then, 1971’s Ransom for a Dead Man, gradually became less of a cop and more of a codger as the franchise wore on. In the reboot, Falk’s Columbo is prone to performing as a grotesque figure of fun. While some of Columbo’s early outings clocked in at just around an hour, ABC’s ambitions for the reboot made each new episode a full-on, 2-hr. mystery event (1 ½ hours with the commercials excised). Lengthening the format, however, is too much of a good thing. There are now scenes where Columbo is more boorish than ingratiating. Example, the way he interminably forces his way into the mid-eighties’ posh digs of noted sex therapist, Joan Allenby (Lindsay Crouse) in Sex and the Married Detective, presumably to wear down her resolve, but actually, becoming more a grating nuisance than nemesis.

The unconventional “howcatchem” strategy of the early franchise, around for nearly a half-century in popular entertainment before being thoroughly exploited here, lacks dynamism in the reboot. At times, even Columbo’s calculated piecing together of the clues gets tedious. In the previous franchise, Columbo’s modus operandi and powers of deduction exhibited a rare screenwriting mastery, not only for the spoken word, but also lengthy monologues, effortlessly delivered by Falk’s curious blend in faux humility and wry baiting of the villains. His search for justice was also complimented, usually by an underling/sidekick on the force. However, in these reboots, Columbo spends interminable bouts of run time alone, plotting his own devious exposure of the soon-to-be-defeated criminals. To be fair to the reboot, even the original franchise had a lot of hand-me-downs, with Columbo baiting the murderers by purposely letting slip information about a supposed suspect he has created from thin air. And the criminal class featured in classic Columbo fare were not above borrowing modes of mayhem. Copycatting is one thing. But these competing ne'er-do-wells were heavily into plagiarism. The most obvious example is 1990’s Uneasy Lies the Crown, almost a shot-for-shot remake of a previously planned Columbo, rejected by Falk in 1977, but made for TV as a McMillan & Wife episode. With only cosmetic modifications, ‘Crown’ is a faux Columbo carbon-copy of something done better elsewhere.

Cumulatively, Columbo – the return marks 40 hours of television programming, occasionally to hit its mark with cameos from Faye Dunaway, Rod Steiger, George Hamilton, William Shatner, Dabney Coleman, Sally Kellerman, Rip Torn, Lindsay Crouse, Ed Begley Jr., Nancy Walker, Tyne Daly, George Wendt, Betsy Palmer, Rue McClanahan, Bill Macy, Steven Hill, and others. There are some ‘fun’ mysteries to sift through, such as the forensic frame-up, A Trace of Murder, and, It's All in the Game in which two chagrined lovers murder their philandering playmate, and, Murder, a Self Portrait involving Columbo in the drowning death of a famous painter's first wife. But by the end of its network run, Columbo had bypassed the creative ennui to afflict most television programs whose producers and star thoroughly lack in the good sense in knowing when to end their run on a high Nielsen rating, instead, going for the sort of lethargic blight and decay that turns creative flourishes into chalk. In lieu of clever moments to display the character’s outwitting genius, we are given interminable scenes that take Columbo from his comfort zone so Falk can merely mug for the cameras. While Columbo himself was a rare melding of character to star, Peter Falk’s frequent bickering over creative control and salary expectations made for a largely unpleasant and highly unstable working alliance.

At first, to keep Falk happy, both the network and producers acquiesced to his demands for script/actor/director approval. While Falk definitely knew his character, he also lacked in the good judgment to recognize he did not know enough to leave well enough alone when it came to choosing good stories. Falk’s other grave miscalculation was an almost blind devotion to actor, Patrick McGoohan, begun with McGoohan playing the villain in 1974’s By Dawn’s Early Light. McGoohan’s influence soon took on a life of its own, with Falk backing the actor against every legitimate concern producers had about his attempt to transform the show into high-class gumbo. The results speak for themselves: 1975’s turgidly scripted and needlessly involving Identity Crisis, directed by McGoohan, even as his own mounting alcoholism was getting wildly out of control, and, 1976’s brutally improvised Last Salute to the Commodore, which makes absolutely no sense at all. Despite McGoohan’s toxic authority, his return to harness was practically a foregone conclusion. McGoohan directs/acts in 1989’s Agenda for Murder, 1998’s Ashes to Ashes, and, 2001’s Murder with Too Many Notes some of the least compelling episodes in the entire Columbo franchise. But even without his participation, McGoohan exerted an almost hypnotic sway over Falk’s creative judgment.

No doubt, McGoohan disapproved of Columbo’s more cringe-worthy moments, often linked to finding humor in alcoholic reactions to the detective, as in 1991’s The Murder of a Rock Star or 1995’s Murder with Too Many Notes, or the even more quaintly bizarre references to Columbo as an obtuse bumbler that every potential suspect believes can be outwitted with a few pleasantries and modes of misdirection flung his way. Falk’s return to familiar territory also seems to have imbued his characterization with a sickening desire to play Columbo as a cheap caricature of what he had previously created and trademarked. So, the cigar-waving gestures became broader, the halfcocked smile, usually reserved to punctuate Columbo’s lowering the boom on the murderer with a big reveal, now turned up at the end of every sentence of interrogation of every suspect. Hand gestures once directed for the camera’s benefit, come to rest on a particular fact or clue – tangibly visible or otherwise – are now wild embellishments in a cacophony of flailing pantomime.

At a time when the settings and sentiments of the franchise were leaning toward location-based realism, the performance Falk gives in each subsequent installment of the reboot lean into an imbecilic theatricality, bordering on senility. Even the means by which Columbo eventually nabs his man – or woman, as the case may be – are distilled into curiously off-putting gags, like a fake gun complete with barrel-bursting ‘bang’, in 1989’s Columbo Goes to the Guillotine, or Columbo playing the part of a circus ringmaster at the end of Murder, Smoke and Shadows; an episode derived from a backstage pass Hollywood motif, not Barnum and Bailey. One can either choose to blame the formulaic atmosphere of this latter franchise on Falk, bad writing, or just an imminent sense that the best work was sadly behind Columbo, and without more diabolical villains to challenge him, his mind had settled on reflections for those glory years.

With all this said, there is little to deny Columbo and Falk their place in television history. The show continues to garner new legions of fans each year, and, books, podcasts and even this review are mindful of that perennial resurrection of a franchise that has never entirely fallen from fashion. While the passage of time has inevitably dated the more superficial aspects of the show – hair, clothing styles, the static execution and glacial pacing of the visuals, distinctly at odds with today’s heavily Ginsu-ed chop/shop editing – what remains inviolate is Columbo’s ability to get under our collective skin as a deceptively astute crime solver with few equals. Here is a character so indelibly etched into the consciousness of not only his own generation, but for several since to have followed it, the iconography of Falk’s squinty and chronically disheveled detective is enough to bring new audiences into multiple viewings and even more fondly rekindled reminiscences about their favorite episodes and Columbo moments.

In the bulk of this review, I have been circumspect in my praise and more directly involved in critiquing the embarrassing oversights, misfires and lost opportunities that, at least for me, prevent this franchise from total canonization in the annals of television history as truly outstanding ‘must see’ programming for the ages. And yet, there is definitely a place of noteworthy distinction for Columbo. It may not be among the all-time greats. But it certainly has retained its uncanny warmth, its fractured charm, and its curious staying power as a flighty, fruity and ferociously fun bit of escapism. Even the ‘how could they?’ moments, as bad as they are, lack in total absurdity to completely tank the franchise. If there are moments, as well as whole episodes that are tragically undernourished in their storytelling (and…there are), what is as certain, is every episode in the original series as well as the reboot, derive a certain cyclical pleasure, returning us to very familiar stomping grounds, only periodically to get thoroughly trampled into the mud. While there are elements in the reboot that are as woefully stifling, abysmally stupid and utterly indigestible by today’s viewing standards, the 4-decade fortitude of the original broadcasts, to say nothing of their ever more involved appreciation by fans for Columbo since its official retirement, speaks to the franchise’s ability to enchant and involve us in these implausible capers over and over again. They serve up as comfort food on a rainy afternoon or some snowy night in front of the fire.

Columbo officially left the airways in 2003 with one of its more competently rendered thrillers – Columbo Likes the Nightlife, taking Falk’s rumbled dick to the seedy underbelly of a rave club. Alas, this time, the update proved too much, even for fans. Ratings tanked and ABC, tired of Falk’s ever-rising salary demands, and the overhead to mount ‘event’ programming, pulled the plug. It was a bittersweet finale, compounded by Falk’s failed ambitions to make one final appearance as the famed detective in a screenplay he had penned himself. ABC had no stomach for this, and neither did any of the other networks Falk pitched his idea to – even cable. Peter Falk left us, age 83, on June 23, 2011, putting a definite period to his 4-decade run as one of television’s most beloved, if chronically befuddled, creations.

With Columbo: The Return, Kino Lorber has officially made the entire Columbo catalog available on Blu-ray. The results are mostly pleasing, if not entirely perfect. Advertised as mastered in 4K by NBCUniversal, all 24 episodes from the late-eighties reboot attain a level of visual consistency that will surely delight – save one ‘minor’ caveat for purists. For reasons known only to NBC/Uni, all of Columbo’s latter-day adventures have been reformatted in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Recall, much, if not all of these shows were shown only in 1.33:1 at the time. Curiously, the re-matted episodes do not suffer from untoward cropping at the top and bottom, unless, of course, one compares them directly to the DVD release which did adhere to the 1.33:1 broadcast ratio. We gain valuable screen real estate to the left and right that also seems to ‘fit’ the new format, suggesting that when these episodes were originally photographed, the plan was to eventually make them available in some sort of widescreen format. These Blu-ray transfers easily best their tired, old DVD counterparts. Fine detail predictably advances and grain looks more indigenous to the source. Color fidelity and saturation also vastly improve. While the reboot favors a subtler palette when compared to the original 70’s run, what’s here looks excellent, with minimal distortions, only the occasional ‘soft’ shot, and, very intermittent/momentary drops in overall image quality, largely due to optical printing methods of the time.

We are favored with 2.0 DTS audio masters that, while rarely to stretch our appreciation, nevertheless do a competent job. As with the earlier release, the only ‘extra’ here is an isolated music/effects track for each episode. Presumably for budgetary reasons, Kino’s original plans to feature expert commentaries on some episodes was summarily scrapped, leaving some fans feeling burned. Regardless, Columbo – The Return allows die-hard fans of the franchise to collect and complete their Columbo odyssey with a stellar effort put forth to remaster each episode to a level of quality that will surely not disappoint…even when the mysteries do. Recommended – with caveats for content.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

1