There are nights when you want to discover the newest television show everybody is talking about. Then there are nights when you just want to see a wrinkled raincoat, a cigar and a detective who looks like he may have wandered into the wrong house. Sometimes comfort wins, and that may be the easiest way to explain why Columbo remains one of the most satisfying shows to binge watch all these years later.
More than five decades after Columbo became a television favorite, Peter Falk’s wonderfully persistent detective remains one of those characters you can settle in with almost immediately. Yes, the cars are older. The clothes definitely belong to another era, and nobody is pulling out a smartphone to help solve the case. None of that really matters. Put on an episode of Columbo and before long you’re right back in his world, watching a very confident murderer slowly discover that the slightly disheveled detective asking all those annoying little questions may actually be the smartest person in the room.
And chances are, Columbo already knows it. He’s just not going to tell anybody.
Why Columbo remains such a different kind of mystery
One of the things that still makes Columbo so much fun is that it doesn’t play by the usual murder-mystery rules. Most of the time, we already know who committed the crime. We watch the murder happen. We see the killer carefully plan it, cover the tracks and convince themselves they’ve come up with the perfect way to get away with it. Then Columbo shows up, usually looking like somebody who couldn’t possibly be a threat to anyone.
That’s when the real mystery begins. The question isn’t always who committed the murder. It’s how Columbo is going to figure out what went wrong and, even better, how he’s finally going to prove it. That makes binge watching Columbo strangely relaxing. Instead of waiting for one giant twist, we’re watching a battle of patience between a detective and a murderer who has usually made one very big mistake: underestimating him.
They see the old raincoat. Then they hear him ramble about his wife, a nephew, a brother-in-law or whatever family member happens to come to mind. Before long, Columbo is searching his pockets, apologizing for bothering them again and finally heading toward the door. Then he turns around because, naturally, there’s just one more thing he forgot to ask. If you’ve watched enough Columbo, you already know that’s usually the moment when somebody should start getting nervous.
Peter Falk made Columbo impossible not to love
A lot of actors have played brilliant television detectives. Very few made brilliance look quite the way Peter Falk did. Columbo didn’t need to show everybody how intelligent he was. In fact, part of his strength was doing exactly the opposite. He was polite, unpretentious and perfectly comfortable letting everyone around him think they were a little smarter than he was.
Falk won four Emmy Awards for playing the character, and we had the opportunity to speak with him many times over the years before his passing. During one of those conversations, Falk explained something about Columbo that gets right to the heart of why the character worked so well.
Click on the media bar below to hear Peter Falk.
That really is Columbo. He doesn’t need the murderer to know how clever he is, and he doesn’t particularly care if anybody else knows, either. He just keeps asking questions until all those little things that didn’t seem important suddenly become very important. That humility was part of the character’s charm, and it helped turn Falk’s performance into one of the most recognizable and beloved detective portrayals in television history.
And we still love watching him do it.
The detective who refused to fade away
The original Columbo is forever associated with television in the 1970s, but the character’s story didn’t end there. Falk returned years later for another run of television movies, allowing Columbo to keep solving cases long after many shows from his original era had disappeared into reruns. That longevity says plenty about the character. Audiences weren’t simply nostalgic for the old episodes. They wanted more Columbo.
His influence also never really went away. You can see pieces of the Columbo formula in later detective shows such as Monk and Elsbeth. The characters are obviously different, but there is still something wonderfully entertaining about watching an eccentric investigator walk into a room and be underestimated by almost everyone there. The audience knows better, and that’s part of the fun.
That may be one reason why Columbo still feels so easy to watch today. Television has changed enormously since the series first became a hit, but the pleasure of watching a smug criminal slowly realize that the detective they dismissed has been quietly putting everything together hasn’t changed at all.
Columbo may be the definition of comfort TV
Maybe that’s the biggest reason why Columbo is still popular and why it works so well as a comfort TV binge watch. You don’t have to remember 47 characters, three different timelines and what happened six episodes ago just to understand tonight’s story. You can simply choose a case, settle in and enjoy it. If you miss a week or jump around between episodes, nobody is going to hand you a homework assignment.
The longer episodes can almost feel like little movies. There are memorable guest stars, elaborate crimes and plenty of time for Columbo to slowly wear down his latest suspect. You can watch one and call it a night, or you can watch another one immediately afterward. Then maybe one more. Suddenly the afternoon is gone and you’ve spent several hours watching Columbo drive wealthy, confident murderers absolutely crazy.
There is also something comforting about knowing roughly what you’re going to get while still wanting to see exactly how it happens. Columbo will be polite. The murderer will become increasingly irritated. At some point, you’ll notice the detective doesn’t look quite as confused as he did when he first walked into the room. Eventually that final little detail will fall into place, and you get the satisfaction of watching somebody who thought they had committed the perfect crime discover that they hadn’t fooled Lieutenant Columbo at all.
Sometimes good old television is exactly what you need
There are more new television shows available today than anyone could possibly keep up with. Every week seems to bring another big premiere, another streaming series and another show somebody insists you absolutely have to start watching immediately. That’s part of what makes television fun now, but sometimes you simply don’t need the newest thing.
Sometimes you need Peter Falk walking back through a doorway because he suddenly remembered one more question.
That’s the lasting appeal of Columbo. Watching it doesn’t feel like catching up on something you missed. It feels more like visiting an old friend. Even if you’ve already seen the episode and know exactly how Columbo catches the murderer, watching him get there can still put a smile on your face. There’s no pressure to race through a season before somebody spoils the ending, and nobody is asking you to study an online timeline afterward to understand what happened.
More than 50 years later, the raincoat is still wrinkled, the questions keep coming and somebody is still making the mistake of believing Lieutenant Columbo isn’t very smart. We know better. And sometimes good old-fashioned comfort TV really is better than whatever happens to be new tonight.
Columbo is available on DVD and digital platforms and is streaming on Tubi, Peacock and Prime Video.
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