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For our first mystery of the semester, we’ll look at “Etude in Black,” a popular episode of the 1970 Columbo series.

I chose Columbo for a couple of reasons. First, I like to begin the term with a drama we can watch and discuss—it’s engaging! I also like to jump ahead in time to how the mystery genre has evolved (with shows like Columbo).  Then when we trace back to our classics like Sherlock Holmes it’s fun to see how our detectives go about their detecting.

In this lesson I’ll provide a few articles about Columbo as well as the actor, Peter Falk. 

Let's start with a trivia question--extra credit for anyone who can find Gwyneth Paltrow's role in this drama.

Each episode is generally concluded with Columbo proving the killer's guilt, though some episodes, such as "Swan Song", go on to show the killer confessing or quietly submitting to arrest. Sometimes, Columbo sets up the murderer with a trick designed to elicit a confession.

Why he ranks: “He’s a very average guy,” Falk once explained. “But what sets him apart is that he’s really curious. He’s got eyes like an eagle and sees things and smells things differently and that quality makes him different from you and me and everybody. And he didn’t care that people thought he was average.” Knives Out director Rian Johnson has cited Columbo as inspiration for Poker Face, his popular show starring Natasha Lyonne about an average gal who just happens to be a human lie detector.

Sleuth truth: Falk, who died in 2011, also noted that “I’d like to think that Columbo was a reflection of my personal taste.” To wit, the character’s signature rumpled raincoat came from Falk’s own closet: “I just felt comfortable in it.” (Streaming on Peacock, Amazon Prime Video).

Lieutenant Columbo is the most likable cop ever to hit the TV screen, the 70s drama became a binge-watching go-to during the pandemic, and the unique formula is instantly identifiable. Just like the series' structure, the answer to the mystery comes at the beginning of the piece, but the real fun is in finding out how the beloved detective will figure it out.

There's rarely any science to which movies or TV shows become valuable as fuel for the memetic hive mind. It's easier to look at a big pop-culture movement and perform an autopsy after the fact because guessing what may become a meme later is a game of chance. However, seeing the response to something like Columbo reveals a lot of interesting details about the way the internet works.

Columbo began its proper television run in 1971, after two pilot episodes that didn't quite nail down the formula. Creators Richard Levinson and William Link devised the pitch initially as a TV movie of the week, but its popularity and lead character led NBC to upgrade Columbo to full series status. There are 61 episodes of Columbo, each between 70 and 90 minutes in length. The show pioneered the inverse mystery format, also known as a "howcatchem" in a reversal of the term "whodunnit." Almost every episode begins with the murder, giving the audience all the information upfront. The drive of the episode is watching Columbo lock on to the culprit and catch them in a lie. It's exciting every time, but it is the same essential structure in each episode. Watching all of Columbo would take around five and a half days. Sounds insurmountable, unless something were to keep viewers under de facto house arrest with an indeterminate sentence.

As comfort viewing, Columbo is effectively unmatched. It's a formulaic drama about a man who the world can't help but like. The average cop drama is intensely unpleasant, sometimes because of the grim subject matter but more often because the show exists solely to convince the world that cops are perfect emissaries of justice. It seems weird for the memetic hive mind, most of which is on the younger side, to find their way to a cop show. It seems less weird after watching an episode or two of Columbo. The series refuses to glorify police work as a practice, nor will it celebrate any police officer whose name isn't in the title. Columbo is about Columbo, an old-fashioned detective who is kind, charming, unassuming, and dedicated to helping others.

He's a man made up of iconography. His outfit, which he wears every episode, looks like it came out of a costume shop. His car is a beat-up sedan that was out-of-date before the first episode aired. He talks constantly about his wife, who seems to have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of all subjects. He doesn't even carry a gun, because he knows that he'll be able to bring every suspect to justice without it. He even has a favorite food and a catchphrase. He's like a cartoon character, every element of his speech and appearance is locked in and constantly referenced from the first few episodes. Yet, somehow, underneath all of that familiarity, Lt. Columbo is almost violently likable. It's impossible to get tired of this weird little guy who loves solving mysteries and eating chili. We want to see him win, but we also want to see him everywhere. Memes can make that happen.

Columbo is a great show that happens to be extremely easy to build references around. Lt. Columbo is such a fully realized character who can comfortably slot into just about any other story. Everything from the structure of the show to the performance of its lead character makes it iconic on an almost unimaginable level. All of this comes from a little detective show from the 70s. Sometimes all it takes to become immortal is a single long-running performance. The entire show is available now on Amazon Prime and elsewhere, don't let it remain a mystery.

For more than 40 years, Peter Falk entered living rooms around the world as Lieutenant Columbo, an unconventional L.A. homicide detective known for his rumpled raincoat and trademark cigar. The actor would go on to win four Emmys for the role, while the series itself remains a benchmark for television crime dramas. But if series creators William Link and Richard Levinson went with their initial choice, the iconic role of Columbo would have gone to a syrupy-smooth crooner rather than the inelegant Falk. Get familiar with one of TV's most unique heroes with facts about Columbo.

1. BING CROSBY WAS ORIGINALLY EYED FOR THE ROLE.

Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link's first choice to play their low-key detective was crooner Bing Crosby. Der Bingle loved the script and the character, but he feared that a TV series commitment would interfere with his true passion—golf. It was probably providential that Crosby turned the role down, since his death in 1977 occurred while the series was still a solid hit on NBC. 

2. PETER FALK WAS AN UNEXPECTED SEX SYMBOL.

Character actor Lee J. Cobb was also considered for the role, until Peter Falk phoned co-creator William Link. Falk had gotten a copy of the script from his agents at William Morris and told Link that he’d “kill to play that cop.” Link and Levinson knew the actor back from their days of working in New York, and even though he was the opposite of everything they’d originally pictured for Lt. Columbo, they had to admit that Falk had a certain likeability that translated to both men and women. Falk was described by a certain female demographic as “sexy,” and males liked him because he was an unthreatening, humble, blue-collar underdog who was smarter than the wealthy perps he encountered.

3. FALK WAS A GOVERNMENT WORKER BEFORE BECOMING AN ACTOR.

Peter Falk wasn’t too far removed from the character he played. In real life he tended to be rumpled and disheveled and was forever misplacing things (he was famous for losing his car keys and having to be driven home from the studio by someone else). He was also intelligent, having earned a master’s degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University, which led to him working for the State of Connecticut’s Budget Bureau as an efficiency expert until the acting bug bit him. He was also used to being underestimated due to his appearance; he’d lost his right eye to cancer at age three, and many of his drama teachers in college warned him of his limited chances in film due to his cockeyed stare. Indeed, after a screen test at Columbia Pictures Harry Cohn dismissed him by saying, “For the same price I can get an actor with two eyes.”

4. COLUMBO'S DOG WASN'T A WELCOME SIGHT AT FIRST.

When Columbo was renewed for a second season, NBC brass had a request: They wanted the lieutenant to have a sidekick. Perhaps a young rookie detective just learning the ropes. Link and Levinson were resistant to the idea, but the network was pressuring them. They conferred with Steven Bochco, who was writing the script for the season opener, “Etude in Black,” and together they hatched the idea of giving Lt. Columbo a dog as a “partner.” Falk was against the idea at first; he felt that between the raincoat, cigar, and Peugeot his character had enough gimmicks. But when he met the lethargic, drooling Basset Hound that had been plucked from a pound, Falk knew it was perfect for Columbo's dog.

The original dog passed away in between the end of the original NBC run of the series and its renewal on ABC, so a replacement was necessary. The new pup was visibly younger than the original dog, and as a result spent more time in the makeup chair to make him look older.

5. FALK'S REAL-LIFE WIFE PLAYED A ROLE IN THE SERIES.

Falk first met Shera Danese, the woman who would become his second wife, on the set of his 1976 film Mikey & Nicky. The movie was being filmed in Danese’s hometown of Philadelphia, and the aspiring actress had landed work as an extra. They were married in 1977, and she was able to pad out her resume by appearing on several episodes of Columbo. Her first few appearances were limited to small walk-on parts—secretaries, sexy assistants, etc. By the time the series was resurrected on ABC in the early 1990s, she was awarded larger roles.

She originally auditioned for the role of the titular rock star in 1991’s “Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star,” but her husband adamantly refused, since the role included a scene of her in bed making love to a much younger man. She instead played the role of a co-conspiring attorney, and was also allowed to sing the song that was the major hit for the murdered star.

6. THE CHARACTER'S TRADEMARK RAINCOAT CAME FROM FALK'S CLOSET.

The initial wardrobe proposed for Columbo struck Peter Falk as completely wrong for the character. To get closer to what he wanted for Columbo, the actor went into his closet and found a beat-up coat he had bought years earlier when caught in a rainstorm on 57th Street. And he ordered one of the blue suits chosen for him to be dyed brown. The drab outfit would become one of the trademarks of the character for decades.

7. STEVEN SPIELBERG GOT AN EARLY BREAK ON COLUMBO.

“Murder by the Book” was the second Columbo episode filmed, but it was the first one to air after the show was picked up as a series. Filming was delayed for a month, though, when Falk refused to sign off on this “kid”—a 25-year-old named Steven Spielberg—to direct the episode. Finally he watched a few of Spielberg’s previous credits (all of them TV episodes) and was impressed by his work on the short-lived NBC series called The Psychiatrist. Once filming was underway, Falk was impressed by many of the techniques employed by the young director, such as filming a street scene with a long lens from a building across the road. “That wasn’t common 20 years ago,” Falk said. He went on to tell producers Link and Levinson that “this guy is too good for Columbo."

8. COLUMBO'S FIRST NAME WOUND UP THE SUBJECT OF A LAWSUIT.

Fred L. Worth, author of several books of trivia facts, had a sneaking feeling that other folks were using his meticulously researched facts without crediting him. He set a “copyright trap” and mentioned in one of his books that Lt. Columbo’s first name was “Philip,” although he had completely fabricated that so-called fact. Sure enough, a 1984 edition of the Trivial Pursuit board game listed the “Philip” Columbo name as an answer on one of their cards, which led to a $300 million lawsuit filed by Mr. Worth.

The board game creators admitted in court that they’d garnered their Columbo fact from Worth’s book, but the judge ultimately determined that it was not an actionable offense. By the way, years later when Columbo was available in syndicated reruns and HD TV was an option, alert viewers were able to freeze-frame a scene where the rumpled lieutenant extended his badge for identification purposes in the season one episode “Dead Weight” and determine that his first name was, in fact, “Frank.”

9. THE SERIES DIDN'T FOLLOW A STANDARD MYSTERY FORMAT.

The premise of Columbo was the “inverted mystery,” or a “HowCatchEm” instead of a “WhoDunIt.” Every episode began with the actual crime being played out in full view of the audience, meaning viewers already knew “WhodunIt.” What they wanted to know is how Lt. Columbo would slowly zero in on the perpetrator. This sort of story was particularly challenging for the series’s writers, and they sometimes found inspiration in the most unlikely places. Like the Yellow Pages, for example. One of Peter Falk’s personal favorite episodes, “Now You See Him,” had its genesis when the writers were flipping through the telephone book looking for a possible profession for a Columbo murderer (keep in mind that all of Columbo’s victims and perps were of the Beverly Hills elite variety, not your typical Starsky and Hutch-type thug).

A page listing professional magicians caught their eye, and that led to a classic episode featuring the ever-suave Jack Cassidy playing the role of the former SS Nazi officer who worked as a nightclub magician. When the Jewish nightclub owner recognized him and threatened to expose him, well, you can guess what happened. But the challenge is to guess how Lt. Columbo ultimately caught him.

10. THERE WAS A SPINOFF THAT KIND OF WAS BUT THEN WASN'T.

The 1979 TV series entitled Mrs. Columbo was not technically related to the original Peter Falk series. In fact, Levinson and Link opposed the entire concept of the series; it was NBC honcho Fred Silverman who gave the OK to use the Columbo name and imply that Kate Mulgrew was the widowed/divorced wife (the series changed names and backstories several times during its short run) of the famed homicide detective. The “real” Mrs. Columbo was never mentioned by her first name during the original series, but actor Peter Falk possibly slipped and revealed that her name was “Rose” when he appeared at this Dean Martin Roast saluting Frank Sinatra and asked for an autograph. 

His first major role was as a contract killer in Murder, Inc. (1960), and he played the gangster Joy Boy in Frank Capra’s Pocketful of Miracles (1961); he was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for both films. His other movies in the early 1960s included Pressure Point (1962), It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), and The Great Race (1965).

Falk later starred with Burt Lancaster in Sidney Pollack’s Castle Keep (1969). He starred in several John Cassavetes movies, including the badly received Husbands (1970) and the harrowing A Woman Under the Influence (1974), and appeared in the murder-mystery spoof Murder by Death (1976). He was the grandfather-narrator in the popular comedy The Princess Bride (1987) and played himself in Wim Wenders’s Der Himmel über Berlin (1987; Wings of Desire). In addition, Falk originated the role of Mel Edison in the Broadway premiere of Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971).

Falk garnered the most attention, however, for his performance as the disheveled, trench-coat-wearing, cigar-smoking Los Angeles homicide detective Columbo. He made his first appearance as Columbo in the 1968 TV movie Prescription: Murder. Over a period of 35 years (1968–2003), Falk portrayed the character in 69 intermittent episodes and made-for-TV movies, winning four Emmy Awards. His later works included the animated film Shark Tale (2004), the action thriller Next (2007), and American Cowslip (2009), his last movie.

The Columbophile blog will provide you with a WEALTH of information about the Columbo series, and many full episodes are available online.

Mr. Columbophile actually didn’t care for this episode, and in the passage below he explains why.

Etude in Black marked the first episode (pilots excluded) with the longer 90+minute running time, which would have been 2 hours on network TV including ads. Season 1 episodes ran for about 75 minutes each (90 mins with ads) and were almost all perfectly paced. But Columbo was such a hit, the network, NBC, insisted on some longer episodes to maximise advertising revenue.

Many Columbo purists, myself included, think that move was a mistake. It led to widespread padding out of scenes in the longer episodes. The stories had a tendency to sag and the potential to lose viewers’ attention.

And while Etude was the first of these longer episodes, it suffers less than some that followed it because, unlike subsequent long episodes, Etude was originally intended as a regular-length transmission. Indeed, the 75-minute version aired in Canada before an extended cut was foisted on US audiences, but while there are some scenes added for padding, the scenes themselves haven’t been padded out. That’s an important distinction.

I’ve never seen the shorter version of Etude, but writer Bochco and Falk himself both admitted that the extra running time did it no favours. I find it an episode that I struggle to really commit to for the full duration. Still, its length is not the sole reason why Etude remains on the fringes of my Columbo favourites. For my money, the central clue just isn’t compelling enough. I don’t think Benedict would cave in on the evidence of the lapel flower. Sure, it doesn’t look good, but it falls short of condemning him.

Something else that could perhaps have been tightened up was Benedict’s reckless approach to setting up the murder. Lest we forget, he takes a heck of a lot of chances getting to Jennifer’s house from the Hollywood Bowl, wearing an extremely conspicuous outfit as he jogged about in broad daylight, and then parking his extremely memorable car right around the corner from the victim’s house! If nothing else, one has to admire his chutzpah but I really don’t consider his actions very plausible if avoiding attention was his goal.

Yet for all that, I can understand why many fans love Etude in Black. It has some marvellous moments… It’s almost cinematic in scale, with its extensive use of location shooting and the epic orchestral score – featuring Chopin, Beethoven and Mozart – putting it a level above most episodes in terms of production values.

Blythe Danner was also a hit as the vulnerable Janice Benedict, hoping against hope that her husband wasn’t really the git she suspects him to be. Danner, who was pregnant with daughter Gwyneth Paltrow at the time, was sympathetic without ever being pathetic. One senses Janice has the moral fibre to bounce back from this blow and get back on with her life at some point – something that can’t always be said for the many wronged wives of the wider series.

There are even cameos for the awesome Jimmy McEachin, as Benedict’s sidekick William, and Pat Morita (AKA Mr Miyagi) as the mysteriously titled ‘House Boy’, who allows Columbo into the Benedict residence, so there’s plenty to surprise and delight the keen viewer. And, last but not least, we welcome ‘Dog’ into the fold. The lovable mutt would go on to win the hearts of millions of viewers and there’s plenty of fun to be had during his debut as Columbo struggles to get to grips with the responsibility of pet ownership.

So there we have it. Etude is an interesting study. On one hand majestic, dynamic and a quite amazing statement of intent for the season. On the other, it’s mired in plot holes that prevent it delivering the sucker punch the lavish settings and big budget set it up for.

With this background (and probably more Columbo trivia than you dreamed of), watch for these factors as you observe Columbo at work.

• How do you, the viewer, take in the opening scene?

• How does the television production provide clues and details that come up later?

• What details define the various characters?

• How does Columbia create his trail of inquiry?

• How does the drama resolve?

• How would you describe what I call “The Columbo Effect”?

And stay tuned—we’ll look for traces of the CE as we read our first Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie Stories.

Curran, S. (2021). Why the world still loves 1970s detective show Columbo. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210909-why-the-world-still-loves-1970s-detective-show-columbo

Kovalchik, K. (2018). 10 Things You Might Not Know About Columbo. Retrieved from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/62270/facts-about-columbo-peter-falk

McCoy, J. (2023). One More Thing: How Did Columbo Become a Meme?  Retrieved from https://gamerant.com/columbo-meme-explained/

Reinstein, M. (2023). The greatest TV cops of all time. Retrieved from https://parade.com/tv/greatest-tv-cops