(The Hollywood Bowl scenes in "Etude in Black" are another great example). Ken's lake cabin in "Murder By the Book", Vivica Fox's farm in "Lovely But Lethal", the house and beach scene with Robert Conrad in "Exercise in Fatality" and on and on. (1) Filming Locations: the early Columbos were predominantly filmed on locations, really cool locations. Not that all episodes are bad, but this collectively sums up why the overall tone and execution of the 90s Columbos just don't measure up to the originals for me. In the 90s, it's a jarring clash of styles that doesn't work IMO.
Columbo stories filmed in the bright sunshine of 70s LA without any traces of "grittiness" allowed Columbo to take his place in the Christie-Holmes-Chesterton view of great detectives. The "film noir" style makes you think some weary, no-BS cop is going to show up. Also, there is an overuse on more than one occasion of "Columbo sees something on a security tape" as a key clue that gets very tiresome after a bit.ģ-A lot of these ABC 90s shows seem photographed and staged in a style more reminiscent of film noir than drawing room mystery. But one thing I've noticed is that in the 90s, the murder often will take place as much as a half hour into the episode and what this means is we get a lot of backstory build-up and a lot less "investigating" afterwards showing the slow step of mini-clues that point Columbo to the killer followed by a satisfying pay-off clue that clinches things. The strength of the scripts in the 70s is that they were carefully nuanced in terms of developing clues that made Columbo's slow unraveling compelling and above all "playing fair" with the viewer. There is almost no difference between how Falk is playing the character in these episodes with how he'd be playing it in a variety show sketch.Ģ-The episodes are simply not well-plotted. To me, the flaws of the 90s Columbos come down to three specific flaws.ġ-Falk is by this point playing Columbo too much like a caricature with none of the nuance and shading that made the earlier years of his performance so compelling.
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