TVSquad

Welcome to TV Squad Lists (formerly 'The Five'), a feature where each blogger has a chance to list his or her own rundown of things in television that stand out from the rest, both good and bad.

Ah, the police detective genre. It's one of the staples of a network's TV lineup. We all have our favorites, whether the characters are in blue uniforms or suits. Here are my Top 5 (and just so we're clear, I'm talking about police detectives, not private eyes or amateur investigators. I'll have that list tomorrow!)

1. Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk): No contest, really. Sure, there are some other great cops and detectives, but not many with the sheer Sherlock Holmes-like smarts as Lt. Columbo. He walked around sorta lost and bumbling, with a constantly lit cigar, a rumpled raincoat, and hair that made it look like he just woke up. But he was no fool, which all the murderers found out a little bit too late.

Must be Columbo week here at TV Squad. Yesterday I talked about some Columbo trivia, and today comes news that they are starting to release the movies made from 1989 and beyond.

The movies from 1989 will be released on April 24. They include Columbo Goes To The Guillotine (with Anthony Andrews), Murder, Smoke, and Mirrors (Fisher Stevens), Grand Deceptions (Robert Foxworth), Sex and the Married Detective (Lindsay Crouse), and Murder: A Self Portrait (Patrick Bauchau). The set will be three discs and probably won't have many (if any) extras on them.

The movies aren't as good as the regular series movies from the late 60s and the 70s (though I like the Andrews episode, where he plays a murderous magician). They just aren't as clever as the older shows were, though a few from the 90s were pretty fun. Those will (hopefully) be released later in the year.

Anyone over the age of 35 has probably caught at least one epsiode of Columbo. It has to be one of the most complete characterizations in TV history; everything from his manner of speaking to his crappy car, tan suit and rumpled raincoat tells you that Columbo wasn't your average cop.

Must have been some genius costume designer working his or her magic, right? Not according to Peter Falk.

I know, I know, it seems like this is Columbo week here at TV Squad, but you've got to watch this. It's a video made for the 50th Anniversary of ABC a couple of years ago. I didn't watch the show, but I'm glad someone put it up on YouTube. Columbo has been called in to help Sydney, Jack, Vaughn and the rest of the team.

Who asked him to help out, and what is he supposed to help with? Well, you'll just have to watch it to see. You don't usually see a crossover episode involving two of your favorite shows, so this was a great find. Very funny stuff.

I heard this many years ago, and now TV Guide's Televisionary talks about it after getting a question from a reader.

When Columbo first started in the late 60s (first as the movie Prescription Murder, and then as part of the NBC Mystery Movie in the 70s), they never said what Columbo's first name was. He was always just "Lt. Columbo" or "Columbo,"  and they never even played with the audience in any way, like showing a piece of paper with a thumb blocking his first name or anything like that. They just never addressed it. But when a spinoff show was made in the 80s (yes, there was a spinoff to Columbo), Kate Columbo, they finally revealed his name as "Philip." The spinoff did what Columbo did, only in reverse: they showed his wife all the time, solving mysteries, but they never showed her husband. I remember seeing this show, and it wasn't that great. Later they even changed the name of the show to get rid of the Columbo connection.

Now, this doesn't mean that his first name was "officially" Philip. It might be one of those cases where some other show answered a question, but it was never made official, sort of like how the new Superman movie pretends that Superman III and IV never happened. But it's a cool trivia question to ask your friends.

Update: As reader Bill points out in the comments, check out the Wikipedia page on Columbo for more clues about his first name.

Peter Falk, the 78 year old actor who played the disheveled but brilliant detective Columbo for ten seasons, not to mention a ton of made-for-TV movies, says he would love to reprise the role for the big screen if the right script ever came along. Falk says the script must begin with a murder scene and "one thing that only Columbo would see." My guess is that if they ever did make a Columbo movie (and why wouldn't the Hollywood machine churn out yet another rehash?) they'd probably find someone younger to play the role in order to secure the right demographics.