Episode 140: Columbo – Murder by the Book

Introduced by Devlin

Gali may not have introduced me to Columbo as such – I’d watched it before and enjoyed it, I’m sure – but he was certainly the person who anchored it as a regular viewing habit. Back when we were housemates in the Hyde Park area of Leeds, we would commandeer the living room telly every Sunday for at least an episode on one of the various Freeview channels that were starved of content to fill their off-peak schedules. These strange, slightly meandering, eccentric feature-length detective stories were like nothing else on TV, and made for perfect lazy afternoon viewing. After buying the DVD boxset for an absolute steal, we could really lock in and watched every single episode at least once – I wouldn’t be surprised if, given how little work we actually did during our student years, we ran the whole roster 2 or 3 times.

In this episode – tangentially linked to our Steven Spielberg series – we dig into our shared love of the show, and the influence American cinema’s future king exerted on its tone and format at the tender age of 24. Murder by the Book, the first true episode of the series after an initial teleplay in the early ’60s and two dry runs with Peter Falk essaying the titular character, is a wonderfully self-referential way for a legendary TV series to start its run. The plot concerns the co-creator of the lucrative Mrs. Melville series of mystery novels – played by Columbo all-star Jack Cassidy – bumping off his soon-to-be-ex partner to preserve his ego. In classic Columbo fashion, we see the murder play out in intricate detail as the cover up and alibis are put in motion, only to be unpicked in methodical fashion by a shambling little man in a beige Mackintosh making a nuisance of himself.

Pick up one of my weird Columbo Japanese shirts here – the character, and the show, are HUGE over there, and this design is modelled after the popular local publication Columbo Perfect Guide Book.

If you want to dig into the world of Columbo more, check out the YouTube channel Watch it for Days, who create hour-long breakdowns of individual episodes; the heavyweight blog The Columbophile; the comprehensive making-of book Shooting Columbo, and avowed superfan Rian Johnson’s appearance on The Spiel.