First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on July 30th 2023

ANDY TATE who we’re welcoming today is a fan of the show, and got in touch with me with a whole list of exciting suggestions of subjects for shows we might want to do on VISION ON SOUND, so it only seemed fair to invite him along and talk to him about some of them.

And what a fun guest he turned out to be, as I think you’ll discover over the next hour, in which, after a bit of a preamble in which we talk about some of his earliest TV memories, we tackle one of the subjects taken from his list of suggestions, a TV topic which is very close to his heart, and talk about one of his favourite TV series, COLUMBO, a series with its roots forged in the very furnace of American television.

Created by RICHARD LEVINSON and WILLIAM LINK, who would also go on to create MURDER SHE WROTE, COLUMBO was apparently inspired in part by both PORFIRY PETROVICH in DOSTOEVSKYs CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, and G K CHESTERTON’S FATHER BROWN, and evolved out an episode from the early 1960s anthology series THE CHEVY MYSTERY SHOW called ENOUGH ROPE, which featured BERT FREED in the role of the Detective, and then transformed into a stage play called PRESCRIPTION: MURDER, which was then adapted into a TELEVISION MOVIE in 1968 starring PETER FALK which acted as an unofficial Pilot episode for the television series which later became so iconic.

A second pilot RANSOM FOR A DEAD MAN followed in March 1971, before the series proper began in September 1971 as part of the NBC WEDNESDAY MYSTERY MOVIE strand in which three detective series would be broadcast in the slot on different weeks.

Initially COLUMBO alternated with DENNIS WEAVER as the urban cowboy detective McCLOUD, and ROCK HUDSON and SUSAN SAINT JAMES as the crime fighting duo of McMILLAN AND WIFE, with RICHARD BOONE adding to the mix in the second year as HEC RAMSEY, mixing the western formula with forensic investigations.

COLUMBO was a POLICE LIEUTENANT attached to the HOMICIDE DEPARTMENT of the LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT, and as such, the homicides he dealt with were often – but not exclusively - committed amongst the glitz and glamour of a Hollywood lifestyle, and, more often than not involved people living at the richer and more privileged end of the American dream.

The show was unusual in that the WHODUNNIT aspect was discarded in favour of a HOWDUNNIT, with the murderer often being identified from the outset, and the mystery itself being more about how COLUMBO would trap the criminal into giving themselves away, often after believing that they had committed the perfect crime.

COLUMBO himself was famously charming and courteous to everyone he met, and this, alongside his shabby outfit of a battered raincoat worn over a rumpled suit and tie, his choice of a battered old Peugeot to park alongside the high value sports cars owned by the suspects, and his seemingly easily distracted demeanour, all caused the criminals to underestimate him, often right up until the moment when they would fall into the trap he set them, usually accompanied with that phrase that rather became his catchphrase: various variations on “Just one more thing…”

Forty-three more episodes of COLUMBO aired across seven seasons in the 1970s, featuring a whole host of celebrity killers who pitted their wits against what they considered to be this shambles of a man.

After a break of 12 years, the series was revived in 1989 for a further six editions, and another fourteen films followed across the next fourteen years, with the final – sixty ninth - COLUMBO first airing in 2003.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.