Tom Salinsky

I stumbled across Columbo as a teenager, idly channel hopping. It was the one with Dick van Dyke as a photographer and I remember not being able to work out if it was a TV show or a movie. This is one of several odd things about this amazing series. It formed part of what was called the NBC Mystery Wheel which variously occupied either a 90 minute or a two-hour prime time slot and would cycle through various different crime shows, each presenting a movie-length edition. Columbo would be followed next week by McCloud or McMillan and Wife or Quincy. This meant each production team only had to come up with 7-8 editions each year and could take their time.

Columbo stands out for a few reasons. Creators Richard Levinson and William Link had been inspired by, among other things, Dial M for Murder, Les Diaboliques and GK Chesterton’s Father Brown. The character went from a short story to a one-off TV play, to a stage play to a one-off TV movie (all with the same basic plot) and it’s here that Peter Falk was cast – the studio wanted Bing Crosby. The novelty with the original story, and the thing which inspired the writers to keep recycling it, was that it was an “inverted mystery”. The first act showed how the murder was committed, by whom and why. The rest of the drama was about how he got caught. Not a “whodunnit” but a “howcatchem”. Could the trick be repeated?

A second one-off TV movie showed that it could, and so Columbo was commissioned, and Peter Falk became a bone fide star. It’s often said that Americans don’t have a class system, but Columbo gives the lie to that assertion. Not only is the central character mild, self-effacing and unfailingly polite in the face of a parade of arrogant, self-aggrandising, pompous killers – he’s a blue collar copper bringing down wealthy evildoers who skulk in mansions and stalk the corridors of power.

It ran for eight years and was then brought back in the late eighties, with occasional specials through the nineties – 69 episodes in all, pretty much all hewing to this formula. And Columbo’s bumbling and deferential manner was in stark contrast to the macho antics of rivals Starsky and Hutch, Miami Vice, Magnum PI – even Cagney and Lacey. It’s fondly remembered and there has been much speculation about a remake. Mark Ruffalo has been known to be interested, and there’s a tiny hint of Columbo in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.

A bit more than a hint is to be found in Johnson’s 2023 TV series Poker Face which borrows the inverted mystery structure, unassuming lead and even the font for the titles from Columbo. Natasha Lyonne plays Charlie Cale, a drifter with a freakish ability to detect liars. In an age of prestige streaming series, this felt refreshingly case-of-the-week with just a hint of a continuing storyline, setting up a big bad in the first episode and despatching him in the last. It has been renewed for a second season.

Not to be outdone, The Good Wife creators Robert and Michelle King picked up their recurring character of Chicago lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) and dropped her down in New York City, attached to the police department where she quickly becomes an asset to the team. Once again, most episodes open with a crime being committed, leaving us in little doubt who has done what, and why, and the fun is watching Elsbeth figure it out. This she tends to do a little too quickly and easily for my taste – the clues are subtler in Poker Face and that’s more fun. A shame as I often felt that The Good Wife was the one American lawyer show which really managed to balance the legal jargon with the needs of easily-digestible narrative. A second series is airing currently.

Meanwhile, the BBC was getting in on the act, with their own quirky-individual-works-with-the-police-to-solve-crimes show. David Mitchell is puzzle-setter John “Ludwig” Taylor whose identical twin brother James is a) a detective and b) mysteriously missing. John is persuaded by his brother’s wife to pose as his brother in order to determine his whereabouts and quickly becomes an asset to the team his brother worked with. Time and again, his puzzle-skills become relevant, but although we see portions of the crime, we don’t always know whodunnit and this doesn’t play by proper Agatha Christie rules either – we usually aren’t given enough information to work it out for ourselves. But this hardly matters when the series is so charming and Mitchell is so well cast. It has been renewed for a second season.

So, in the English-speaking world, the TV landscape is and always has been awash with quirky are-they-cops-or-aren’t-they gallantly and unassumingly fighting crime, but in France it’s not such a familiar cliché – which meant there was a gap in the market. This was filled in 2021 when Stéphane Carrié, Alice Chegaray-Breugnot, and Nicolas Jean created HPI (short for Haut potentiel intellectual) in which office cleaner Morgane Alvaro gets seconded to the Lille police force and quickly becomes an asset to the team.

In short order, this was snapped up by ABC television in the states who put Drew Goddard in charge of it and cast Kaitlin Olson (who I’ve discovered is not an Olsen twin) as Morgan Gillory, a high potential individual who is talked into becoming a police consultant and who quickly becomes an asset to the team. You can watch High Potential on Disney+ in the UK and it has been renewed for a second season. This doesn’t commit to the inverted mystery structure – most episodes play out as a more typical police procedural, but it still feels to me like part of the same family.

There’s also Kathy Bates as Matlock, to add to our roster of usually-gender-flipped, easy-to-underestimate, quirky-kind-of-cop, solves-impossible crimes, case-of-the-week shows – but there are some quite serious and complicated problems with this iteration, which I might leave for a future essay. In the meantime, here’s your rundown of The Spawn of Columbo.

COLUMBO

Transmitted: 1968-1977 on NBC, 1989-2003 on ABC.

Starring: Peter Falk as Lt Columbo (no first name ever given) of the LAPD.

Quirks: Wears a shabby raincoat, drives a beaten-up car, sometimes has a dog (called “dog”), puffs on cheap cigars. Is often a huge fan of the very wealthy and famous killer and awestruck to be in their company. A working class stiff typically in a nouveau riche world.

Magic powers: His attention to detail is matched only by his faith in humanity. He tenaciously locks on to the killer early in the episode and all but annoys them into confessing.

Episode structure: All the classic episodes show the crime committed in detail before Columbo even shows up. A handful of later episodes mess with this formula and it kind of ruins the fun.

Supporting characters: Effectively none. A handful of coroners or other police workers show up in a few episodes, but Columbo is a lone wolf by design.

Star killers: An amazing roster of familiar faces including Patrick McGoohan (four times), Robert Culp, Ruth Gordon, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (in different episodes). Even Billy Connolly (although it’s not a great outing).

Ongoing narrative: None whatsoever (it was the 1970s, are you kidding).

POKER FACE

Transmitted: 2023- on Peacock (NOW TV in the UK)

Starring: Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale who drifts around various parts of the United States.

Quirks: Not nearly as deferential as Columbo, Charlie is usually cheerful and friendly, but has a wide cynical streak and plenty of street smarts. Paradoxically, her magic powers (see below) make it almost impossible for her to keep down a job, so we usually discover her making ends meet doing grunt work of some kind.

Magic powers: Charlie has a sixth sense for liars, which often manifests as an almost involuntary “bullshit” when a fib reaches her ears.

Episode structure: As with Columbo, we usually see all the details of the crime unfold before Natasha Lyonne makes her entrance. The wrinkle here is that after the first act break, rather than the main character only now arriving on the scene, we rewind and see much of the same events again, but from Charlie’s point-of-view. She had been there all along, we just didn’t see her. It’s fun. Also fun – Charlie isn’t a cop so sometimes she hands the baddies over to the forces of law and order, and sometimes she has to rely on natural justice.

Supporting characters: Charlie is fundamentally a loner, but she forges an uneasy alliance with Simon Helberg’s FBI agent who appears in a few episodes.

Star killers: This is stuffed with familiar faces including Nick Nolte, Tim Meadows, Adrien Brody, Chloë Sevigny, Stephanie Hsu, Tim Blake Nelson, Ellen Barkin and many more.

Ongoing narrative: After the events of the first episode, Charlie is pursued by Benjamin Bratt and eventually faces down Ron Perlman, but if you just watch episodes 2-9, you’ll scarcely notice this.

ELSBETH

Transmitted: 2024- on CBS (NOW TV in the UK)

Starring: Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Tascioni, Chicago lawyer appointed to provide the NYPD was some needed oversight.

Quirks: Elsbeth is a very enthusiastic and perky middle-aged woman, who dresses in garish outfits and is sometimes too quick to speak her mind. Like Columbo, she is easily impressed by rich and famous types, and very disappointed to discover that they have blood on their hands.

Magic powers: Like many of her TV peers, Elsbeth is freakishly perceptive and notices many details which others miss.

Episode structure: Frequently makes use of the inverted mystery structure, but isn’t wedded to it – and as noted, the plotting isn’t quite as A1 as on Poker Face.

Supporting characters: A much more traditional roster of supporting characters, which gives a general throughline of: how much faith will these beat cops and career detectives learn to place in this kooky lawyer from out-of-town? Adding much class is The Wire’s Wendell Pierce as Captain Wagner. Cara Patterson as Kaya Blanke serves as an effective 2IC. Various other detectives float in and out, but none makes a huge impression, and you could say the same for Elsbeth’s son, Kaya’s dishy roommate and so on.

Star killers: Once again this is stuffed to the gills. Say hello to Jane Krakowski, Blair Underwood, Laurie Metcalf, Vanessa Bayer, Eric McCormack, Alan Ruck, Keegan-Michael Key, Matthew Broderick and countless others.

Ongoing narrative: A thin slip of a continuing storyline surrounds Elsbeth’s true reason for being in New York, and she gradually becomes closer and closer to Maya over the course of Season 1. Having exonerated Captain Wagner, in Season 2 she comes under suspicion herself, and there’s a further ongoing storyline which surrounds Lost’s Michael Emerson, whose entrance in the cold open of the episode One Angry Woman is nothing short of genius. Despite having (a bit) more screentime devoted to the season arc than Poker Face, this generally does a good job of balancing both aspects.

LUDWIG

Transmitted: 2024- on BBC One

Starring: David Mitchell as John “Ludwig” Taylor, a reclusive puzzle-setter.

Quirks: Cripplingly shy and introverted, with a strong sense of self-preservation, John cares deeply for his brother and his brother’s family, and he loves a good puzzle. He sometimes fails to take into account other people’s feelings, and is a shockingly poor improviser, which makes it all the more remarkable that his fairly inept deception isn’t tumbled immediately.

Magic powers: He da puzzle king.

Episode structure: Rather than seeing all the details of the crime, we get a few hints about what really happened before the police show up.

Supporting characters: Nice turns from Dipo Ola as James’s partner DI Carter and Sophie Willan as the station’s IT expert. Anna Maxwell-Martin is luminous as always. The unchanging team of younger coppers is a bit more anonymous. Ralph Ineson makes a strong impression.

Star killers: Not bad for a home-grown show. The first batch of episodes includes appearances from Felicity Kendall and Derek Jacobi, but this isn’t the usual case of “arrest the most famous person in the cast, they probably did it.” Many of the guest actors are familiar from other UK TV shows, but very few are really huge names.

Ongoing narrative: John’s deception is a foregrounded feature of many instalments, and the reasons for it take up half of episode one and most of episode six, but it is very engaging if slightly ludicrous. Season 2 has been set up without this element and it remains to be seen whether the show will be stronger or weaker without it – especially given how exciting it is when the whole house of cards collapses in episode six.

HIGH POTENTIAL

Transmitted: 2024- on ABC (now showing on Disney+ in the UK)

Starring: Kaitlin Olson as cleaner turned police consultant Morgan Gillory.

Quirks: Morgan hates unsolved puzzles, and is brash and overconfident, despite clearly having no shortage of empathy. Whereas Columbo was often star-struck, Morgan is impossible to impress and treats everyone the same.

Magic powers: Morgan sees everything, notices everything, and has a photographic memory as well as the kind of wide-ranging general knowledge which would put the average quizzer to shame. Here’s another contrast with Columbo. Peter Falk’s character was fascinated by new technology and always found something new to learn. Morgan Gillory already knows arcane details about which way churches face or the life cycles of exotic animals just by watching cable TV or listening to podcasts.

Episode structure: As with Ludwig, we tend to get an incomplete version of the murder which keeps us guessing as to who really did what to whom.

Supporting characters: Like Elsbeth, this is as much about the slowly deepening relationships and bond of trust between Morgan and her co-workers, and Morgan learning the rules of cop-land. She’s partnered with Daniel Sunjata as Detective Karadec, who manages not to turn his part into too broad a piece of comic relief, and it’s always nice to see Judy Reyes from Scrubs now as the head of the LAPD Major Crimes Division. A couple of other less charismatic cops are also hanging around (same team every time), plus Morgan has kids and an ex-husband played by Taran Killam from SNL (and Scrubs).

Star killers: The Amazing Spider Man’s Marc Webb directed an episode – does that count?

Ongoing narrative: Morgan’s deal for working with the police includes resources to investigate the disappearance of her first husband, but this comes up far less often than you’d think.

All of which brings us to Kathy Bates as Matlock, who once again is an unassuming quirky character who has talked her way into joining a team in order to investigate wrong-doings, but who is also pursuing her own agenda. And yet, for all its superficial similarities, this is a very different show – and I think a worse one. All of the foregoing are well-made, highly entertaining procedurals of the kind we weren’t getting any more. Maybe we’ll talk about Matlock in a few days…