Columbo in the 90s

Stevens was extremely good-looking back in the day but he would be better suited for an episode of Love Boat...

Brenda Vaccarro is also in the show ("I love tampons!")

the victim was shot twice; I still can't tell whether Andy or Brenda played the killer and I've watched it twice.

I guess andrew did it; he was the one they carted off. Brenda got to go home.

so dumb.

They chop them up so much that they make no sense. They used to run in a 90-minute slot on NBC. MeTV, which has a lot more commercials, tries to shoe-horn them into 90 minutes as well. They should give them a two-hour slot so we can see the whole thing.

OP I think it was the casting; the actors they used in the 90s shows just weren't very good compared to the stars they had in the 1970s. I love the 70s movies but just like the 90s movies.

good point OP; but I did see Faye Dunaway on one of the 90s movies; I imagine the budgets in the 70s were bigger and they took more time.

I have the entire Columbo disc set. I'm going to sell them on ebay. here's a spoiler-his FIRST name is Frank

R4 here -- I was mistaken -- I was watching them on COZI, not MeTV.

Faye won an Emmy for her episode, I think it's the only one Peter Falk wrote.

R9, you may also like this thread.

The Patrick McGoohan one in the '90s - I think it was called Agenda for Murder - is excellent. Otherwise, I agree with you that the '90s ones simply aren't as good.

I think Patrick was in 1997's episode "Ashes to Ashes" where he plays a thieving undertaker who bludgeons and cremates our beloved Rue McClanaghan!

I just don't get why so many people love that show. It seems to me that it's basically an hour of him hanging out in another shag-carpeted penthouse living room with the obvious killer-- who inevitably becomes so annoyed with Columbo's relemtless irritating questions that he ends up confessing just to make him shut TF up. Every single episode.

Have you ever actually seen the show, R13? The killer isn't "obvious"; the killer is revealed at the beginning of every episode. It's not a whodunnit. And the killers rarely confess.

The 90s episodes were generally shitty in comparison the the 70s, with several exceptions. They run them all day each Sunday here in the UK

I like the one with gay actor Ian Buchanan as a straight pussyhound!

R16 he was in the episode where he murdered daytime legend Deidre Hall!

Bump for Columbo and Dog

Thirty years as a Lieutenant. By the late 90s and still no captains bars he was just collecting his paycheck

Yeah one would have thought he would ve promoted many times but that would have interfered with the formula.

What's weirder is that he was working into his 70s. Don't the police have strict retirement ages?

Colombo was fabulous in the 90s

Mostly in the later episodes the much younger Mrs Falk acted in half a dozen episodes as various characters.

R22 And then she estranged Falk from his kids as he slid into dementia. Wouldn't let them near him. Really sad

R16 and R17, if that isn't the definition of gayface then I don't know what is.

I like the 90s Columbo shows, the actors all seem to enjoy themselves hamming it up, and the weird-ass plots are fun to watch unfold.