![]() ![]() Other than Wendt starring in "Cheers" and Rhys showing some acting chops, the guest stars pale in acting comparison with their series predecessors. George Wendt is pathetic and Billy Connolly was hardly stellar. Of the three, I find only Matthew Rhys' performance worthy or stylistic. For comparison sake, let's look at three of the last episodes of the latter Columbo: "Strange Bedfellows", "Murder With too Many Notes" and "Columbo Likes the Nightlife". These are three extremely talented artists, who each give a memorable performance to their respective episodes. ![]() Going back to three episodes I mentioned earlier: "Try and Catch Me", "How to Dial a Murder" and "The Conspirators" look at the guests: Ruth Gordon, Nicol Williamson and Clive Revill. Although, I like each of these episodes, the music lacks originality.) Rather than use original scores, the producers resort to pre-recorded songs by artists ("Columbo Goes to College", "Columbo Cries Wolf" and "Columbo Likes the Nightlife" are three examples I can come up with off the top of my head. The later episodes lack that musical spark and inspiration. Each note adds suspense and mood to their respective episodes. "Try and Catch Me", "How to Dial a Murder" and "The Conspirators" are wonderfully accented by the score. ![]() In early Columbo episodes, Patrick Williams came up with some quite inventive scores. It feels like they took the cheapest way out in order to get them made, while in the original episodes, they spared no expense to get the right touch or "feel" for an episode. ![]() They're dull because of where they were filmed. There's no real "authentic" atmosphere in many of the latter episodes due to this. Filming at a real house or beach gives the episode a realistic movie feel and not some cheap made-for-TV straight to DVD piece of garbage. You can almost here the director yelling "Cut" half a dozen times while they try to get it right. The later Columbos, while including some on-site filming locations (Pepperdine University for a lot of "Columbo Goes to College", for example) seemed to be filmed quite a bit on sets and stages. Some of the scenes were obviously filmed on a Hollywood stage, but the majority were on location. (The Hollywood Bowl scenes in "Etude in Black" are another great example). Ken's lake cabin in "Murder By the Book", Vivica Fox's farm in "Lovely But Lethal", the house and beach scene with Robert Conrad in "Exercise in Fatality" and on and on. (1) Filming Locations: the early Columbos were predominantly filmed on locations, really cool locations. Not that all episodes are bad, but this collectively sums up why the overall tone and execution of the 90s Columbos just don't measure up to the originals for me. In the 90s, it's a jarring clash of styles that doesn't work IMO. Columbo stories filmed in the bright sunshine of 70s LA without any traces of "grittiness" allowed Columbo to take his place in the Christie-Holmes-Chesterton view of great detectives. The "film noir" style makes you think some weary, no-BS cop is going to show up. Also, there is an overuse on more than one occasion of "Columbo sees something on a security tape" as a key clue that gets very tiresome after a bit.ģ-A lot of these ABC 90s shows seem photographed and staged in a style more reminiscent of film noir than drawing room mystery. But one thing I've noticed is that in the 90s, the murder often will take place as much as a half hour into the episode and what this means is we get a lot of backstory build-up and a lot less "investigating" afterwards showing the slow step of mini-clues that point Columbo to the killer followed by a satisfying pay-off clue that clinches things. The strength of the scripts in the 70s is that they were carefully nuanced in terms of developing clues that made Columbo's slow unraveling compelling and above all "playing fair" with the viewer. There is almost no difference between how Falk is playing the character in these episodes with how he'd be playing it in a variety show sketch.Ģ-The episodes are simply not well-plotted. To me, the flaws of the 90s Columbos come down to three specific flaws.ġ-Falk is by this point playing Columbo too much like a caricature with none of the nuance and shading that made the earlier years of his performance so compelling. ![]()
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