Columbo: Mystery Movie Collection 1989

The Bravo network ranked Peter Falk's Columbo among TV's top 10 greatest characters. The best laid plans of the most conniving and arrogant of killers were routinely undone by this rumpled LAPD homicide detective who always wanted to know “just one more thing” when interviewing a prime suspect. Columbo made his screen debut in a 1968 made-for-TV movie, after which the eponymous Emmy-winning series ran from 1971-78. Ten years later, Falk once again donned his iconic trench coat for a new series of TV movies, and as these five Columbo procedurals ably demonstrate, it was still a perfect fit. As always, viewers already know whodunit: the fun lies in watching Columbo deliberately, ploddingly, strip away the killer's alibis. One drawback of these films is the considerably diminished star power next to Falk. Columbo matches wits with killers portrayed by Fisher Stevens (as a Spielbergian wunderkind director in Murder, Smoke and Shadows), Lindsay Crouse (as a sex therapist in Sex and the Married Detective), Anthony Andrews (as a bogus psychic in Columbo Goes to the Guillotine), Robert Foxworth (as an embezzling colonel at a military academy in Grand Deceptions), and Patrick Bauchau (as an artist who kills his ex-wife in Murder, A Self Portrait). But all acquit themselves well here, as does Falk, who continues to find new wrinkles in his signature character—as classic as Columbo's battered 1959 Peugeot. Just one more thing: this set contains a suspicious featurette entitled “America's Top Sleuths,” which is actually more of a plug for Universal TV series such as Magnum P.I. and Kojak. Recommended. (D. Liebenson)