The Columbo episode, which they probably didn’t know, was staged by Steven Spielberg

The basic idea of ”Columbo” is deceptively simple: there was a murder, and the persistent and friendly Lt. Columbo of the Los Angeles police department is in this case and always solves the case at the end of the episode. The turn is how almost every episode unfolds because the audience finds out who the killer is before Columbo even appeared. Most episodes of “Columbo” are about 75 minutes long, and the first 15 of these minutes are devoted to us to learn the situation and understand why someone would commit murder before doing the dirty act. Essentially, the tension of each episode is to ask himself how Columbo capture his quarry, which is why the show does not belong to the “whodunit” subgenre of secrets, but to howcatchem “.

Another peculiarity of the history of “Columbo” is that the first two episodes are seen as separate one-time TV films, basically two separate pilot pisodes, one of which was broadcast in 1968, and the other was broadcast in spring 1971. However, when Steven Spielberg with the first regular episode of “Columboe” camera “Columbo -Murder” camera “Columbo -Murder” Regitated “Columbo -Murder”, “Columbo,” Columbo, “Murder,” Murder “, became” Murder “. Although the show was created by Richard Levinson and William Link, “Murder by the Book” by Steven Bochco was written. If this name rings a bell, it should; Bochco wrote or created shows such as “La Law”, “Nypd Blue” and “Hill Street Blues”. Essentially “Murder by the Book” caught a flash in a bottle without realizing it. While nobody would say (without being a lot of contrarians) that “murder through the book” is the best that one of these stevens made, it is very easy to see the episode and see the seeds of size, especially in Spielberg’s direction.

The plot of “Murder by the Book” revolves around two authors, Ken Franklin and Jim Ferris (represented by Jack Cassidy or Martin Milner). You have successfully written a number of Miss Marple-like detective novels for years, but Jim is ready to work on his own projects without Ken. Ken is primarily dismayed because he enjoyed a certain type of lifestyle that is granted by the success of the books, of which he really didn’t write much for a long time. In order to go away with a pretty insurance policy, he lures Jim into a quiet cabin from him, where he kills his partner and tries to frame it on some invisible gangsters, which means that Jim researches the criminals unpublished for a book. Of course, such things are not easy. Ken will soon have to kill a local shop owner who a) has a) crush and b) realizes that Ken killed his co-author and wants to blackmail him for privilege.

The basic elements of almost every episode of “Columbo” are available in “Murder by the Book”, and what it feels like visually both Spielbergian and an effective template for the appearance of the show in future episodes and seasons. One of the critical, but often uncontrolled aspects of “Columbo” is that almost every episode serves as a comment on lessons in the 1970s. Columbo himself, which Peter Falk played so masterfully, is the living embodiment of the word “rumpled”, with a raincoat that looks like it had been killed a few times, a ruffled haircut and an apparent inability to remember what he put in what he put in his pocket. (Falk’s amazing performance is all the more remarkable when you recognize He wasn’t even the first choice To play the character.) Conversely, his suspects are among the toniest members of the Los Angeles Society. Here it is an upscale author, but future episodes would be Columbo against a general manager in NFL style, a world-famous orchestra conductor (played by Falk’s long-time friend John Cassavetes) and the deputy chief of police against Falk. Together with this appearance of the episodes, the building voltage between suspicious and kidnapped and the epic large scale of the presentation of Columbo Against the background of Los Angeles, all of them are created in this first episode in this first episode.