Reviewed by Guy Clapperton
Stars Peter Falk, Rip Torn, Patrick McGoohan | UK cert 12 | UK RRP £29.99 | Runtime 179 minutes
By this time you're sadly wondering whether a dead horse has been flogged too much already. OK, that might be unfair. The episodes of Columbo presented here are not really TV episodes at all but specials. Nobody pretended they were supposed to be viewed back to back or even in rapid succession; it was a TV show that knew it could overplay its hand and was spreading itself thinly as a result.
That's not what happens with a DVD box set. You watch the things all bunched up and not even a performance of genuine charm like that of Peter Falk can persuade you that you're watching more than a lot of retreads, with some welcome guest appearances (is that really Patrick McGoohan acting and even directing? Er ... yes) but the formula as before nonetheless.
This isn't a second part of season 10, it's a set of some TV specials with no extras on the release and it suffers as a result. The plots are almost indistinguishable – if I tell you that in what was to prove the last ever TV Columbo, "Columbo Likes the Night Life", the story is about a tabloid reporter involved in a blackmail who appears to have committed suicide but actually hasn't – well, you get the idea. It could just as easily have been episode 1, season 1.
It's a shame. It's an even greater shame it peters out like this; Columbo at its best was atmospheric and endearing. Falk's Alzheimer's means there won't be any more, but if you want to buy a box set to remember him at his best don't make it this one. It's too tired and the character looks out of place. That's it - they've probably issued all they're going to.
Maybe they'll release the pre-Falk Columbo, which still exists in the archive. Now, that I'd like to see as a curio ...
EXTRAS None