NBC to ABC to DVD

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m a huge fan of older TV detective series. And, much to my wife’s consternation, I have been buying up DVD versions of those productions as they can be found. But I thought I already had all the episodes of Columbo (seasons one through seven) that were likely to be released. Not so, it seems. TV Squad reports today that the Columbo movies Peter Falk made for ABC-TV (after the cancellation of the series’ original home, the NBC Mystery Movie) are starting to be released, as well. The first set, from 1989, is due in stores on April 24.

According to TV Squad, the movies in that set will be “Columbo Goes to the Guillotine (with Anthony Andrews), Murder, Smoke, and Mirrors (Fisher Stevens), Grand Deceptions (Robert Foxworth), Sex and the Married Detective (Lindsay Crouse), and Murder: A Self Portrait (Patrick Bauchau). The set will be three discs and probably won’t have many (if any) extras on them.”

I remember a couple of these, though they weren’t as worth remembering as the original series. As Falk aged within his rumpled raincoat, he started to play his L.A. police lieutenant character more for laughs, and that detracted from the story intrigue. Nonetheless, ABC continued to turn out Columbo features, first as part of its ABC Mystery Movie rotation and later as teleflick specials. The last Columbo made, from what I can tell, was Columbo Likes the Nightlife, which came out in 2003 and guest-starred Matthew Rhys and Jennifer Sky. Whether Universal Classic Television will release all 24 of the Columbos made after the NBC Mystery Movie went off the air is as much a question as whether I really need to own them all.

READ MORE: “‘Enough Rope’--The Very First ‘Columbo’” (The Ultimate Columbo Site).