Show Notes
The sixth season of Columbo kicks off with “Fade in to Murder,” and we’re right there with it. Yes, we had to scrap our planned chat on Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (Mike just couldn’t stomach it), but that means we get to dive straight into William Shatner swaggering his way through one of the great villain roles of the NBC years. Chris can’t help but heap praise on Shatner’s performance as ego-fueled actor Ward Fowler, while Mike wrestles with the episode’s meta conceit, its TV-within-TV layers, and Peter Falk’s always-dependable rumpled brilliance.
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More from The Shabby Detective: Yet Another Columbo Podcast
Peter Falk strolls through gunfire like it’s light rain while Alan Arkin screams for both of them, and there isn’t a trace of Columbo in sight. The In-Laws (1979), directed by Arthur Hiller and written by Andrew Bergman, lands on The Shabby Detective during the long haul between Columbo Season 7 and Season 8. Mike and Chris sort out whether this mark-and-stooge romp earns its reputation. They weigh Falk playing against type, a first hour that stalls before the madcap begins, Richard Libertini’s black-velvet art gallery, screenwriter Walon Green’s tales of William Friedkin wrangling Falk on The Brink’s Job (1978), the troubled Big Trouble (1986) reunion, and the The In-Laws (2003) remake with Albert Brooks and Michael Douglas. Serpentine!
Mike spends the cold open dodging one simple question: why, exactly, are he and Chris watching a 1979 Romanian comedy called Nea Mărin miliardar? He won't say. The answer arrives thirty minutes and seventeen seconds in, when a stranger billed as Detective Columbo shuffles into frame and asks for one more thing.
Peter Falk said no. Richard Levinson and William Link said no. Fred Silverman did it anyway. Mike and Chris take a detour into the Columbo universe's most dubious corner: Mrs. Columbo, Season 2, Episode 5, "A Chilling Surprise" (aired November 22, 1979). Kate Callahan — no longer even Mrs. Columbo in any meaningful sense — investigates a body that won't stay put in a restaurant freezer.
Mike and Chris close the book on Season Seven with "The Conspirators," a 1978 episode that takes Columbo somewhere the series rarely ventured: the murky, morally weighted world of real geopolitical conflict. Clive Revill — Tony-nominated stage actor, Matilda's trainer in the boxing kangaroo film of the same name, and the original voice of Emperor Palpatine in The Empire Strikes Back — plays Joe Devlin, an Irish poet and public charmer who moonlights as a gun-runner for the IRA.