The Shabby Detective: Yet Another Columbo Podcast

Weirding Way Media
Weirding Way Media
  • 4.1 (38)
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Podcasters Chris Stachiw (The Kulturecast) and Mike White (The Projection Booth) look at the enduring character of Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) and his creators. The Shabby Detective is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at weirdingwaymedia.com. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

  1. Sep 14 ·  Bonus

    Murder by Natural Causes (1979)

    How many push-ups can you do?  Between Columbo seasons, Mike and Chris dig into another Richard Levinson and William Link production: Murder by Natural Causes (1979), directed by Robert Day for CBS. Hal Holbrook stars as Arthur Sinclair, a stage mentalist whose heart condition makes him an inviting target: his younger wife Allison (Katharine Ross) and her lover, struggling actor Gil Weston (Barry Bostwick), cook up a plan to literally frighten him to death with a staged home invasion. Naturally, nothing goes as planned. Arthur's lawyer George (Richard Anderson) has his own designs on Allison, and the film piles on twist after twist — the kind of nested double-crosses Levinson and Link built entire careers on. Holbrook and Ross had already played off each other in They Only Kill Their Masters, and Bostwick brings a slippery, vain energy to Gil that makes his scheming both funny and pathetic. Mike and Chris talk through how the film's chamber-piece structure (four characters, one house, one long night) squeezes maximum tension from minimal sets, how it fits the "TV movie as filmed stage play" tradition Levinson and Link mastered, and why the finale's final line lands as one of the great mean little punchlines in their catalog. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

    Murder by Natural Causes (1979)

  2. Aug 10 ·  Bonus

    Uncle Marin, The Billionaire (1979)

    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. Director Sergiu Nicolaescu's mistaken-identity farce casts Amza Pellea in a double role as a bumpkin uncle and the American billionaire he's confused with, with Puiu Călinescu doing his best Peter Falk impression as the country's most inexplicable cameo cop. Two sets of gangsters, a kidnapped heiress, a doubled briefcase, and a laundry chute all get involved. Mike and Chris trace the Columbo Connected Universe to Ceaușescu's Romania, debate whether Falk owns the character even secondhand, and confirm that Columbo was universal. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

    Uncle Marin, The Billionaire (1979)

  3. Jun 26 ·  Bonus

    Mrs. Columbo

    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. When her friend Zev Arno collapses and promptly disappears, Kate finds herself chasing a tangle of affairs, frame-ups, and frozen corpses while no one, least of all Det. Sgt. Mike Varrick, believes a word she says. Directed by Philip Leacock and written by E. Arthur Kean, the episode features a gloriously charismatic Armand Assante doing his best with very little. It's 45 minutes that feels like three times that — a cash-in spinoff that couldn't even commit to its own premise long enough to keep the title. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

    Mrs. Columbo

  4. May 15

    The Conspirators

    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.  Devlin doesn't irritate Columbo the way most killers do — he disarms him. They exchange verse, play darts, share whiskey, and trade jokes about their respective cultures, two sides of the same immigrant coin. We weigh whether all that conviviality comes at the cost of tension. An episode this pleasant can sometimes forget to be dangerous. Directed by Leo Penn and written by Howard Berk, "The Conspirators" is not Season Seven's sharpest hour.  As the last Columbo of the 1970s, the last on NBC, and the last new case the Lieutenant would face for nearly eleven years, it leaves a lot to be desired.  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

    The Conspirators

  5. Apr 20

    How to Dial a Murder

    What's the perfect alibi? Being at the doctor's office while your dogs do the dirty work. Mike White and Chris Stachiw sink their teeth into Season Seven's "How to Dial a Murder," a 1978 episode that features one of the most ingeniously gruesome murder methods in the entire Columbo canon.   Nicol Williamson commands the screen as Dr. Eric Mason, a behavioral psychologist with iron self-control, a house full of movie memorabilia, and two very well-trained Dobermans named Laurel and Hardy. When he discovers that his late wife had been having an affair with his best friend Dr. Charles Hunter (Joel Fabiani), Mason devises a kill that's equal parts Pavlov and Orson Welles: dial home, ask a question about Citizen Kane, and let the dogs handle the rest.   There's also the small matter of Columbo's complicated feelings about the dogs — and whether they deserve what the legal system has in store for them. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

    How to Dial a Murder

  6. Mar 23

    Make Me a Perfect Murder

    Hell hath no fury like a TV executive scorned. Mike and Chris train their cameras on Season Seven's "Make Me a Perfect Murder," a 1978 entry that puts Trish Van Devere center stage as Kay Freestone — a network programmer who, after being passed over for the big promotion by her boss and lover Mark McAndrews (Laurence Luckinbill), decides that a well-timed gunshot during a screening room preview is a more satisfying career move than updating her résumé. Our hosts wrestle with the episode's real weaknesses: a runtime that overstays its welcome by a good twenty minutes, bogged down by a meandering subplot involving Lainie Kazan's has-been singer and one too many scenes of Columbo fiddling with TV equipment. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

    Make Me a Perfect Murder

  7. Feb 16

    Murder Under Glass

    As Mike and Chris continue to traipse through the controversial official final season of Columbo with the Shabby Detective returning to the kitchen to face off against Louis Jourdan as a snotty TV chef and food critic who uses blowfish poison to take out a victim of blackmail who was going to go public. Is the all-star cast and steady directing from Jonathan Demme enough to save the episode? Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

    Murder Under Glass

  8. Jan 16

    Try and Catch Me

    Mike White and Chris Stachiw kick off season seven of Columbo with a close look at “Try and Catch Me,” where literary titan Abigail Mitchell (Ruth Gordon) believes she’s engineered the perfect murder—cool, elegant, and legally, uh, airtight—only to underestimate a rumpled detective who thrives on patience and psychological pressure. The conversation delves into Columbo's new show-runner, giving the Lieutenant's catchphrases to others, and how a skilled mystery writer can bungle a crime so badly. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

    Try and Catch Me
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4.1
out of 5
38 Ratings

About

Podcasters Chris Stachiw (The Kulturecast) and Mike White (The Projection Booth) look at the enduring character of Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) and his creators. The Shabby Detective is part of the Weirding Way Media podcast network. Explore more of our shows at weirdingwaymedia.com. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-shabby-detective-yet-another-columbo-podcast--5084441/support.

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