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Comment by bgroat | Hacker News Reader

I watched Columbo for the first time in the past year and I *don't* think the format is well known (I was born in the 90s, so it may be a generational thing).

I want to expand on it because it's really unique and amazing.

For those who don't know, each episode opens with us seeing the crime being committed and covered up. We always know who it is, immediately.

Then in the 2nd act we're introduced to Columbo, and we observe him trying to figure out what we already know.

For all of the reasons stated in the parent article, Columbo is one of the most perfect representations of a "real smart person" in media. Another favourite of mine is Jonathan Creek

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Columbo is often described as a "how catchem" instead of a "who dunnit".

Just started rewatching the JC catalog last week. The tech seems a bit dated (big cellphones, cars, etc) but the stories generally hold up well (so far, and FWIR). I do wish there was some effort to remaster/restore/polish up the video. What we have (and what I've seen rebroadcast) just looks a bit... washed out.

Also, I watch with headphones on, and it's amazing to me how much food people eat, and how loud they are, in many TV shows. Just went through Blue Murder (also with Caroline Quentin in it) and every episode there's one or two roundtable shots of the group eating... loudly.

But yeah, JC is good, and I'll be watching another one tonight :)

Early Jonathan Creek is a masterpiece. In particular, the "Black Canary" special is possibly the finest two hours of television ever constructed. I often think if they had released it as a movie it would have been a hit.

I agree with you about the picture quality. Black Canary from the DVD is really very noisy and grainy - to the point where I actually made my own "remastered" version by doing some basic color correction and digital noise reduction. It looks a lot better.

Some modern televisions have pretty good built-in modes for doing noise reduction and improving the color, try experimenting with those. (Just don't leave it on all the time.)

I watched the DVD set on my CRT television, it looked absolutely fine to me. One advantage of being a "late adopter".

The overly loud eating you hear might have been overdubbed in post-production by foley artists (sound effects technicians).

Read the closing credits at the end of each show and you may find a foley artist was part of the production (and therefore the likely person who created recordings of simulated eating sound effects, to sync with the filmed visuals of the actors eating)

JC did something really cool in doing specials years after the original broadcasts that kind of jump back in with Jonathan and where he is in his life now.

The tech in those is a bit more modern (I think the most recent is in something like 2015)

Based on this thread I'm watching Columbo now. Law and Order Criminal Intent is directly derivative of this. I see a lot of Vincent D'Onofrio's character in Columbo, especially how he gets into the houses and offices and messes with their personal effects to disarm and disrupt them.

It's a generational thing yeah. Even in Holland Columbo was always on rerun. Everyone born in the 70s would know the format because it takes only one episode to know it :)

Good show though!

> we observe him trying to figure out what we already know

Except that that's not really what happens. Somehow, Columbo seems to know immediately who the perpetrator is, and spends the rest of the episode just trying to figure out how to prove it.

I haven't watched my old DVDs in a while, but my recollection is that (in most episodes, at least) Columbo would explain what detail from early in the investigation made him suspicious of the perpetrator and what evidence and/or reasoning he used to rule out the other suspects along the way.

Yes, that's true. But I always found it a little annoying that based on some pretty scant initial evidence he focused on a single suspect to the exclusion of all other possibilities. In the real world that would be considered pretty bad police work, notwithstanding that it turned out that his initial hunch was always right. That starts to push up pretty hard against my willing suspension of disbelief after a few dozen episodes.

Sherlock Holmes has many flaws, but one thing it does get right is that the titular character repeatedly emphasizes how much of our worldview is defined by assumption, the danger of favoring a preferred hypothesis too early in the investigation, and the importance of systematically eliminating all possibilities until one remains.

We only ever see him question a single suspect, but he's constantly alluding to things he's done offscreen

A little nit pick from my side: there was a few episodes where this format was changed a bit in various ways.

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