Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3094 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-06-15
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 716 minutes

Synopsis
One of the most famous detectives to ever hit the television screen, COLUMBO (Peter Falk) has become an iconic character in popular culture. Forever clad in a raincoat and chomping a cigar, the dishevelled Columbo seems as scatterbrained as his appearance would suggest. However, even when it appears that his investigation is going nowhere, Columbo's keen mind is absorbing details and clues, until finally he reveals that he knows everything that's happened. Each episode opens with a murder, followed by Columbo's investigation, and finally his revelation of how he put the events together. COLUMBO became popular and famous for its clever dramatic structure and Peter Falk's winning portrayal of the detective. This release includes a selection of episodes from the tenth series of the show.

Customer Reviews

An excellent collection of Columbo
The 80's/90's revival of Columbo got off to a shakey start with dull stories and pointles padding eg Columbo playing the tuba in Sex And The Married Detective. Thankfully things did improve and this collection (season 10 part 1) contains some excellent episodes which are more like the original 70's series.

The episodes in this 4 disk set are :-
Columbo Goes To College
Caution : Murder Can Be Hazadous To Your Health
Columbo And The Murder Of A Rock Star
Death Hits The Jackpot
No Time To Die
A Bird In The Hand
It's All In The Game
Butterfly In Shades Of Grey

Nearly all of the episodes are enjoyable. The only one I wasnt so keen on was No Time To Die which was more like a bad cop show than an episode of Columbo. You will see what I mean when you watch it. I really enjoyed Butterfly In Shades Of Grey, Caution: Murder Can Be Hazadous To Your Health and Death Hits The Jackpot.

The new Columbo's have been critersized for having weaker murderers but this set has some excellent killer including Rip Thorn, Faye Dunnerway and even has some actors who appeared in the original 70's series including William Shatner and Robert Culp. So if you miss the old style Columbo then why not give this dvd set a go.

Interesting In Places, If Also A Little Stale In Places, Too
I don't actually believe Columbo was being filmed as a series by this point in time, more as an odd tv special from time to time, and this DVD covers the three year period 1990-93. However, unfortunately generally the results are rather mixed much of the time.

Maybe the format by this period was beginning to feel really tired, i'm not sure, because a number of these stories, despite being mildly entertaining, are simply not very inspiring, even despite there being on occasions a departure from the familiar Columbo formula. Possibly the best of the batch is 'Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous To Your Health' starring George Hamilton, which does carry many of the familiar plot devices most effectively, and where the sparring between the murderer and Columbo does display a degree of flair and intensity - Falk and Hamilton do manage to engage the audience fairly well. 'Butterfly In Shades Of Grey' is also an entertaining episode, even if the motive for the murder doesn't seem especially substantial. William Shatner isn't amongst the finest actors when it comes to portraying subtelty, but he does manage to be entertaining and fun in his role as a murderer.
However, there is one episode that really doesn't work well at all, and coincidentally it's the story that possesses the biggest plot departures. 'No Time To Die', predominantly a story about a kidnapping, pretty much falls flat on its face. 'It's All In The Game' seems rather quirky, especially in the way that Columbo is portrayed romancing his suspect (Faye Dunaway) - but ultimately this story is extremely hard to swallow, especially bearing in mind Falk's previous portrayal of Columbo - the notion of romancing your main suspect seems pretty far fetched, even if the purpose ultimately is to entrap them. However, this story proved popular enough to win an emmy, and there is an undoubted chemistry between Peter Falk and Faye Dunaway. Peter Falk also wrote this story and it does contain a certain ingenuity, but it also suffers from appearing rather self indulgent.

This volume of Columbo is undoubtedly fairly entertaining especially on a first viewing, but ultimately many of these shows aren't of the calibre of the show in its prime during the seventies - they ultimately lack the sharpness of the old series, in addition to a meticulous attention to detail - my rating therefore reflects this.

Columbo Series 10, Volume 1
Although I am a great fan of Columbo, I have always thought the episodes produced in the 70s far superior to those produced in the 1990s and 2000s. There are a couple of excellent episodes in this latest collection, however, namely 'Columbo and the Murder of a Rockstar',starring Dabney Coleman and 'Death Hits the Jackpot'where Rip Torn gives a fantastic performace as Leon Lemarr.