Season 1 of Columbo would include these episodes, assuming that the two pilot movies would be included (as they should. The guest killer is listed at right)
#1-"Prescription Murder" (Gene Barry) (1968 pilot) #2-"Ransom For A Dead Man" (Lee Grant) (1971 pilot) #3-"Murder By The Book" (Jack Cassidy) (Steven Spielberg director) #4-"Death Lends A Hand" (Robert Culp) #5-"Dead Weight" (Eddie Albert) #6-"Suitable For Framing" (Ross Martin) #7-"Lady In Waiting" (Susan Clark) #8-"Short Fuse" (Roddy McDowall) #9-"Blueprint For Murder" (Patrick O'Neal)(Peter Falk director)
Don't know if any extra features are planned, but a commentary by Falk and surviving creator William Link would be great for "Prescription Murder" and while it's wishful thinking that Spielberg would do a commentary for "Murder By The Book" (the first Columbo that was part of the NBC Mystery Movie), since Stephen Bochco wrote the episode maybe he could participate. Also, if the full "NBC Mystery Movie" opening with the Henry Mancini theme can't be included on every episode, at least include it as a supplement.
In the meantime, it's glad to know that at long last the moratorium on Universal's greatest detective show is going to be over by year's end!
No Need for Spoilers at all, Columbo Always showed you the killer the fun was in Watching Columbo figure out how he did it and have him fess up. If universal does no price these Obscenely , like in Battlestar Galactica's Case, I'm there.
McGoohan doesn't show up until Season 4 ("By Dawn's Early Light", his Emmy winning role as the military school commandant) and Season 5 ("Identity Crisis", where he plays a familiar role of secret agent). He also directed the Season 5 finale "Last Salute To The Commodore."
Exactly! I never watched these growing up (I guess my parents weren't big fans), but I try to catch it whenever I can on Bravo at 1:00 in the afternoon (if I'm sick or working from home). It's great watching Columbo hoodwink all the killers into thinking he's a bumbling idiot and then unravel their scheming and planning. Peter Falk is just fantastic in this role. Did you ever get to meet Columbo's wife?
Excellent! I'm less concerned about price than packaging, given their recent releases such as Abbott & Costello. It deserves better than to have an entire season crammed onto one dvd.
Very good point, the Abbott & Costello packages are by far one of the best value buys on DVD I have ever encountered and the picture looks much clearer on those sets than the more expensive Marx Brother set.
But I think the Columbo DVDs are going to need to be on more DVD than less to make sure the transfers are good...
Correction. A show that took the name "Mrs. Columbo" appeared in a cheap attempt to exploit the Columbo formula without Falk, and then in a bad piece of miscasting they put Kate Mulgrew in the lead part who was far too young to be credible. When viewers reacted negatively they retooled the series and made the Mulgrew character a divorced woman (which offended Columbo fans even more) but it failed again.
"Mrs. Columbo" is for "Columbo" fans what "Galactica: 1980" is for "Battlestar Galatica" fans. Something we like to say never happened.
The seven "Mystery Movie" Columbos of the first season are all 90 minute shows, but the two pilot movies are two hour shows. Ideally, I think they should appear this way.
Disc 1 "Prescription For Murder" "Ransom For A Dead Man"
Disc 2 "Murder By The Book" "Death Lends A Hand"
Disc 3 "Dead Weight" "Suitable For Framing" "Lady In Waiting"
Disc 4 "Short Fuse" "Blueprint For Murder"
Unless some would think these should be two discs double-sided.
Something even Kate Mulgrew fans would like to think never happened, I'd wager. I know I was a fan of hers from her Ryan's Hope days, and I couldn't stomach Mrs. Columbo.
I would definitely buy this set, too. And I agree, the original Mystery Movie theme would be a lovely extra. Columbo and the other units in the Mystery Movie rotation really kind of redefined television back in the day. And one of the coolest things is that Columbo himself never seems dated or anachronistic.
Another unusual anthology show I'd love to see make DVD would be the Name of the Game. That series had a standard cast, but the stars of the episodes rotated (Gene Barry, Robert Stack, Tony Franciosa) and each of their episodes had a very different flavor. Heck, even a DVD release of the episode LA 2017 would be great.
There is a GREAT book out there called "The Columbo File", but I'm not sure if it's still in print. It lists every episode, the plot, background info, etc. in an easy-to-read and entertaining format. It has a great section of the structure of the show and the difficulty they had getting Universal and NBC to buy into it. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
The book (actual title is "The Columbo Phile") alas has been out of print for years and is very hard to locate. Copies on e-bay actually go for as high as $200.
I actually lost my 15 year old copy on an airline flight last month, and had to get a new copy the hard (but cheaper) way by borrowing a library copy and scanning the entire contents to my computer.
It is a magnificent book with all kinds of inside detail on the production and each episode is given a fair amount of attention (unlike the scattershot approach of something similar like "Twilight Zone Companion").
The author, Mark Dawidziak, has been trying to get the book reissued, but no publisher is willing to at this point.