It is very sad news about Peter Falk, who is suffering from dementia. He is such a lovely man, but with his illness it means he no longer remembers his famous character Columbo.
Columbo is an American crime fiction TV series starring Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. The show popularized the inverted detective story format; almost every episode began by showing the commission of the crime and the perpetrator. The character first appeared in an 1960 episode of the anthology series The Chevy Mystery Show (later to be adapted into a stage play). A pilot movie was broadcast in 1968; the series aired regularly from 1971 to 1978, and later, sporadically from 1989 to 2003.
The character of Lt. Columbo is a shabby, apparently slow-witted police detective whose fumbling, overly polite manner makes him an unlikely choice to solve any crime, let alone a complex murder. However, as criminals eventually learn, appearances can be deceptive, Columbo actually only uses his deferential and absent-minded persona to lull criminal suspects into a false sense of security. Meanwhile, he solves his cases by paying close attention to tiny inconsistencies in a suspect's story, and by relentlessly hounding the suspect (with increasing forcefulness as time goes on) until he or she winds up confessing to the crime or otherwise clearly establishing their guilt.
Columbo's signature interrogation technique is to politely conclude an interview with a suspect and exit the scene, but to then stop in the doorway (or even return a moment later from outside) and ask the suspect just one more thing. The "one more thing" always brings to light the key inconsistency in the suspect's alibi.
Just One More Thing: Columbo TV Store - Lieutenant Columbo DVD & Memorabilia
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