Day 208

Aka Sunday 27th August 2017

Today I felt kinda restless and lazy, so as it was a Sunday I thought I’d re-watch an episode or two of Columbo. One of my main memories of being young is when the BBC would show an episode of Columbo on Sunday afternoons, at that time of day just before you had to start thinking about the school or work week starting the next day and whether I’d done my homework, ironed my uniform, etc., so I could get lost in the episode and not worry about anything. When the episode was finished, that would be the start of the end of the weekend and time for getting ready for the next working week.

Aside from the feelings of nostalgia I like Columbo because the bad guy is always caught, normally because they over-thought their plan and/or under estimated Columbo and that Columbo won through sheer reasoning. Violence never played any role in catching the bad guy, there were no car chases or shoot outs with Columbo/the cops, Columbo simply set out his case and there was nothing the bad guy could do.

It’s also fun to see who pops up either directing or acting in the episodes, because there is a bevy of famous names starting out or appearing in the episodes (and playing against type, e.g. Dick Van Dyke playing a murder), such as Steven Spielberg, Jonathan Demme (who directed The Silence of the Lambs), Lee Grant, Patrick McGoohan, Johnny Cash, Ruth Gordon, Janet Leigh Donald Pleasence, Kim Cattrall, Robert Vaughn, Roddy McDowall, John Cassavetes, Robert Culp, Honor Blackman, Leonard Nimoy, Dick Van Dyke and William Shatner.

I also watched Munich (directed by Steven Spielberg, who directed the first episode of Columbo season one!), which is a little bit more ‘grey’ than Columbo! Munich is an ok film, it is very competently made and well acted, but, for me, the story isn’t developed enough. The Israeli-Palestine conflict raises a lot of issues, some of which can be summed up in the phrase/cliché ‘One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter’, but the story doesn’t really touch on them and when it does it’s only on the surface. A missed opportunity.