Is it because he’s always nailing smug weirdo rich fuckbags? Is it the peter falk hard carry? Is it because despite being canonically a cop he does anything but act like a cop?
Is everything downstream of columbo an attempt to erase his legacy as the hound of wealthy sociopaths?
Is Columbo a demigod?
Part of it is that Columbo was made before Dick Wolf barged onto the scene feeling like cops didn’t get sucked off enough by
state propagandaprivate individuals with common interests, influence and links to the ruling regime. He also felt the need to vilify public defenders.Brain worms were still ever present back when columbo was made, so it could still have been awful (look at one of the first cop shows: Dragnet if you doubt me). But back then there were room for more “common” people in the entertainment industry and it was made right between the red scare and the Reagan red scare, so you could get away with being a little leftists as a treat.
That’s my theory anyway
But without Dragnet we would never have got Mathnet
i feel like a lot of the “detective” shows that appear in columbo’s wake, including some that columbo’s own stable of early writers/directors worked on, were extremely regressive revisions of what columbo was.
it didn’t even take until the show was cancelled for its legacy to be a bunch of reactionary dreck