The only Columbo episode to be filmed in the 21st century, Columbo Likes the Nightlife burst onto screens on January 30, 2003, wearing a backwards cap, a luminous feather boa and peeping a whistle.
Yes folks, Nightlife plunges the Lieutenant into the unlikely world of the underground rave scene of the early 2000s, complete with techno tunes, scantily clad honeys and a double homicide to contend with.
The final Columbo to air, could Nightlife buck the trend and give our main man an epic send-off in his 35th year of televisual crime fighting? Or to put it another way, is this a big fish, a little fish, or a cardboard box of an episode? Let’s find out…
Dramatis personae
Lieutenant Columbo: Peter Falk
Justin Price: Matthew Rhys
Vanessa Farrow: Jennifer Sky
Linwood Coben: Douglas Roberts
Tony Galper: Carmine Giovinazzo
Freddie: Steve Schirripa
Sean Jarvis: John Finnegan
Giant police officer: Julius Carry
Julius: Jorge Garcia
Directed by: Jeffrey Reiner
Written by: Michael Alaimo
Episode synopsis
Warehouse rave impresario Justin Price is about to go mainstream. He’s secured funding for his flashy new nightclub, Bait, via the ill-gotten gains of business partner – and son-of-a-mob-boss – Tony Galper. In 36 hours, Tony’s cash will hit Justin’s bank account and his ticket to the big time will be punched.
Naturally, things don’t go quite according to plan. As he’s in town, Tony decides to pay a visit to ultra-hot ex-wife Vanessa but when he uncovers that she and Justin are now a couple, he flips into a rage. It looks for all the world like Vanessa will be the episode’s victim, but no! She fends off Tony’s advances and shoves him away, sending the sleazebag tumbling backwards on to her coffee table.
It was hardly a blow of Investigator Brimmer-esque proportions, but the gentle tumble nevertheless results in Tony’s EXTINCTION! This is bad news for Vanessa, who fears mob reprisals, but also for Justin, who knows that his dreams of running LA’s hippest dance venue will be over if Tony’s death is revealed.
The two lovers concoct a plan to conceal Tony’s demise from the wider world. We don’t see what they do with the body, but Justin nabs Tony’s hotel key card and hire car keys and as soon as the cash hits his bank account, 36 hours later, he and Vanessa put ‘Operation Cover-Up’ into action.
Justin sneaks into Tony’s hotel suite and makes the place look used by ruffling sheets, wetting towels etc before checking out via a phone call to the lobby and leaving the key card on a table within the suite. He then drops off Tony’s sick hire car and leaves the keys in an exterior drop box so as to avoid contact with any staff. Vanessa is there to pick him up and the two melt away into LA traffic like nothing has happened. Nicely done, team!
Alas, the duo aren’t able to bask in their success for long. That night, Vanessa receives a MYSTERY PHONE CALL from a sinister fella who claims to know that she killed Tony. In a panic, she rings Justin – just as he receives an email from disreputable (and debt-ridden) photojournalist Linwood Coben, who somehow has snaps of Vanessa’s altercation with Tony, and her and Justin’s subsequent clean-up. Yowzers!
Justin arranges a rendezvous with Coben, who tells him he can have the negatives and all the prints for the princely sum of $250,000. Justin reluctantly appears to accept the terms, and the two agree to meet again at Coben’s dingy office-cum-apartment two hours hence. “And bring a girl with you – I’ll show her a good time,” laughs the vile Coben as Justin storms off.
As it happens, Justin will bring a girl with him but it’ll be getaway driver Vanessa, not a lady of loose morals like Coben is expecting. The slimeball has gargled with mouthwash and trimmed his nose hair in preparation to woo a wench and is disappointed to open his apartment door to find Justin there alone. Business first, girl later, says Justin, handing Coben a back-pack supposedly full of cash.
Coben turns over the incriminating photos and negatives before unzipping the backpack. However, instead of oodles of loot, it’s full of cut-up nightclub flyers! With Coben distracted, Justin whips a cord around his foe’s neck and eventually subdues him after a long and (by Columbo standards) rather gruesome tussle.
With Coben out cold, seemingly dead as a dodo and now tied to a radiator, Justin is on the receiving end of yet another fly in the proverbial ointment. He gets a pager message summoning him to deal with an emergency at the front door of the warehouse club he’s supposed to be managing! Acting swiftly, he swipes some additional pics of Vanessa from Coben’s filing cabinet, tears a note with directions to his club from Coben’s desk calendar and types a phony suicide note on the victim’s PC.
Before he can leave, however, he gets another shock. Coben ain’t dead! The lumbering journalist struggles to his feet but before he can bray for help, Justin shoves him from the window – Coben’s neck snapping when the line tying him to the radiator goes taut. The radiator itself promptly follows, creating one heck of a din and sending Justin dashing down to Vanessa and urging her to put the pedal to the metal before the whole neighbourhood is aroused.
When he is safely returned to his club, Justin has to deal with an ambulance crew who have had to come and rescue a dehydrated underage raver. Club bouncer Julius is hopping mad that it took Justin so long to respond to his pager summons (approx. 15 minutes), but it looks like Justin might just have gotten away with murder all the same.
The following morning, one Lieutenant Columbo is amongst the LAPD officers investigating the apparent suicide of Linwood Coben. And it’s Columbo who is immediately noticing little things that indicate the possibility of murder most foul. He detects the scent of mouthwash on the dead man and, after removing the corpse’s shoe and sock, finds that he’s just clipped his toenails. Upon poking around in the dead man’s bathroom, the Lieutenant discovers an open bottle of mouthwash and toenail clippings in the toilet – one of which he removes with his bare hand!
Why would a man who had suicide in mind bother to clip his toenails and freshen his breath? Seems more like he was getting ready to entertain a hot senorita than fling himself to Kingdom Come. The suicide note gives Columbo further reason for suspicion. Coben’s fingerprints are on most of the keys – but conspicuously not on the ‘I’ or the ‘E’. The suicide note features both letters numerous times, leading Columbo to believe the note was typed by an unknown assailant who was wearing gloves and whose repeated use of the two keys had wiped Coben’s prints from them.
“This ain’t no suicide,” Columbo confidently opines to a CSI colleague. “But there’s some guy out there who wants me to think it is and that’s the dude I’m going to be looking for.”
Using the age-old detective trick of rubbing a pencil on a blank sheet of paper to reveal the message written on a missing sheet above it, Columbo gleans the directions to Justin’s warehouse club that Coben had noted on his desk calendar. There’s not much activity there now, just a few chicks still boogieing to the last remnants of their disco biscuits, but Columbo does find a flyer for Justin’s new Bait club, sending him on a collision course with the murderous music major-domo.
When they meet, Justin plays up the fact that Coben was a debt-ridden worm, who had a previous suicide attempt to his name. There’s nothing to trigger Columbo’s suspicions at this stage, although he does note that Justin was twice paged during their short interview – a fact he will squirrel away for later reference. The pagee, of course, was Vanessa, who continues to boil with stress at home.
Seeking intel on who might want to bump off Coben, Columbo visits one of the tabloid rags he worked for and finds out that the man had two pending lawsuits against him and was an unreliable drunkard, whom editors thought twice about hiring. “Linwood had a lot of enemies,” a magazine editor tells the Lieutenant. “I’m sure there’s more than a handful of people in this town who’d want him dead.”
Next stop for the detective is with the ambulance crew who picked up the dehydrated youth from Justin’s club on the night Coben died. There, Columbo learns that it took Justin 15 minutes to respond to the emergency pager summons, and that this all happened at roughly the same time Coben seems to have been slain. It’s not much, sure, but Justin will have some explaining to do.
The Lieutenant immediately heads off to see Justin in an attempt to ‘tie up these loose ends’ – chief amongst them why it took him so long to jump to action after the club doorman’s emergency page. It was a simple case of dead batteries, Justin bats back. But your beeper was working just fine in our meeting this morning, Columbo responds. That’s because I keep spares in my car, explains the unruffled showman, and I switched them in there and then. It’s a nice little interchange, with both men gleaning a bit of insight into the other. Justin is quick and convincing under pressure. Columbo is a threat to be taken seriously – bright pink feather boa (festooned on him by a young partygoer) notwithstanding.
While snooping around back at the crime scene, Columbo is fortunate enough to hear an answer machine message left for Coben by a Sean Jarvis, who wants some cash he is owed. The Lieutenant makes a beeline for Jarvis’s pad and discovers the not-inconsiderable nugget that Coben had been using a tree in Jarvis’s back garden to gain a vantage point from which to take photos of a neighbouring property – and that property is Vanessa Farrow’s!
Columbo heads straight there to grill Vanessa about Coben. She admits to having heard of him, but says she’s not high profile enough to be a target. Astute as ever, Columbo notices some indentations in the carpet that suggest a larger coffee table has recently been replaced by the less substantial one currently on display. Who knows what it could mean, but those little things are definitely starting to add up.
Now he knows of Coben’s interest in Vanessa, Columbo returns to the dead man’s office and ferrets around in his filing cabinet. There is a file on Vanessa and it features several sub-folders of photos, all marked with dates. Oddly, the file dated June 22nd (the last day of Coben’s life) is empty! He also uncovers legal papers that show Vanessa divorced from Tony Galper just four months earlier.
Shaken by her encounter, Vanessa arranges a meeting with Justin. He’s adamant they need to keep their distance to avoid Columbo making the connection between them. She is increasingly looking like the weak link in the chain.
Back at LAPD HQ, meanwhile, Columbo gets another lucky break when he overhears another cop referencing a missing person named Tony Galper. This rings a divorce-papers-sized bell in the Lieutenant’s head and he scurries back to Coben’s (again) to delve into the filing cabinet. There’s a file all about Galper (the son of known Mob don ‘Joey G’), which includes several dated envelopes of photos. Just as was the case with Vanessa, the file dated June 22nd is empty.
Turns out that Coben was investigating Galper in the hope of landing a scoop, but in doing so he angered the mob. Prior to his death, Coben received a brick and menacing note through his car windscreen. Maybe he was the victim of a mob hit after all? Certainly there’s a valid reason to grill Vanessa further, and by chance or orchestration, Columbo runs into her in a fashion store. She claims not to have seen her ex-husband for months, but is unsettled by the line of questioning – not least when asked what she was doing on the night Coben died. She has no alibi.
Keen to trace Galper’s movements, Columbo visits the car hire joint and discovers (to his apparent amazement) that it’s no longer essential for customers to sign paperwork upon returning their cars. They can just drop off the keys and run. Likewise, at Galper’s hotel, he was able to check out without signing anything. It means that an imposter could easily have pretended to be Galper and no one would be any the wiser.
This hunch intensifies when Columbo learns from the room maid that Galper (ahem) routinely missed the bowl while urinating and sprinkled on the bathroom floor. The only time the maid noticed he hadn’t done this was on the morning he checked out. For an ace detective, that can only mean one of two things: either Galper cleaned up his widdling act (unlikely), or he was never there on the morning of his supposed check-out at all.
Following on from this, Columbo encounters Freddie, a whole lot of messenger from the mob, who is very interested in the Lieutenant’s investigation. They suspect foul play and had been freezing Galper’s pending investments. Strangely, the final investment that cleared before Galper’s disappearance was his payment to Justin’s Bait nightclub. All of a sudden Columbo has the link he needs to connect Justin to Vanessa.
Dropping by the club, Columbo lets Justin know that he’s now investigating Galper’s disappearance as well as Coben’s murder. While he’s leaving, he notices a number of new fish tanks filled with koi carp that Justin has had installed in the dancefloor. A charming feature of a hip rave experience, or an indication of involvement in foul play? You decide…
All that’s left for Columbo to do now is to prove his suspicions that Vanessa and Justin are partners in crime. He pays her a visit and whips out phone records that show she has contacted Justin’s pager multiple times – including on a number of occasions on the morning Coben was found dead. Predictably, Vanessa is soon in a tizzy. She rings Justin from a payphone, demanding to see him straight away. He, on the verge of opening the doors of Bait for the first time, refuses. She heads there anyway.
Justin is not happy to see Vanessa – and even less happy when she reveals that Columbo has a list of all the times she has paged him. Chill babygirrrrl, Justin insists. Without Galper’s body, there’s no case to answer and there’s no way Galper’s going to reappear, so if they stay cool they’ll be in the clear.
It’s at this moment that the pounding house music is abruptly cut off. And who should be behind that but Lieutenant Columbo? He has a warrant to search the place for the body of Tony Galper and he lays out his case against Justin and Vanessa in front of an ocean of presumably pill-popping witnesses.
Interestingly, the koi carp-filled fish tanks he admired earlier triggered a light bulb moment for the good Lieutenant. He noticed that one of the tanks had fewer fish than the others. And because his nephew works at SeaWorld, Columbo knows that there’s a minimum amount of water required in a tank per inch of fish kept within it.
Measuring the depths of two tanks reveals a telling sign. The tank with 14 fish in it is about four feet deep. The one with only nine fish is less than three feet deep. Why is this particular tank shallower than the others? We’ll soon find out as Columbo summons a colleague to scan the tank with ground-penetrating radar.
The image from the scan is projected onto the big screens behind the DJ booth. As it slowly zooms out, the clear shape of a human form can be seen. It’s Tony Galper, who’s almost literally sleeping with da fishes. “This place really could have been something. Too bad…” says Columbo as fellow officers move in to slap cuffs on Justin and Vanessa.
Columbo strides out through the packed dance floor like a boss, stopping briefly in the entranceway to accept the thanks of mob boy Freddie, before credits roll for the very last time…
My memories of Columbo Likes the Nightlife
As has been the norm since beginning this blog in 2015, I’ve deliberately stayed away from rewatching ‘new Columbo’ episodes so I can watch them afresh ahead of reviewing. Columbo Likes the Nightlife is no exception, and is an episode I may have seen as little as once or twice and not in the last decade.
While admittedly not recalling much of it (I’d totally forgotten there were two killings), my recollections largely centred around the suitability or otherwise of a Columbo adventure set against a rave scene backdrop. Would the episode have Columbo jigging like an idiot on the dancefloor in a bid to elicit a few laughs? I couldn’t recall. And would what seems like such an obvious ploy to appeal to younger viewers reduce the Lieutenant to a comedic parody? Going by the series’ recent standards, this was a justifiable concern.
What gave me hope coming back to this was the affirmation from several knowledgeable fans that Nightlife is a terrific episode, a real return to form, and a suitable send-off for the world’s greatest detective. Please, let them be proven right…
Episode analysis
Although seismically different in tone and style, Columbo Likes the Nightlife owes its existence to the unexpectedly high ratings enjoyed by 2001’s Murder With Too Many Notes. Never you mind that the Notes has ultimately gone down in history as one of the series’ least appreciated entries. In a world where ratings are king, Billy Connolly and co. were sufficiently appealing to viewers to tempt the ABC network to give Columbo one more hall pass in a thoroughly contemporary setting.
For while Columbo Likes the Nightlife wasn’t the first new Columbo episode to air in the new millennium, it was the first (and only) to be filmed in the 2000s, Notes having been committed to celluloid in November 1998.
Having loathed the final cut of Too Many Notes, few ABC execs had expected it to be a hit – hence why it didn’t debut until more than two years after it was filmed. So when a further Columbo adventure was given the greenlight, there were certain stipulations that had to met. Namely, it needed young actors in significant roles, and a theme that would appeal to a younger demographic.
No more of the campy, light-hearted pap that Columbo had recently stooped to, either. With the highest-rated shows of the day dominated by police procedurals, including two variants of CSI and three of Law & Order, the Lieutenant was going to have to give the audience what it wanted: a gritty, real-world murder mystery played with a very straight bat.
The production team ultimately settled on the theme of murder set against the underground rave scene and Columbo Likes the Nightlife was born. With Falk having just turned 75 at the time of filming in October 2002, 27-year-old Welshman Matthew Rhys and 25-year-old former model Jennifer Sky were drafted in as murderous lovers Justin and Vanessa to increase the age differential and imbue the show’s opening half hour with an aura of youthful vibrancy.
In that, Nightlife, in my opinion, is entirely successful. The rave scene was indeed kicking at the time allowing the episode to embrace its era in a way not seen since 1989’s Columbo Cries Wolf. That instalment did a grand job of injecting the Lieutenant into the seedy fashions and soap-opera lifestyles of those involved in the adult magazine business to produce one of the most watchable outings of the revival age.
Nightlife is the ‘new Columbo’ equivalent of Season 4 classic A Friend in Deed.
However, where Nightlife differs is that it takes its subject matters much more seriously. Cries Wolf was a camp and bawdy romp, a perfect time capsule of its day, but is not an episode to be taken too seriously. Nightlife, however, plays it straight to deliver a gritty and plausible mystery in which people act and react in realistic ways, and in which the series’ star is treated with suitable reverence.
I might even go so far as to say that Nightlife is the ‘new Columbo’ equivalent of Season 4 classic A Friend in Deed, which gave us a dark and largely humourless but gripping encounter between the Lieutenant and a pair of conniving killers. Nightlife is not on the same level as Friend in Deed (few episodes are), but is tonally the closest the series has come to it in almost three decades. After the McGoohan-infused silliness that pervaded/ruined the two most recent episodes, that’s a blessed relief.
Regular readers will remember that I have regularly bewailed the Columbo characterisations served up since his 1989 comeback. Too much self-referential, cartoonish goofiness, allied with stupid scenarios like tuba parping, bin rummaging, mermaid-gazing, panties-fumbling and musical singalongs, have reduced the Lieutenant to a borderline senile irritation on far too many occasions.
Here, drinking at the proverbial last chance saloon, Falk gives his single best Columbo performance since his ABC stint kicked off 14 years earlier. The Lieutenant may be venerable and faintly eccentric in Nightlife, but the broad humour and cheap attempts to earn a laugh through buffoon-like behaviour are almost entirely absent in Falk’s portrayal – and it’s an absolute breath of fresh air. He probably hasn’t been this watchable since Try and Catch Me in 1977. A long time to wait…
Nightlife’s Columbo takes his character back to basics: an inspired lone-wolf with an uncanny knack for noticing little details and a superlative mind to connect the dots in what is a complex case. Just about the only feature of his performance I’m not crazy about is his dog-like sniffing around the corpse of Linwood Coben as he detects the dead man’s recent use of mouthwash. This seems somewhat forced, but is less jarring than a similar scene of him detecting a block of highly visible cheese in Agenda for Murder, so I can’t be too damning.
It’s also reminiscent of a scene from A Study in Scarlet, where Sherlock Holmes deduces a man was poisoned to death by sniffing the lips of a corpse. On both occasions, the deduction plays a tangible role in solving the crime, so I prefer to think of it as more of an homage to a fellow great detective than another moment of heavy-handed tomfoolery.
There’s also the rather unpleasant moment when Columbo plunges his bare arm down Coben’s (presumably filthy) toilet to retrieve a toenail clipping, which has the OCD me wincing with disrelish. I might have preferred to see the Lieutenant approach this grim task a shade less readily, but at least the moment is presented in a matter-of-fact manner and not played for laughs as would undoubtedly have been the case in earlier episodes. It still traumatises me that Columbo does not wash (let alone sterilise) his hands after this scene, but what can you do?
Elsewhere, further scenarios that might once have been set against jaunty music to indicate supposed comedy are mercifully underplayed. Columbo being adorned with a pink feather boa by a clubbing hottie could have been ghastly. So, too, could his clambering up a tree in Vanessa’s neighbour’s backyard, and his encounter with a garish Hawaiian shirt. In all cases, pleasing restraint was shown – something the production team deserve great credit for.
Nightlife is a tautly-paced mystery, with little screentime wasted and almost every scene having some sort of payoff.
Instead of gimmickry, we’re given a shrewd detective who is making logical deductions to practical clues and piecing them together seamlessly to aid in his solving of the case. The path Columbo takes to uncovering Coben’s interest in Vanessa and her connection to Justin feels earned, not given. Throughout proceedings the evidence does the talking. It all points to collusion in the death of two individuals and is satisfyingly wrapped up in such a way that you feel the perpetrators will face justice. That hasn’t always been the case in recent adventures – particularly those fumbled by Patrick McGoohan – and is another reason why Nightlife makes for rewarding viewing.
It helps that this is the shortest Columbo episode of the new batch. At only 88 minutes in length, it’s a full 10 minutes shorter than most of its post-1989 counterparts. Nightlife is a tautly-paced mystery, with little screentime wasted and almost every scene having some sort of payoff, advancing the plotline and justifying its inclusion. Bravo.
Although relative unknowns by Columbo standards, all the supporting cast more than earn their keep. Importantly, they feel like real people rather than simple stereotypes. Even photojournalist Coben – the easiest cliché to fall into – is given a sufficient dose of Phillip Seymour Hoffman-esque sleaziness by Douglas Roberts to ground him in a grubby reality. His murder is one of the most unsettling ever shown in Columbo – a further indication of a show moving with the times.
As Justin and Vanessa, Matthew Rhys and Jennifer Sky dovetail sufficiently well to earmark them amongst the more compelling Columbo villains of the time. She – apparently a victim of domestic violence at the hands of ex-husband Tony Galper – kills by accident and would surely have received sympathetic treatment at the hands of the police had she reported the incident.
What the episode does well is give both Vanessa and Justin good reason to cover up Tony’s death. She fears reprisals from Tony’s mob boss father. Justin needs to wait 36 hours until Tony’s money enters his account so he can pay off his debts and open his new nightclub. Once they settle on this course of action, Coben holding them to blackmail forces their hand into decisive action against him – again in a realistic manner. I’m not advocating murder by any stretch, but the script does a fine job of manoeuvring them into such a tight spot that killing Coben could conceivably be considered their only way out.
Of the two, Justin is the more interesting. Once Coben has been bumped off, Vanessa’s role is largely limited to being a damsel in distress making increasingly agitated phone calls to her lover to find out the lie of the land. One senses that she will be the one to blow the pair’s cover, and so it will prove when Columbo obtains phone records that show her many desperate attempts to contact Justin in the aftermath of the double deaths.
Justin, meanwhile, is pretty much in control of everything except for Vanessa’s rising panic. He never falls into the perennial Columbo killer’s habit of being too helpful, or of suggesting outlandish possibilities to put the detective off his stride. In short, he’s a cool customer and Rhys nicely balances the demands of being a character under pressure while exuding an aura of innocence throughout his interactions with the Lieutenant.
He and Falk enjoy good rapport in Nightlife, doubtless stemming back to their work together on a BBC TV two-part adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World in 2001. Interestingly, Falk played the villainous role on that occasion, with Rhys the central good guy. The reversal of roles here does nothing to dampen their chemistry.
As a Brit who was largely raised in Wales, it’s also pleasing to me that Rhys was allowed to retain his natural Welsh accent throughout proceedings – although according to Rhys himself, that was more by accident than design. He had intended to play the part with a London accent (a more familiar lilt to US audiences of the day) but apparently Falk was so unimpressed with his attempts that they decided to let Rhys play it in his everyday accent itself. It doesn’t harm the episode a bit.
Two further support roles warrant attention. Firstly, the appearance of Jorge Garcia as bouncer Julius is notable in this being one of his last roles before being rocketed into the collective consciousness as Hurley in 121 episodes of Lost between 2004-10. Secondly, Nightlife brought back Columbo regular John Finnegan for one last bow in the small role of Sean Jarvis, whose back garden Coben used to photograph Vanessa’s killing of Tony.
This marked Finnegan’s 13th Columbo appearance over a period spanning more than 30 years since he made his debut as a construction site supervisor in Blueprint for Murder in 1972. Nightlife was Finnegan’s final career acting credit and his presence represents a nice call back for fans of the original series in an episode that otherwise feels a long way removed from its 70s’ heyday.
Such are the strengths of Nightlife that even the presence of tubby mob boy Freddie – indeed the whole mob subplot – can mostly be overlooked. For an episode that feels so fresh, the mob elements seem unnecessary. I get that there needed to be an undercurrent of menace to drive Vanessa and Justin’s actions, but the hackneyed injection of the Mafia into proceedings does the episode few favours. Fortunately, restraint was also shown with this aspect of the plot, helping to avoid the ludicrous theatrics that blighted Strange Bedfellows a few years earlier.
Still, that’s about the only negative detail I take away from my viewing of Nightlife. Everything else works just fine – right down to the techno soundtrack, which might be jarring for purists, but was authentic for the plot and didn’t overpower the episode. I was half expecting to hear a techno riff on This Old Man, but – heavens be praised! – they never went there.
The extensive use of real locations, as opposed to sets and the Universal lot, all helped add to the credibility of the episode – not least the many scenes set in the underbelly of the city. We do get to peep inside some luxury mansions, but much of Nightlife is set in warehouses, alleys and basic dwellings well outside the show’s normal socio-economic boundaries, and feels all the better for it.
It even all wraps up on a superior note. It’s fair to say that the Columbo gotcha of the 80s-90s was often a lesser experience than those of the 70s. Not so here. Columbo figuring out that the lower fish-to-tank ratio could indicate a corpse hidden beneath it is a bit of a gem, and the CSI-style ground-penetrating radar that proves his hunch correct gives is thoroughly damning. Justin and Vanessa are the most demonstrably guilty parties in years.
Even the very final scene of Columbo bidding farewell to Freddie and refusing to accept his business card is nicely done. There’s no air of finality about it, it just comes and goes without fanfare as befits a standalone outing that was not intended to be the Lieutenant’s curtain call. Alas, that’s exactly what it would be, though, as, for all its strengths, Columbo Likes the Nightlife was not sufficiently liked by the viewers of the day. It slumped to the lowest opening-night ratings of any Columbo episode.
Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, this seems like rough justice. Nightlife is a very serviceable murder mystery with a strong plot and capable performances. The irony is that if this vision of Columbo had been hit on years earlier, the series’ second coming could have been another golden age. Instead, the production choices all too often sent the show – and its main character – down the path of banality, showiness and pseudo-comedic claptrap.
The irony is that if this vision of Columbo had been hit on years earlier, the series’ second coming could have been another golden age.
Peter Falk never gave up on Columbo, despite Nightlife’s inability to win hearts and minds of a new generation. He had hoped to bring Columbo back just one more time in a final case that would give official closure to the character, but no network would take it. With Falk pushing towards his 80th birthday, the Lieutenant’s last boat ship had sailed.
Viewed on its own merits, Columbo Likes the Nightlife is far from the failure its poor ratings suggest. Indeed, when considered alongside 1968’s Prescription: Murder, it makes for an excellent bookend to the series. Both episodes were filmed some years apart from those that came after or before them. Both are tonally different from their other 67 counterparts, with a look, feel and sound that makes them unique entries into the Columbo canon.
Both also hinted at the potential the series and its main character had to offer. With Prescription: Murder, this promise was ultimately realised through the creation of one of the most enduring and cherished TV shows of its generation. Nightlife, for all that it did right, had the opposite effect. It became the undeserving final nail in the coffin of a show that had been dying a slow death for years.
A harsh outcome? Certainly. But what Columbo Likes the Nightlife did was to bring Columbo up-to-date in a manner that enhanced rather than diminished its central star, and let him exit stage right on a comparative high whether he wanted to or not.
How I rate ’em
Something of a revelation, Columbo Likes the Nightlife is a very pleasant surprise that cuts the cr*p to dish up the best episode in years. This sits proudly alongside the best efforts of the ABC years and is a darn sight better than I had remembered.
If you haven’t watched it for a while, or have previously dismissed it as just another example of a lesser new Columbo outing, I’d urge to view again with an open mind. You’ll find a lot to enjoy.
To read my reviews of any of the other revival Columbo episodes up to this point, simply click the links in the list below. Now that all the episode reviews are in the can, I have slightly rejigged the overall rankings and the tiering of episodes.
My next task will be to filter these into an overall hierarchy with the classic episodes to create my conclusive ranking of all 69 episodes. In the meantime, you can see how I rank all the ‘classic era’ episodes here.
- Columbo Goes to College — top tier new Columbo episodes —
- Columbo Likes the Nightlife
- Agenda for Murder
- Death Hits the Jackpot
- Columbo Cries Wolf
- Rest in Peace, Mrs Columbo
- Ashes to Ashes — 2nd tier starts here —
- It’s All in the Game
- Columbo Goes to the Guillotine
- Sex & The Married Detective
- Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health
- Butterfly in Shades of Grey
- A Bird in the Hand…
- Murder, A Self Portrait — 3rd tier starts here —
- Murder, Smoke & Shadows
- Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star
- Uneasy Lies the Crown
- A Trace of Murder
- Strange Bedfellows — 4th tier starts here —
- No Time to Die
- Grand Deceptions
- Undercover
- Murder With Too Many Notes
- Murder in Malibu
Now it’s your turn. Please share your thoughts on Columbo Likes the Nightlife. A fitting finale for our beloved Lieutenant, or a flash, trash, brash attempt to move with the times that was as ill a fit for Columbo as a floral Hawaiian shirt?
And what this means, of course, is that after nearly eight years of reviewing Columbo episodes I’ve finally worked my way through them all. To all of you who have joined me on this voyage of discovery, rediscovery and reaffirmation, I thank you sincerely for your support and kind words – especially during the dark days of my daughter’s illness in 2021.
And this is not the end of the Columbophile blog. Far from it! I have a glut of content in the wings to help wrap-up the 1989-2003 years, and will continue my endeavours to ensure that the Lieutenant’s legacy continues to shine brightly in the years to come. I may not be posting as regularly as I used to, but I’ll be there, in the background, waiting to welcome you back for more measured debate and reminiscences about the greatest fictional detective of them all.
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Thanks for all the Columbo espisode reviews. This episode was really good. Falk and cast put in gritty solid performances. Columbo Likes the Night Life felt like a serious police drama. Columbo is drawn into the rave underground to solve a complicated case. Even the mob was involved. I like how the 1990s orchestration was canned, and replaced by modern techno rave music. The chemistry between Columbo, Price (Rhys), and Farrow (Sky) was authentic. Roberts (Coben) was good as the corrupt gossip photographer. The ending was really good. I like how the mob was part of the drama, but toned down alot. I think this last episode was made to bring in a younger viewing audience. But for Falk’s final farewell episode this was really good. Cheers.
Congrates on completing your marathon. It’s been a pleasure watching along all these years and I look forward to future endeavours!
I haven’t read the comment section yet, but I thought this was a solid episode with lots going on.
I do have a BIG criticism, however. Much like the far-fetched ending with the Murder of the Rockstar (with Dabney Coleman and a fake mask??!!) the gotcha here was also completely out of leftfield. As a viewer, I felt cheated. At no point in time were the fish tanks in the floor a possible clue. The body could have been dumped ANYWHERE, yet Columbo, out of the blue, deduces that the body must be buried in one of the club’s fish tanks in the floor?! I mean. c’mon. Us viewers didn’t have a chance! (If you did know the body was in one of the fish tanks, then you must have an advanced degree from Harvard!
Other than that, the female lead was very attractive and had just the right amount of paranoia. The male lead was also excellent, and I liked his red jacket.
Still, I can’t get over the “fish tank” reveal. That alone knocks it down several spots for me.
Thank you, CP, for all the wonderful reviews!
I remember working my way to the end of the DVD set and being genuinely shocked by the gory, prolonged nature of Justin’s murder of Linwood. I agree that it helps the episode, but it’s also especially shocking for “Columbo”, a show in which most of the time the killing was bloodless, or accidental, or bang-fall over, or even offscreen.
This show is also helped by the casting of Matthew Rhys. He’s a terrific actor and he really sells this part. Pretty soon after this he started playing nothing but roles with American accents and, after watching him all the way through the run of “The Americans” (one of the best TV shows ever), it sure was a trip to hear his real accent.
Many thanks to Columbophile for this long and highly interesting series of reviews. It was a lot of work. I sometimes thought he was too negative about the show, but he loves this show and the care showed in his writing.
Matther Rhys was outstanding playing the role of Justin Price. As Columbophile wrote, Rhys was originally going to play Justin with a British accent but ended up sticking with his natural Welsh accent.
When Peter Falk heard Rhys say his lines in a British dialect, perhaps he sensed that something wasn’t quite natural with Rhys’ accent. And Falk, being the method actor he was, wanted Rhys’ character to be as realistic and natural as possible. For example, as Robert Conrad once recalled when he was doing his “orange juice” scene with Falk in “An Exercise in Fatality,” Falk insisted that real carrot juice be used in his breakfast drink so that his surprise and reaction in the scene could be genuine.
Here’s Matthew Rhys telling his story on The Graham Norton show of how he came to use his own Welsh accent in the role: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCqYTGX1TWI
As it has been stated before, the “back to basics” approach in this entry allowed the series to bow out on a higher note. It is as if the producers had finally decide to sit down and get everything back together. The result is an extremely commendable episode in which one senses a serious effort of grounding our dear Lieutenant in a new Era.
Great Review, great episode. I’ll expect Nightlife to be in the final final top 10!
Good to see you managed to finish all the episode reviews, was what I found most interesting here, and there’s been other blogs that managed to review them all years ago, but they were much shorter than yours, yours are more in depth, which is what I like: when there’s a doubt about some detail it most likely can be found here.
I don’t like nightlife as much as you do, I consider it an average episode, but still don’t mind it, in particular the fact we have 2 “murderers” (vanessa’s kill was accidental and she didn’t take part in the 2nd murder), especially liked when she complained to justin that every time columbo came to her he knew more and more stuff and that she was getting increasingly worried.
I’m also one of those who liked the ending with the fish; I thought it was a logical final deduction for columbo and a worthy ending.
I’m aware he wanted to do another episode, too bad they didn’t let him.
Looking forward to see your final ranking when you will combine both the first and second era episodes and to what other articles will come up.
Thanks for completing this wonderful website for all Columbo fans! As far as CLTNL is concerned, I can’t say I’m as excited about it. It’s not the worst of the new episodes, but for me doesn’t come close to capturing the magic of so many of the 70’s shows.
Thank you so much for all your work on these reviews over the years, Columbophile. I’ve always loved this series, and finding your blog has been a source of great joy (as well as immense amusement). I haven’t seen ‘Nightlife’ myself, but it’s good to know that the series went out on a relatively high note after some disappointing episodes in the later seasons.
Wait!!!! C’mon!!! “Freddie” is “Bobby Bacala”!!!!!!!!! This puts Columbo and The Sopranos in the same universe!!!!!!
I definitely agree that this is one of the better episodes of the second run. It’s back to basics in many ways.
Indeed it’s flaws are not in the plot nor in the acting. The flaws are all in the production. They’re relatively minor I guess, but mean at times it doesn’t FEEL like a Columbo episode.
For starters, the decision to use a “filmic” look to the episode makes the pictures look weird and wrong. I don’t know how they filmed the episodes originally (on film or video tape) but I’m guessing this was recorded on video and then a filmic filter applied to it. That happened a lot around that time. They even tried to do it to soap operas. And it looks and feels wrong compared to the other episodes. It’s not crisp, it’s not clean.
The text in the titles are all in white rather than yellow. It’s a little niggle I know, but why change it? Coupled with the above, it doesn’t “feel” like Columbo. We know the wrong story can make episodes not “feel” like a proper Columbo. But the wrong visuals can do the same.
Oh and the soundtrack. I have to disagree. I found it very intrusive and overpowering. It really didn’t work.
Like I say, a good episode, even taking that into account. Although I do wonder how many of the club-goers would actually all stand around compliantly when the police arrive. No one kicks off about that? But I’ll let that slide.
And is it just me, or does anyone else feel really sorry for the fish in the dance floor? I know it’s a story but I can imagine a fish tank in a dancefloor would be a rather stressful environment to live in!
What great timing, I just decided yesterday to go back and rewatch some Columbo episodes, which naturally led me to revisit this site, right after you finally got to the end!
I agree about the quality of this episode. It initially felt jarring to see the character in this early 2000s setting but once I got over that, it was a solid procedural and story. Not the worst note to go out on.
I commented on Falk’s restrained performance below, and that is probably my personal highlight of Nightlife. Just being able to close the book on the series without copious eyerolling was a relief. Yet there are other aspects of Nightlife I enjoyed, most of which have been noted by others. I for one don’t find the rave setting horribly dated. Sure the kids are doing it a different way — with the lines between hip hop and techno, among other music genres, blurring; laser light shows replacing neon glow sticks; etc. — but there remains some sort of “club scene” in every major city where folks go to get high, cut loose and maybe meet someone. Watching this episode, you get the point. (And there aren’t that many scenes in the club anyway.)
Likewise, I’m not all that bothered by the gotcha technically applying to the wrong victim. It’s true, finding Galper’s body does not prove Justin killed Coben. But it does establish motive to about as blatant a degree as humanly possible. Columbo can show all the connections from Coben to Galper to Vanessa to Justin. The latter will have to answer questions about disposing of Galper’s body, Coben’s missing Vanessa files, and on and on. And based on her portrayal up to that point, it’s virtually impossible to believe Vanessa won’t crack under interrogation. Good enough for TV, in other words.
However, I do agree with Glenn about the fish tank clue not adding up. I couldn’t figure it out when watching and now see there wasn’t anything to figure out (almost as if an early scene establishing Justin’s insistence on symmetrical design is missing). But yeah, smaller tank hardly equates to corpse concealment logically speaking. At least unlike in Blueprint for Murder, Columbo was able to use high-tech (if make-believe) equipment to test his theory as opposed to spoiling construction of a major high-rise. 😉
Actually, a different missing sequence is probably more logical. After noticing the fish disparity, Columbo would locate and question whomever installed the tanks, and whomever supplied the fish. I highly doubt it was Justin Price who decided to put fewer fish in the one tank. Some aquarium supplier measured the tank and decided how many fish it could hold. Once armed with something concrete that one tank is shallower than the others — and not for other reasons (e.g., structural supports under only one part of the floor) — Columbo could proceed as he did.
In my mind, that’s what happened and, as usual, the SeaWorld/nephew anecdote was hokum. Columbo got intel from Freddie of how Tony’s investment money into Bait was spent (fishes being referenced), so it’s not too big a leap to assume Columbo used this info to grill the suppliers and get the info he needed to guide his thinking towards a hidden corpse.
I’m firm in believing that when the viewer has to provide their own explanation of how Columbo came up with the gotcha, it’s a failed gotcha. Its the same reason I don’t like that we never see how Columbo divines the gizmo-heavy murder explanation in “College”.
I wouldn’t go that far. A gotcha also has to surprise the audience. Sometimes we’re able to see the thought process (at least in retrospect): the cuckoo clock interrupting the football broadcast in the travel agency in “The Most Crucial Game”; Sgt. Wilson extolling the crisp image left by a plastic carbon ribbon in “Now You See Him.” Sometimes we’re told afterwards, like in “A Friend in Deed.” But take “Suitable for Framing,” for instance. Everyone’s favorite gotcha. Before any paintings are found, Columbo arrives at Edna’s house concealing his gloved hands in his pockets. Is it ever explained how Columbo was so sure beforehand (1) that what he touched in Kingston’s apartment were the stolen paintings, and (2) that Kingston had planted these paintings in Edna’s house in time for the police search? No. Sure, we can speculate, but it’s never explained. Do we care? No.
Yes – surprise, but not confusion.
The audience surprise should come from seeing how Columbo uses the breadcrumbs sprinkled through the episode (as you note, the “thought process” in retrospect) to arrive at the Gotcha. It’s all there for the viewer to exclaim at the close, “Oh, that’s how he figured it out!” When the breadcrumbs aren’t there – and they’re really not for the tank finale in CLTN – it feels like a cheat….How exactly did Columbo make that mental leap? Sure, one can retrofit an explanation to fill in the blanks, but why am I writing the episode? I’d prefer to get the hints of how Columbo’s mind is working, and what’s triggering his thoughts. It’s a much more nuanced and satisfying wrap-up. The classic era Gotchas excelled in this, even when the Gotchas themselves weren’t always perfect.
I feel like this might be the first time I ever have seen someone trimming their nosehair on TV with an electric trimmer. Nice to feel seen, as someone who uses one. Al Bundy did in an episode too, long ago.
Also, liked the red herring when Columbo visited Vanessa’s place and there was landscaping with trees being planted outside. I thought the body would be buried out there (even though I did see this originally as the ending made me recall having watched it).
I adore your writing. From first word to last, every bit of this review (including photo choices and captions) is perfect. If you never write another word for this blog you’d be going out on a high here, just like Columbo does in this excellent episode.
Congratulations, CP, for having realised all those reviews. A great job. And I admit you’ve seen in CLTNL several qualities I hadn’t seen. However, it’s surprising how this youngest episode is outdated whereas the older ones are not.
Is it really surprising? When a drama attempts to be very timely, it’s more inclined to date faster than one that has fewer time-specific moments.
I thought this was a very satisfying send off for the Lt. Great direction, good camera work, good characterisation, and the story really rips along (yes, the gotcha is hokey, but we’ll forgive the writers that). Even the music works, somehow.
Now, admittedly I’m one of those rare folks with something of a soft spot for 80s/90s Columbo, if only because I was a teenager when these shows originally aired, and they provide generally pleasant (if bland) nostalgic fodder. But ‘Nightlife’ really works; I can watch it again and again, and still find something to enjoy.
I couldn’t find a production timeline for Nightlife, but I would guess it was filmed within a year of shooting the Jon Favreau movie Made, in which Falk has a small but juicy comedic part that he plays deliciously and, above all, straight. (Many late-era Falk appearances are winking nods to his Columbo persona, but he plays a distinctly different character in Made.)
I wonder if — beyond the disgrace of Too Many Notes — this experience inspired him to treat the script and his characterization of Columbo in Nightlife more seriously. Perhaps he needed a reminder that the laughs flow more freely when you aren’t mugging for them. Maybe not — after all Falk was obviously a veteran actor who had performed in far more prestigious fare than Made — but it seems just as obvious that Falk had hit a creative rut, and it would be interesting to know if anything in particular jolted him back artistically.
Thank you so much for your wonderful reviews and stories! I’m sorry the reviews are over. They have added much joy to my life. Looking forward to future content!
Fabulous review CP! …and funny too.
…and congratulations on having reached the end of all episodes.
Bravo, CP! What a terrific body of work.
This is one of my favorites of the new era Columbo episodes (there were very few ‘favorites’) and one of the better episodes of the entire series (in my Top 20).
What’s sad is that this is probably the only murder that was actually an act of defense against an abusive ex, but that the coverup turned it into a murder, which of course leads to the actual murder of the blackmailing gossip rag scumbag.
When Columbo tried to be too relevant – like having the Robby the Robot as a supporting actor in Mind Over Matter – it often went off the rails. That could have easily happened with rave culture in Nightlife. But at least it got the right tone of Columbo being out of sinc with all the young, sweaty, ecstasy-juiced bodies on the dance floor, while not turning down a feathered boa. In any case, your reviews are always wonderful, even if the post-classic episodes often are not. I’m glad you found something redeeming in the espisode. I’ll watch it next time with that in mind.
Great review. And I am glad that it happened to be a positive one at this end of the show’s run.
I don’t think I have watched the episode before as it was broadcast past my TV days when series became accessible on DVD. And while I watched the episodes before, I would not have bothered to seek out a Columbo episode after the streak of mediocre attempts to modernize the show.
Which indeed seems to really work for the first time – including the “modern methods” at the end. Which in hindsight is something one could have made a bit more of, especially in the light of Columbo’s more… rustic approach at the beginning.
His entrance was a bit too slow for my taste and the sniffing as well as him going to the room upstairs, going down and then once more shouting out of the window was quite tedious. It felt obvious to me that had they just limited it to him sniffing shortly, getting the hunch, going up and then having the officer remove the sock while shouting through the window, would have been funnier without being sillier and also saved some lines of him having to explain his erratic behavior. Then maybe a bit of time would have been left to introduce the radar instrument early on with Columbo being uninterested – which would have tied in the ending when he uses it against his usual habits a bit better, making it feel a bit less of a deus ex machina moment. But from there on it is a nice trail of clues, some maybe a bit too convenient (like the connection to the photographer via the answering machine) but at least they moved the investigation forward and justified Columbo’s confidence concerning the aquarium, which in turn ended up to be one of the few occasions with actual evidence being found at a rather damning spot rather than showing something entirely circumstantial only to have the murderer immediately confess (which always has been a Columbo problem).
So in hindsight I regret a bit not having watched it while Falk was still alive, as the episode is a worthy send-off with redeeming qualities.
The reference to “Prescription: Murder” in CP’s “Nightlife” review made me think of the similarities between Joan Hudson and Vanessa Farrow. I half-expected Columbo to tell Vanessa: “Justin Price made one mistake, and you’re it. You’re the weak link, Miss Farrow.”
I’ve long argued of the value of this final Columbo and what a fitting bookend it is to the series. Much like the first episode, Columbo is exploring his depth as an observer and evaluator of the clues. Furthermore his work in ferreting out the murderer(s) is epic. His final walk-out is how Peter Falk imho would want to finish; at the top, acknowledged by all as the genius who solved the crime. Thanks for this final send-off.
Columbophile, so glad you enjoyed Nightlife so much!
To be honest, I have rarely watched the 1989-2003 episodes. The first Columbo I ever saw was A Matter of Honor in February 1976. I saw several others in reruns that season, and saw most of the 1976-78 seasons in prime time.
Two years later, a network late movie (a different one, CBS) began airing NBC Sunday Mystery Movie episodes on a regular basis (previously, they had aired them occasionally). By that time, I had a VCR. I taped all of the McCloud episodes (that being my favorite), and over time also saw the whole run of the three main NBC Mystery Movies and several lesser ones (Banacek, Hec Ramsey, Cool Million, McCoy, The Snoop Sisters; several others weren’t aired on CBS). This lasted until 1985, when the network started commissioning original series for late night. (The SMM main shows, including Banacek, have turned up on various cable networks.)
But by 1989, I was so busy with other tasks that I almost never spared two hours to watch Columbo, even when the ABC episodes were rerun as a weekly series in 1992.
So, nearly all your reviews of the later series are new to me. I would be very interested in seeing the new shows to find out if I agree with you.
Thank you, sir!
I heartily agree with the Columbophile on this excellent episode, although I’d put it at the top of the comeback episodes, and would rate it with some of the better ‘70s entries. No, it’s not perfect, and yes, it can be picked apart and flaws can be found, as the naysayers here have done, but a pox on the naysayers, says I, as even the acknowledged ‘70s Columbo classics can be picked apart and flaws found, as Columbo exists in its own universe, and has its own realism. For instance, I couldn’t care less if ground-penetrating radar doesn’t actually look like that. Yawn. At any rate, the story holds together well enough for Columbo universe purposes, and all the characters are faultlessly played and the actors all have great chemistry together. A great modernization of a classic show that retains the core signature elements that make it special. I’m so glad Columbo went out on such a high note.
It’s one of many ‘new’ ones I’m happy to watch on repeat.
For comparison there’s not many from the 1976-8 of the ‘old’ Columbo’s I can say that about.
I have pretty much the same reaction, both to this episode and to Columbo Goes to College. The episodes were indeed more tightly written than most in the ABC era, but the perps were just jerks who, for me, were unable to elicit the love/hate feelings I expect to have for the legendary Columbo killers.
I also agree that big/eccentric performances go a long way to papering over the often egregious flaws in some episodes. In addition to Billy Connolly, I’d add Rod Steiger (yes, I know!), Rip Torn, Anthony Zerbe and Fisher Stevens (huh?) to the list. All the Columbos with these actors would likely have been considerably lessened by their absence.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have the scripts that allowed them to rise to rise to the level of a Donald Pleasance, Ruth Gordon or Jack Cassidy, all of whom played their own characters dangerously close to self parody, and all of whom manage to avoid overstepping, some just barely.
Great piece, as always. So, Columbophile, what is the ETA of the companion to your book?
Unknown at this stage, sorry. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
An otherwise mediocre episode made worse by the gratuitous violence at the beginning (notably absent from the original series episodes) and the annoying, repetitive rave music which, thankfully, amounted to a short-lived passing fad, and understandably so.
Feels like you might be bumping ‘Nightlife’ a bit because you’re finally done with this dismal stretch. For me, the value of a Columbo depends a lot on the performance of the villain, and I’m just not seeing it from Rhys here. Even though Billy Connolly’s story was dreadfully written, he, personally, rose to the level I was looking for. (That’s also why I do not rate ‘Columbo Goes to College’ as highly as you do. I would have your 3-6 as my tentative top 4.)
The rave club makes me cringe and I just don’t feel that Columbo is at home in this story.
I do like the ending here. Though the radar imaging feels more like CSI than I’m used to from Columbo, the fish-counting is reasonably old school.
Glenn brings up the CLTN gotcha. This warrants an entirely separate discussion — one that, for me, harkens back to Peter Falk’s autobiography (“Just One More Thing”). For this reason, I’ll post it as a standalone comment, rather than as a reply to Glenn’s.
According to the Falk autobiography, Universal employed a college student in 1991 “to come up with clues” for Columbo by reading “everything in sight — short stories, novels, magazine pieces, court trials, forensic materials.” I’m reasonably sure that CLTN’s fish-to-water ratio gotcha arose just that way — that first, someone read somewhere that “for every inch of fish in the tank, you gotta have one gallon of water.” Maybe it was “Nightlife” episode writer Michael Alaimo; maybe someone else. And only then did Alaimo reverse engineer much of his story, including the name and design of Justin Price’s club, the disposal of Tony Galper’s body, and everything else relevant to this episode’s solution — all back from this one intriguing piece of pet store trivia.
What other explanation is there for Price choosing to put fish tanks in his club’s floor and choosing a tank as the place to hide a corpse? There is none. Nothing else in the story of CLTN offers reasons for his doing so. As a result, the ending comes off as a manufactured contrivance.
Some backwards plotting is inevitable. The exalted “Suitable for Framing” has a decent dose of it. Why does Dale Kingston give Columbo permission to remain in his apartment for as long as he wanted? Why does Kingston unwrap the Degas pastels before loading them into his carrying case? Might it be that otherwise Columbo couldn’t leave his fingerprints on the painting? Of course. But it isn’t as obvious or extensive there as it is here.
Ideally, it’s supposed to work the other way around. The characters, setting, and story should come first, with clever clues then drawn from the characters and setting, from the situation and story. What makes them especially clever is their unseen inevitability — that they are so much a part of the characters and events that they go unnoticed (until our hero notices them).
During the original run of Columbo, we saw many such character-based solutions — gotchas inextricably intertwined with the essence of a principal character: A wine aficionado foiled by an overheated bottle of dessert port (“Any Old Port in a Storm”). A man intolerant of breaches of discipline done in because he spotted a jug of fermenting cider (“By Dawn’s Early Light”). An unrepentant intellectual snob tricked into outshining his “fellow intelligentsia” (“The Bye-Bye Sky Hi IQ Murder Case”). A top photographer knowing how to disprove a reversed enlargement (“Negative Reaction”). A writer, who habitually wrote down all story ideas, memorializing a murder plot told to him five years earlier (“Murder by the Book”). A compulsive movie memorabilia collector saving a souvenir from where he rehearsed a murder (“How to Dial a Murder”). In other words, where the clue couldn’t have been used in any episode but this one.
What we rarely saw in the original run was an episode solved based upon an esoteric piece of specialized knowledge. I’m not referring to something that pervades the entire episode, like permanent versus dissolving suture in “A Stitch in Crime,” or subliminal cuts in “Double Exposure.” Or something known to everyone except Columbo, like how an IBM Selectric typewriter works (“Now You See Him”). How often did some odd fact from an old book swoop in at the end? Perhaps the strain of poison ivy found nowhere in California (“Lovely But Lethal”), or that diamond scratches leave unique prints (“The Conspirators”). It’s no coincidence that these two are considered mediocre gotchas. Even the shoelace bit in “An Exercise in Fatality” is more about human nature than a piece of trivia — how the appearance of a tied shoelace differs depending on whether it’s been tied by the wearer or someone else.
You don’t find human nature in a book: e.g., that you’ll risk using money you shouldn’t possess if it will stop a more serious threat (“Ransom for a Dead Man”); if you dangle the existence of a lost piece of damning evidence before a murderer, he’ll try to find and destroy it (“Death Lends a Hand”); that someone dying slowly will try to leave a clue to his killer’s identity (“Try and Catch Me”). Or the numerous solutions found, not in a book, but in the details of the particular story’s timeline (e.g., “Lady in Waiting”; “Double Shock”; “Publish or Perish”; “Playback”; “Forgotten Lady”; “Identity Crisis”).
To me, that reference in FaIk’s autobiography helps explain Columbo’s 1990’s slide. Reverse engineering stories from collected facts (whether found by a college student reading old magazines or not), reshaped into clues unrelated to the character of the episode’s murderer, was not the way to produce the best Columbo gotchas. That includes the briny solution to this episode.
The slide started with ‘A Matter of Honour’ for me.
“During the original run of Columbo, we saw many such character-based solutions — gotchas inextricably intertwined with the essence of a principal character.”
Was there even one such Fatal Flaw Gotcha in Columbo 2.0? Is a list of “Best 90s Gotchas” even feasible?
At the top, I’d put “Cries Wolf”, “Butterfly”, and….yeah, that’s it. “College” is good, but not original. The rest are mostly CSI-designed for the crime lab (“Agenda”, “Hazardous”, among others), overly contrived (“Jackpot”, “Nightlife”), dubious confessions (“Notes”, “Crown”) or using one suspect against another (“Game”, “Trace”). And yes, the original run had confessions too, but they were at least triggered by a piece of evidence that in the moment convinced the killer, Columbo, and the viewer that the jig was up. (Forget about what the killer would argue in court later on – we don’t get there in the Columboverse).
Ironically, the thing that Peter Falk was most concerned about – getting a good “pop” clue – is what spoiled virtually every episode of New Columbo.
But even the gotchas to “Columbo Cries Wolf” and “Butterfly in Shades of Grey” arose independently from the episode’s story and characters. The beeper bracelets in “Wolf”? William Link told of paying a mystery magazine interviewer $500 for that clue. The cellphone dead zone in “Butterfly”? That was an idea conceived by “Murder, She Wrote” writer Robert Swanson, told to his colleague Peter S. Fischer over lunch, and then plugged by Fischer into the “Butterfly” script.
I’ve written four scripts for my proposed Columbo prequel: “Det. Columbo, NYPD.” (Any TV producers out there?) In each case, the story evolved the same way. Since the series takes place in Manhattan in the late 50’s, I wanted each episode to feature an evocative Manhattan setting from that era. So the setting came first. Then a prominent, perhaps famous, often influential person indigenous to that setting emerged as a prototypical Columbo murderer. Then the “perfect” crime: whom does he kill, how, and why. The clues were the last things to fall into place, often by simply looking at the crime as Columbo might. As for the gotcha, it always had its roots in the core of the murderer’s character. The murderer’s essence. What made him who he is.
I’m not saying there’s no other way to go about it. But shoehorning in some unrelated fact doesn’t seem like a fruitful alternative.
No matter how they got their gotcha’s though, the bracelets in Columbo cries Wolf and the cellphone dead zone in Butterfly in Shades of Grey are definitely related facts to the crime commited (in Butterfly) or to the murderer and his victim (in Wolf).
A thought on the question of failed gotchas raised by Glenn earlier. Your ideas on character-based gotchas make me think that a really failed gotcha would not be something too elaborate to be easily explained or tangential to the plot, but something that actually runs counter to established character traits.
Consider Butterfly. Fielding Chase is obviously a very busy man constantly in contact with lots of people in the course of running his show. That’s why he has a carphone in the first place. Is it conceivable that he never attempted to call somebody from his car in that zone before and not discovered the fact that the area is out of service?
Or take RIP Mrs. Columbo. Vivian Dimitri is an obsessive unbalanced woman, whose whole life revolves around one thing only – revenge. Is it possible for her to be tricked by “that’s not my house” routine? Most likely a person like that would have stalked Columbos for months before setting her plot in motion.
On a lighter note Malibu’s Wayne Jennings probably handled lots of women underwear over the course of his prolific career as a gigolo so you may think that one mistake would actually be the least likely for him to make.
On a different level the whole plot of Married Detective doesn’t make sense if you look at it from character-based point of view. Joan Allenby makes a career out of dealing with peoples sex lives. If there is a person who would totally understand that infidelity in a relationship is a perfectly normal, routine, run of the mill thing, that would be her. Then why the murder? Only because of that cruel “pudding” metaphor our unfortunate victim happens to use? You can work around this inconsistency by really developing her character and giving some background on her relationship with the victim so as to explain why this situation triggered her to such an extent, but we just don’t have it in the script.
All good points. Particularly about Vivian Dimitri. Of course, some are sure to say: (1) Fielding Chase may have experienced the dead zone before, but he’s got a lot on his kind and it’s not something he’s likely to remember; (2) Wayne was probably more of a “taking off” than “putting on” panties expert; and (3) someone else’s problems with an unfaithful lover probably seem more routine than when it happens to you.
But I do like your overall approach to this issue.
Re: RIP, Mrs. Columbo –
I’m going to speculate that writer Peter Fischer’s plotting was hamstrung by the iron-clad dictum that the audience was never going to see Mrs. C. Hence, instead of an up-close-and-personal murder plot (CP’s review suggests staking out the Columbo home and plugging the missus dead), we get the less dramatic, secondhand “Please pass this poison marmalade along to your wife, Lieutenant” plot.
Thank you, good sir, for your superb insights in this actual Columbo swan song – I was less fond overall but you make excellent points about its spirit & vibe. I will be rewatching it anon. Your photo caption commentary is always side-splitting…a great start to my day. Thanks & kudos from New York City!!
There’s quite a lot to like about “Nightlife”, as CP summarizes, and this is a very watchable episode. Matthew Rhys is terrific, putting the 90s casting decisions of stiffs like Greg Evigan, James Read, Andrew Stevens, and David Rasche to shame. The paparazzi killing itself is stylishly envisioned, and the clues pointing to murder make sense without being obvious. Kudos to jettisoning the lame humor, deathly pacing, substandard music choices, doddering Falk mannerisms, and painful filler scenes infecting virtually the entire library of New Columbo. Bold choices all, and they work. And yet…..
….we’re still missing something. Rich hits on it in comments below, and it’s made even worse by the fact that viewers spent the first 58 of the 88 minute runtime getting invested in all the clues and painstaking investigation of the paparazzi murder. Then, it’s all wiped away when Columbo hears about Galpin’s disappearance. Price is nailed for hiding the mobster’s body, but Columbo establishes no real connection of Price to the phony suicide, so Justin would seem to get away with the more heinous crime. Meanwhile, photog Coben, as everyone acknowledged, had many enemies, including members of the mob, who should now be the prime suspects in Coben’s death. The lieutenant is all smiles with the NY gangster at the fade-out, which is a crock.
And the Gotcha…..I’ve watched this explanation multiple times, but I just don’t get it. “Less space, less fish”, sure, makes sense. But so what? Price doesn’t have the same number of fish in each tank, so Columbo thinks he must have dumped Galpin’s body beneath the tank with less fish? What kind of mental leap is that? I would’ve loved to see Columbo getting the radar-survey warrant on that one. “Yes, your honor, there’s a tank that has only 9 fish, but the others have 14! And Galpin didn’t actually check out of his hotel on Monday, because the maid said that he didn’t pee directly on the toilet bowl that day!” While the Columboverse isn’t a world of actual realism, it does at least need plausible realism.
Despite this, I do applaud the back-to-basics approach of this finale, and the most important takeaway is that “Nightlife” wraps up the 69-installment 1968-2003 Columbo Caseload without embarrassment, which is quite a relief considering some of the dreck that’s come before it. We now have concrete proof that for all these years of Columbo 2.0, Peter Falk didn’t need to act like a dotty old man, we didn’t need low-brow yucks with goofy music, we didn’t need D-listers in a poker scene, we didn’t need little mermaids, we didn’t need tuba blowing, we didn’t need Peugeot backfires, we didn’t need Patrick McGoohan writing or directing, we didn’t need rainbow parachute pants, we didn’t need APBs for missing cats, we didn’t need stupid funeral ditties, we didn’t need dirty winks in a porno store, we didn’t need capering about looking for clothing tags, we didn’t need slow car crawls, we didn’t need panty talk, we didn’t need Ed McBain books, we didn’t need ringmaster outfits, we didn’t need guns that say “Bang!”, we didn’t need little toy Columbos…..and we sure didn’t need Shera Danese.
In the end, what we’re left with are the enduring classics and the many missed opportunities for New Columbo.
Come on Glenn, I would hardly call James Read a “stiff” !
But you are definitely right about Matthew Rhys – and a perceptive decision by Peter Falk to insist on natural Welsh accent !
The best TV villains, particularly those going up against Columbo, have to project a strength and intelligence that makes them worthy opponents. A streak of steel and menace in the portrayal further elevates the cat-and-mouse. Critically – and this is most important – we have to feel that the killer is formidable enough to be worthy of Columbo’s time and effort. It should be an almost-equal battle of wits.
With the exceptions of vets like Rip Torn and Faye Dunaway, too many of the New Columbo villains had all the character strength of a wet cheese sandwich. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily terrible actors; as I mentioned in the “Trace of Murder” comments, I enjoyed David Rasche as “Sledgehammer”. And he was a terrible Columbo killer. I have nothing against James Read, but as for his ability to be a strong adversary for Columbo, it was IMHO simply beyond Read to convincingly portray this.
As much as I bemoan Patrick McGoohan’s tone-deafness as a writer/director, McGoohan the actor was an impressive, challenging villain, absolutely one of the best. There’s a reason that he and Robert Culp and Jack Cassidy and Robert Vaughn got call-backs. Is there a first-time New Columbo actor-villain who you really would have wanted to see again?
The classic Columbo villains weren’t only formidable adversaries, they all considered themselves vastly superior to Columbo by dint of their wealth, celebrity status, social standing, access to power, or any combination thereof. As William Link admitted in an interview, “We played the class card, and it worked for us.”
But the 90’s Columbos strayed from that. It would crop up occasionally, but not as regularly as before. Why? I think it was the fear that the Columbo myth — a lone (for the most part), unarmed, somewhat shabby detective outwitting the high and mighty, so certain that their crimes or coverups were foolproof — was too divorced from reality for modern audiences. So many 90’s Columbos either played the old formula with a comical wink to the audience disclaiming that “we know that you know we’re not being serious”; or tried to make the villains more relatable by substituting an Everyman for the elites from the past: a realtor, a dentist, a gigolo, college students, a jeweler, a gambler. Justin Price fits squarely in that latter column.
It certainly wasn’t my preference, but who am I to say that, from a ratings perspective, they were wrong? Replicating the old formula exactly, even as Columbo aged (and an older Columbo was the creators’ original conception, hence Bing Crosby as their first casting choice) probably would have thrilled me — but I’m not exactly TV’s target demographic. In fact, no one who remembers the first-run broadcast of “Ransom for a Dead Man,” as I do, qualifies for that title.
So, yes, Justin Price was no Ken Franklin or Mark Halperin or Lyle Rumford or Dale Kingston or Bart Kepple, but who’s to say how the 18-35 set would have responded to those guys if they’d first been aired 20 years later.
I think the class card was very evident in the seventies. (All the Starsky and Hutch villains wore suits.)
Certainly, no new Columbo actor again, apart from Rip Torn ! But I would loved to have seen classic period stars like Robert Conrad and Ross Martin again.
My defence of James Read is that I liked the understated style – as would befit a dentist perhaps. This is why I find comic actors, like Billy Connolly, unsuitable for crime dramas.
I liked this episode better than most latter era Columbos. With two homicides and two suspects and oh, Columbo isn’t the only one investigating, there’s enough going on plot-wise to avoid the usual need for filler. Columbo’s work has been compared to peeling an onion, and here the layers come off crisply and logically, while the tension of the suspects ratchets upward. That was satisfying to watch.
The ending though is a disappointment. Columbo doesn’t really like the nightlife of course, and it’s completely out of character that he would show up on opening night with a search warrant that could be executed anytime. The crowd is out of character too. Rave goers aren’t known for their pro-police attitudes, but they are strangely quiet and cooperative for Columbo. The scanner used to locate the body is straight out of science fiction. There is such a thing as ground penetrating radar – I once watched two people use it to find unmarked graves in an old cemetery, but it bears no resemblance to what’s shown here. The output of ground penetrating radar is ripples or waves to show if the ground has been disturbed. You certainly do not get a scan or a body.
Great review. Fitting that we agree 100% for the first time ever – LOL!!!
Yes. It’s a very good episode that I feel has been underrated – simply because of the sequence of poor episodes before it (Ashes to Ashes, excepted).
Great shame, we couldn’t get more of this new gritty no-nonsense Columbo (he reminded me of the detective we got in my favorite episode ‘A Friend in Deed’).
I don’t have it quite as high in the ‘new’ episodes – but that’s because I rate four or five of these highly as well.
Overall, the new ones were not the disaster as some would have it believed. Half of them are in top half overall list ranking. And I think that ‘From A Matter of Honour’ onwards, the quality of episodes has largely stayed the same, i.e. a few great ones, but plenty of ordinary ones.
Nice to know we see eye to eye at long last 🙌🏼
Bravo, CP, for finishing the job in style. It’s no small feat — 69 detailed, comprehensive episode reviews — and you pulled the task off brilliantly. I didn’t agree with everything you wrote, but no one can disagree with the ardor, seriousness of purpose, and good humor with which you tackled this labor of love.
As to “Columbo Likes the Nightlife,” it’s notable that in this final case, once again, Columbo solves the wrong death. Justin and Vanessa didn’t murder Tony Galper. They (or at least he) murdered Linwood Coben. But Columbo solves the Galper case, not the Coben murder. It’s like with Nicholas Frame and Lillian Stanhope (“Dagger of the Mind”). Sir Roger’s death wasn’t a murder; Tanner’s was — but Columbo solves only Sir Roger’s. Ditto “Lovely But Lethal.” Viveca Scott didn’t necessarily intend to kill Karl Lessing, but unequivocally murdered Shirley Blane intentionally — the crime Columbo doesn’t solve. And in “A Deadly State of Mind,” Karl Donner’s death was justified while Nadia Donner’s was cold-blooded murder — but only Karl’s is solved.
I might add “A Friend in Deed” to that list. Mark Halperin didn’t murder Janice Caldwell; Hugh Caldwell did. Halperin murdered Margaret. But Columbo arrests Halperin when Janice’s jewels were found under his mattress. (At least, when this gotcha was reused in “Columbo Goes to College,” it proved the correct crime.) “Requiem for a Falling Star” and “A Stitch in Crime” both raise similar issues. Did Columbo solve Jean Davis’ murder or Al Cumberland’s? (Is “Jean knew” enough?) Did Columbo solve the murders of Sharon Martin or Harry Alexander, or only the attempted murder of Dr. Heideman? (Circumstantially maybe, but not definitively.) And in “The Most Dangerous Match,” did Columbo solve a murder by drug injection, or only a non-fatal incident with a trash compactor?
So “Columbo Likes the Nightlife” continues a well-established Columbo tradition. An unfortunate tradition, but at least one with a long track record.
Rich, very true. And dramatically, that makes sense because Columbo solves the crime that viewers have spent much of the episode getting involved with, even if the other murders are unresolved. My issue with “Nightlife” is that we spend so much time with Coben’s murder, it gets brushed off way too easily in the last 30 minutes, and there’s not a lot of dramatic satisfaction for us….well, for me anyway.
Congratulations CP, what a milestone this is, having reviewed all 69 episodes!
Thank you for all the enjoyment for the past eight years. You made this website into my favourite pub, a place where I’ll always return to and where I’ll always be a regular. Cheers, on your good health sir!
Just one more thing: there’s the review itself I entirely forgot to comment on. I love how the final episode managed to impress you this way, even using the words ‘kind of a revelation’. I’ve always liked Nightlife myself and though I wouldn’t put it above Agenda for Murder, I can see why you ranked it so highly.