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25 June 2011 12:17 AM, PDT | Obsessed with Film | See recent Obsessed with Film news »

In The Kingdom Of The Blind …

Back in the seventies, my grandad used to love watching Columbo. He loved the way he missed nothing and always managed to get the suspect to tie themselves in knots. “He’s a clever one, that Columbo”, he told me. Of course, my grandad had never heard of Peter Falk. Columbo was real to him and, in a way, he was right to think so.

Typecasting is a common fear among TV actors – although, of course, it’s something they all secretly pray for – but there are few who have deserved it and embraced it as much as Falk. William Link and Richard Levinson may have created Columbo, but Falk owned him.

It was not inevitably so. Falk wasn’t even the first person to play him. The character first appeared in the person of one Bert Freed as part of a 1960 TV show called The Chevy Mystery Show, »

- John Ashbrook

1 item from 2011