The thing about episodes of "Columbo" is that they're kind of like slices of pizza: even when they're not that great, they're still pretty wonderful. There really aren't any god-awful episodes of ...

Lieutenant Columbo, played with average Joe charm and unshowy, easy-to-miss dexterity by Peter Falk, is more than meets the eye — to the bad guys, not us, because we know how things will turn out.

From the moment he shuffled onto television screens in a rumpled raincoat, cigar dangling from his fingers, Columbo-in the ...