Remember the "Columbo" TV series?

For no good reason, I added the old TV series "Columbo" to my Netflix queue and watched the first of the long running series.  The first one aired in 1968, the year I graduated from high school.  Of course, I remember watching "Columbo" on TV but not until the mid 1970's or later. It seems it was on until the early 1990's, which seems difficult to believe, but hey, IMDB knows better than me!

Anyway, I watched the first episode tonight and while it was very enjoyable, it was a bit simplistic.  For those of us who have dozens and dozens of "Law and Order" and "CSI" and "NCIS" under our viewing belt, this "original" detective genre-making series is so very silly in so many ways.  A crime is committed in an office that has been tossed, but the next day it is totally put back in order and is not a crime scene, anyone can walk in and wander around!  A body is found on the front lawn of a suspect's house and yet anyone can walk into the house and again wander around!  Perhaps that yellow crime scene tape had not been invented in 1968.  Maybe no one knew about tampering with evidence or contaminating a scene back in those dark ages.  I laughed a lot.

But still, it was good and entertaining.  The villain was very villainous and the women were very gullible and Columbo was his irascible self, much as I remembered.

Here's a cool thing:  the credits ran and this one episode was directed by Steven Spielberg!  And written by Steven Bochco who we all know wrote tons of TV shows like "L.A. Law" and "NYPD Blue" and the awesome "Hill Street Blues" and "Doogie Howser" and many more. Amazing.

So, Columbo is great when you don't want to think, you just want the show to be given to you on a paper plate with plastic forks and then you can toss the entire thing into the dumpster, after consuming it and feeling entirely satisfied with what you got for that one meal.  It's just like that. Only a tiny bit better.  And the episodes are about 90 minutes long, so you can only watch one unless you start early (which I rarely do) and when it's over, it's time for bed.

And off I go.