Columbo- the coolest TV detective ever?

tech77 wrote: »

Just watching a Columbo repeat there and can't help thinking- man, Columbo is the coolest fcuker ever:

A facade of simplicity hiding incredible astuteness..
He's never wrong.
He's ridiculously self-assured and single-minded.
He's perenially underestimated.
He's totally
unpretentious.

Or is he just a smart ar$e?

You don't really get characters like him nowadays.
OK you got guys like Horatio Caine, but you get the impression with him he thinks of himself as some kinda deity- not so with Columbo.


So:
1) any fans of Columbo here and
2) who is the coolest TV detective ever?

He was brilliant, any man who can catch killers without carrying a gun has to be good

article on Columbo by Declan Lynch in the Sindo last year.

"Watching Columbo last night one thing bothered me.It seems that little attention had been paid to the wider implication of Columbo's career for American society in general, not just in the seventies and eighties, but up to the present day.
After all,over the course of several series in which he solved numerous fiendishly-clever murders, Columbo put almost an entire class of people behind bars.
There are no more sophisticates living freely on the West coast of America, because Columbo found them all out.There are no more suave fellows wearing cravats, no more connoisseurs of fine wine, no more lovers of the arts living in tastefully-designed villas,because they were all in fact, murderers who would surely have got away with it, if Columbo hadn't been on the case.But he was, and so they were screwed. Not only was this entire breed rendered almost extinct by the efforts of one man, their like will not be seen again. Few of them seemed to have children back then , for fear the demands of the little ones might disrupt their elegant lifestyles.And they're unlikely to be having any now, as the few of them who survived live in captivity. And since many of them murdered their equally sophisticated wives,it's as if a whole species has vanished within a generation,without anyone noticing it, let alone deeming it worthy of comment or analysis.
They will talk about the general coarsening of American culture, oblivious to the fact that it could hardly be any other way., due to the disappearance of the few people in America who had taste and a bit of olde-worlde style, who were fastidious in all things, even murder. Especially murder.
Columbo was also subversive in that he challenged the liberal orthodoxy which decrees that the justice system of America is no more than a form of social engineering whereby great swathes of the underclass are incarcerated.
Uniquely Columbo totally ignored crimes committed by the disadvantaged and the down trodden.So American could feel comfortable with itself, enjoying this illusion that the law also applies top the upper classes. But that's one for the bearded sociologists. Let us spare a thought this morning for all those brillantined ponces who were undone by the little man in the dirty raincoat.They were not nice people, but did they deserve to be virtually wiped out?"

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055547956

Only a few weeks ago I came to the same conclusion