Columbo’s greatest mystery: why do Gen Zers adore him?

The year’s biggest mystery wears a big flapping trenchcoat and hang-dog smile. America has gone crazy for a retro-thriller inspired by a 50-year-old cop show – but why? That’s the puzzler presented by Poker Face, the new hit from Knives Out creator Rian Johnson. The series, which has just had its finale in the US – a UK air date has yet to be announced – stars Natasha Lyonne as a flinty sleuth and has captivated viewers with its old-school mystery-of-the-week format.

But along with transfixing audiences in 2023, Poker Face doubles as a love letter to rumpled Seventies whodunnit Columbo, of the underdog grin and dusty overcoat. Johnson has explicitly name-dropped Columbo as an inspiration. “I binged Columbo, like many people, over the pandemic. I think that was just something we all decided collectively to do,” he told the Ringer when explaining the origins of Poker Face.

He’s gone one better than simply binging, however. In Lyonne’s character, Charlie Cale, he has created a modern-day version of Peter Falk’s craggy detective. Just like Columbo, Charlie, a jaded casino worker, is a walking mess. She's disorganised, rambling, with tatty dress sense and just-out-bed hair. Her personality has the texture of three-day-old cigarette ash. At first glance, this is not the sort of person anyone would take seriously. But here's the rub: as with Columbo, the shambolic exterior conceals a sharp mind (unlike Columbo, she also has a quasi-supernatural ability to detect lies).

Poker Face takes inspiration from Columbo in another way too. The “mystery of the week” format has allowed Johnson tap a rich seam of guest stars – including Chloë Sevigny, Adrian Brody and Nick Nolte. This self-consciously echoes Columbo, where Leonard Nimoy, Faye Dunaway and John Cassavetes were among the A-listers passing through. And who could forget the episode in which Johnny Cash played a famous country-gospel singer whose latest project is…murder.

Johnson’s juggernaut isn’t merely a valentine to Columbo. It also draws on his love for Kojak, the Rockford Files and Magnum PI (which he likewise binged through lockdown). But it is undeniably indebted to Falk – down to the “reveal’ of the killer at the top of each hour. It’s a gender-swapped cover version, Lyonne’s rasping Charlie replacing Falk’s mumbling Columbo.

Even before Poker Face, Falk and his alter-ego were having a moment. As Johnson says, over the lockdown a new generation – several generations in fact – have discovered the thrills of Columbo. Gen Z is especially gung-ho.

“I’m a Gen Z er hooked on Columbo – ask me anything”, went a popular thread on website Reddit. “I started watching Columbo with my dad in the fall of 2016,” began a think-piece in pop culture site Paste headlined “Columbo Is a Gift that Will Never Stop Giving”. “The long-running show about an irascible detective hits all the right pleasure centres,” agreed American GQ in a mediation on Colombo as Gen Z lockdown phenomenon.

This love for Falk has been expressed in a very 21st-century fashion. The actor, who passed away in 2011 at age 83, has inspired the bizarre new trend of “Columboposting”. It started with the Twitter feed “Smaller Columbo”, which posted musings from the perspective of Columbo, but imagined he was three inches high (don’t try to make sense of it – it will just make your brain cramp).

Next, actor Gianni Matragrano began to upload clips in which he quoted “Small Columbo” – using Peter Falk’s voice and mannerisms. Then, Gen Zers started posting videos in which Columbo investigated mysteries to do with anime, gender fluidity and Japanese video games. “Columboposting” had been born. Inevitably, someone discovered a Japanese take on Columbo called Columbo of Shinano, about a detective obsessed with Falk to the point of aping his dress sense. It, too, steamrolled social media.

But what is it about the series, which ran in its original incarnation from 1971 to 1989 (and which then spawned several TV movies), that makes it so appealing to modern audiences?

“Most shows from the Seventies were of their time—the plots, themes, music, pace, visual effects, characters. And consequently most now seem dated,” says David Koenig, author of Shooting Columbo The Lives & Deaths of TV's Rumpled Detective.

“The primary appeal of Columbo has always been the character and its embodiment by Peter Falk… which are timeless.”

That unhurried pace is partly because this is a whodunnit where we know who did it. Each episode starts with a “cold open” in which we observe the crime as it is committed. In the very first regular season episode – directed by an up-and-comer named Steven Spielberg – we see Jack Cassidy (father of David) as a playboy novelist who lures his writing partner to a cabin – and then shoots him (he’s fed up splitting those royalties cheques). From there, it’s a delicious amble as Falk wanders through and puts together the pieces.

“The pace was intentionally slow, the mystery format inverted, giving Falk time to let the character flourish,” says David Koenig. “There’s never any hurry in Columbo—and what a welcome change that is from today.”

Columbo’s charms were bound up with those of the slouching Falk. The show typically pits the hangdog detective against what we would today call one-percenters – mega-rich who, of course, underestimate this disorganised cop. Anyone who has ever been looked down on will immediately be in Columbo’s corner.

In fact, those who worked on the show – Jonathan Demme also directed an episode while the writers’ room included future Hill Street Blues creator Steven Bochco – said it was often hard to see where Falk ended and Columbo began. The clothes the character wore – the scrunched tie, the shabby raincoat– were the actor’s own. Falk had the same bumbling qualities that defined the detective: he was forever misplacing his car keys, he couldn’t change a lightbulb.

Yet, just like Columbo, those dishevelled trappings concealed a shrewd interior. Falk would re-write scripts and ad-lib dialogue. By season two, he was essentially running the series and had the power of veto over guest stars.

That cunning quality was reflected in Columbo’s sleuthing style. He had an eye for details that other cops could miss. Moreover, his everyman aspect would often wrong-foot the villain. He’d dupe them into giving away too much – and then force the suspect out in the open with that final killer question. Or, as he would say, “... just one more thing…”

“Columbo was not in the least bit glamorous with his crumpled raincoat and shuffling gait and the typical crimes he investigated were committed by smart, glamorous people who thought themselves above the law, says Oliver Colling, hosts of podcast My 70s Childhood.

“His brain was razor-sharp and he was able to pick up all of the clues to nail the villain. The biggest departure from the usual cop shows was that Columbo always began by showing the murdered committing the crime so there was never a whodunnit to solve – rather a “how will Lt Frank Columbo find a way to trip up the wrongdoer?” Turning the genre on its head made the show truly memorable.”

Columbo may have been an everyman but the show made Falk a star. He’d grown up in a hard-knock neighbourhood of the Bronx, losing an eye at age three to retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer. The artificial eye he had for the rest of his life was the source of Columbo’s trademark squint.

His first ambition was not to be a star but a spook. However, his application to join the CIA was rejected because he’d joined a trade union during a stint in the merchant navy – which made him a communist in the eyes of the US Government. So he turned to the stage and Off-Broadway productions of Don Juan and the Iceman Cometh.

It may seem preordained that Falk would slip on Columbo’s tatty overcoat. He actually came to the character late. Columbo, created by producers Richard Levinson and William Link, had first been played by Bert Freed in the anthology series Chevy Mystery Show and then on Broadway by Thomas Mitchell (and two-time Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actor).

Falk, however, saw something of himself in the character and lobbied to play him in the TV movie Prescription: Murder in 1968 (adapted from Mitchell’s Broadway play). Levinson and Link had wanted Bing Crosby for the part. When he proved unavailable they relented and cast Falk.

Prescription: Murder proved a hit. A second “one-off” followed in 1971 and then, the first season proper (kicking off with that episode directed by 24-year-old Spielberg).

Falk didn’t have to feel his way into the character. An underdog himself, he understood Columbo from the start. “Columbo has a genuine mistiness about him. It seems to hang in the air … [and] he's capable of being distracted …,” he said.  “Columbo is an a__-backwards Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had a long neck, Columbo has no neck; Holmes smoked a pipe, and Columbo chews up six cigars a day.”

It’s that hunched, wily quality that made Columbo so compelling – and continues to do so to this day. “Falk’s personal charisma translates effortlessly to the screen and doesn’t rely on styling or clothing that would have been in fashion at the time and less so today. Additionally the show is not dated by attitudes or by reliance on technology or techniques that would be considered obsolete by a modern audience. It has a timeless quality that makes it as relatable in 2023 as it was in 1973,” says Iain Bartholomew, co-host of the Columbo Podcast.

Revealing the killer up front was an inspired choice, says Bartholomew. We’ve all had that experience of watching a thriller and feeling we can’t quite keep up. It’s been a long day, we have things on our minds. And now a TV show is asking us to take notes and put together a narrative jigsaw? There is none of that with Columbo – or, its spiritual heir, Poker Face. Put it that way and it’s no mystery that they have gone down so well with Millennials and Gen Zers.

“The format of the show, which Poker Face has adopted and developed…. means the viewer is not made to feel foolish or inferior by the mystery,” says Bartholomew. “Knowing from the start who the perpetrator is means audiences can follow the investigation without worrying about twists or reveals they didn’t see coming. This is likely also a reason the show is a family favourite, with generations watching together leading to a nostalgic attraction for viewers as they get older. For a show that deals primarily in murder, the lack of violence and adult themes or language makes it accessible to people of all ages.”