Like many popular crime TV series, Columbo succeeded because of, rather than despite, its formulaic structure. Fans endured waits lasting anywhere from weeks to years between episodes for the chance to see Peter Falk wield his fake humility against the overweening ego of a colorful guest star, pop up at awkward and arguably humorous moments to rattle the killer, and slowly advance his case (sometimes verrrrry slowly during those 95-minute episodes), culminating in the inevitable “gotcha!” moment. Each of these elements constitutes a factor in the rating/ranking of a Columbo: how effective was the guest star? How funny were the Columbo moments? How great was the “gotcha?”

On rare occasions, Columbo deviated from its formula, with mixed results. There was “Final Salute to the Commodore,” which eschewed the inverted structure and gave us a genuine whodunnit; sadly, most fans regard this experiment with disdain. After the series moved to ABC, more attempts were made to play around with the basic concept of the series – and that is what we find in today’s first spotlighted episode, “Columbo Cries Wolf.”

At first glance, this barely qualifies as a distaff episode, as its main guest villain is played by former soap actor Ian Buchanan – but more about that later. Buchanan stars as Sean Brantley, a sort of Hugh Hefner figure who lives in a huge mansion with loads of scantily clad cuties and a pack of llamas, where he hosts lavish pool parties and runs his men’s magazine empire with his business partner and lover, Dian Hunter (Deirdre Hall, famous for playing Marlena Evans on Days of Our Lives for a hundred years.) But all is not hunky-dory in this male paradise: Dian confronts Sean over his philandering and tells him she plans to sell her share of the empire to Sir Harry Matthews, a British magnate (Alan Scarfe), which would destroy Sean’s high-flying playboy lifestyle. 

Dian heads off to London to complete the sale, but she never makes it to the meeting. Whereupon Sir Harry contacts his friend at New Scotland Yard (we never see the cop, but I believe it’s the character who was played by Bernard Fox in “Dagger of the Mind”) and asks him to push the Los Angeles police to investigate Dian’s disappearance. This, of course, leads to Columbo heading his decrepit Peugeot up the impressive driveway of Sean’s estate and spending 80 minutes of the episode trying to prove that Brantley murdered Dian, despite his alibi of being surrounded by babes in the middle of a midnight pool party and the lack of a corpus delicti.  

Even the most casual viewer might be aware that something is different here from the start. For once, we do not bear witness to every detail of a killer’s plan. We know that something’s up, but it all shakes out a bit differently. We see Dian drive off in a limo and have her chauffeur stop at her favorite L.A. eatery to pick up some food for the plane. While he’s in the restaurant kitchen, the chauffeur hears a shot outside. He rushes to check but sees no person or other car near the limo. He goes back in, collects the Scottish salmon, and returns to the car. When he checks the rear-view mirror, he sees that his passenger has put up the glass between the front and back seat and that she is now dressed in a heavy coat, scarf, hat and dark glasses. 

This leaves viewers to fill in the details, and as Columbo investigates, he essentially checks all the boxes on our own theory of what happened: Dian was shot by Brantley’s accomplice – probably his girlfriend Tina (Rebecca Staab) – who then hid the body in a convenient back seat trunk, assumed Dian’s identity, flew to London, changed clothes and disappeared. Columbo finds clues to support that the woman who exited the car and waited in the airport was not Dian, and in the alley outside the restaurant he finds a shell casing; each of these serves as evidence that we fans are clever, too – perhaps we don’t even need Columbo!

It’s hard to go past this point without spoiling everything. On the surface this seems in every other way like an ordinary episode, except that this week’s guest villain is so abominably obnoxious, as is everyone around him, that I actually feel for Columbo and can’t wait to see him wipe the perpetual smirk off everyone’s face. I was also prepared to argue that this doesn’t rank much as a distaff episode: Staab does little more than look pretty throughout the episode, and I don’t think she utters more than a half dozen lines. 

What I will say is that, in the end, this is more of a distaff episode than you think, and what happens doesn’t feel good but, in the Columbo scheme of things, is quite clever. I think it struggles in the last ten minutes to reestablish the “typical” series format, and the results undo the accomplishments of all that has gone before and require such intense stupidity on the part of Brantley and his accomplice that Columbo’s “gotcha” moment – which literally involves the word “gotcha!” – feels contrived as hell. I suppose the writers had written themselves into a corner or chickened out . . . or just thought they were being clever. And maybe in the days of awful shoulder pads and Playboy madness, they were being clever. 

At least, in the final moments, Buchanan’s smarmy smirk is wiped off his face!

Another format shift of a sort occurs two episodes later in “Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo. The story is told almost entirely in flashback (that “almost” amounts to my only real quibble with this episode), and the point of origin is strikingly personal, as all the main characters are gathered at the grave of Lieutenant Columbo’s wife! 

Now, it’s impossible in hindsight to take this tragedy seriously, given that a few years later an even bigger tragedy occurred on television – the unauthorized, ill-planned “sequel” to this series called Mrs. Columbo. Unlike the Lieutenant’s wife here, that one died an ignominious death and garnered a whole bunch of “I told you so”s from creators Link and Levinson and Peter Falk himself. I imagine even Columbo fans watching “R.I.P., Mrs. C.” for the first time were smart enough to see this as maybe Columbo’s biggest “gotcha” of them all. 

But it’s all handled so expertly that we’re willing to go along for the ride, and that is largely due to the guest performance of Helen Shaver as deranged killer Vivian Dimitri. A chief highlight for me of watching all these episodes has been the chance to revisit the careers of some of my favorite actresses of the late 20^th century: Susan Clark, Trish Van Devere, and now Shaver, who was perfectly lovely in the film Desert Hearts and perfectly creepy in the horror film The Believers. 

Here, Shaver is lovely, creepy and heart-breaking as Vivian, whose adored husband suffered a fatal heart attack while serving a term in prison. Viv blames Columbo, who arrested him, and her old friend and new realtor boss, Charlie Chambers (Edward Winter), who ratted on the husband for a chance to snap up his wife as a prize. For the first time in my viewing, we have a murderer who is definitely mentally ill, and that gooses the suspense here. True, Charlie’s murder plays out like a typical case for Columbo, where the killer plans a complex crime and manages to provide themselves with a perfect alibi. What works so well here is how Shaver plays the alibi and how Columbo uncovers her not because of a stupid error but because circumstances outside of Vivian’s control manage to blow up her story. (There’s a nice moment when Columbo walks along the pier with his sergeant and, step-by-step, proves that the victim had died earlier than the “evidence” suggested.)

The elements that make this episode deviate from the typical truly matter here. Vivian is not merely trying to establish her innocence; in fact, her larger plan is one of the most diabolical we have seen. She wants to murder Mrs. Columbo and make the Lieutenant suffer as she has suffered. To do that, she is even willing to expose her crime and spend the rest of her life in jail, if only for the chance to look her adversary in the face and crow about how she has ruined his life. 

To that end, it really doesn’t matter that Columbo becomes increasingly aware of Vivian’s motives. What does matter is what he’s going to do about it. And this raises the stakes of the game considerably. We know, of course, that there will be the inevitable showdown where Columbo comes out on top, but this time it’s going to be personal as hell, and that makes us watch carefully right up to the end. It leads to one of the best final confrontations of the series.Yes, this is another long episode, but Shaver fills her moments with great pathos, and for once the stuff going on with Columbo doesn’t feel like padding because we’re more invested in his private life than ever before. As a result, this has to rank as one of the best of the bunch. But next time, I fear, we’re in for a downturn. Both our main villains are men which, sight unseen, makes me seriously question their inclusion on our list. But before I go off half-cocked, let’s first see if they’re any good.