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.

While not the first to do it, Columbo is the best-known example of the "howcatchem" mystery series, inspiring series like Elsbeth or Poker Face, where an eccentric character pieces together the clues ...

From 1968 through 1978, and then again from 1989 to 2003, the rich and powerful, the haughty and the vain, all feared one man; a man who looked like he had forgotten to comb his hair and couldn’t ...