Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

Columbo: Seasons 1-7 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov December 21, 2023

Columbo: Seasons 1-7 (1968-1978) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The supplemental features on the release include optional music & effects tracks for each episode and a shorter cut of Nicholas Colasanto's Etude in Black. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for each episode. Region-A "locked".

No watch, but it must be time to go to work again.

Even though he is one of many in Los Angeles who do the same work he does, Lieutenant Columbo (Peter Falk) is different. He looks different. Most of the time, Columbo looks like a man who was forced out of bed after a long night of hard drinking at the local bar that ended up with a quick brawl in front of his home. Columbo talks differently. He uses simple words to construct simple sentences whose message cannot be misinterpreted. But often, while finishing his sentences, his mind abruptly veers off in an unexpected direction and he struggles to complete them. Columbo works differently. He trusts his instincts more than he does lab evidence, and he prefers to improvise rather than follow protocol. Columbo drives a clunker and smokes cheap cigars, the kind that is always heavily discounted because they are very hard to sell.

Columbo takes on cases that send him all across Los Angeles. Sometimes he ends up in the city’s wealthiest areas, sometimes he hits the gutter where life is as cheap as his awful cigars. Crime does not discriminate and neither does Columbo. He does not mind leaving Los Angeles, either. He could go to London, or Acapulco, and be just as effective -- and perplexing to his foreign colleagues -- as he is at home. Columbo loves his job, but he is not obsessed with it. He is good at what he does, and the job pays enough for him and his wife to make ends meet.

Columbo was launched with two pilot episodes, Prescription Murder (1968) and Ransom for a Dead Man (1971), and ran until 2003. However, NBC canceled the show in 1978, and ABC relaunched it in 1989. Falk stayed with his iconic character for as long as he could and did very well, but most of the latter episodes of the show did not replicate the charisma and casual wit of the early episodes.

Kino Lorber’s twenty-disc box set features the first seven seasons of Columbo, whose episodes have been recently remastered in 4K by Universal. The running times of the episodes from each season vary. The shortest ones are approximately seventy minutes long, while the longest ones are approximately ninety minutes long. One episode, “Etude in Black”, is presented in two cuts.

Some of the directors who worked on the early episodes of Columbo include Steven Spielberg (“Murder by the Book”), Bernard Kowalski (“Death Lands a Hand”), Boris Sagal (“The Greenhouse Jungle”), Hy Averback (“A Stitch in Crime”), Ben Gazzara (“Troubled Waters”), James Frawley (“Try and Catch Me”), and Jonathan Demme (“Murder Under Glass”). Falk directed one episode as well (“Blueprint for Murder”).

Despite contributions from different directors, writers, cinematographers, and editors, the quality of the material from the first seven seasons is consistently excellent. For example, the humor is just as witty in the early episodes as it is in the latter episodes, and Falk does not alter the rhythm of its delivery. This said, in some of the latter episodes the casting choices become a bit more intriguing, so occasionally the suspense and drama reveal different qualities. In “Swan Song”, for instance, Falk meets Johnny Cash, whose iconic personality immediately forces Falk to appropriately adjust his performance.

The list of iconic Hollywood stars and great character actors that make an appearance, or often multiple appearances, in Columbo is massive. Amongst them are Ray Milland, Vincent Price, Robert Vaughn, Dean Stockwell, William Shatner, Leslie Nielsen, John Cassavetes, Martin Landau, Ida Lupino, Donald Pleasence, Patrick McGoohan, and Suzanne Pleshette.

Each episode of the seven seasons in the twenty-disc box set comes with an optional music & effects lossless track.

Columbo: Seasons 1-7 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Columbo: Seasons 1-7 arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Despite some minor fluctuations, the overall quality of the episodes from the first seven seasons of the iconic TV show is very good. All episodes have been remastered in 4K by Universal, but they have not been fully restored in 4K, which is why the fluctuations remain. What does this mean exactly? Some episodes reveal density fluctuations that affect delineation and depth, so the consistency of the visuals is not the same across the board. Some episodes simply look a little healthier than the rest because time has been a little more forgiving to them. While very good and very convincing, color reproduction is not identical in each episode either. To be clear, I do not refer to lensing preferences that affect color temperature. In select episodes, color reproduction -- both in terms of saturation levels and balance -- is simply a bit better. The discrepancies are particularly easy to spot in darker areas with different ranges of nuances, but elsewhere the primary settings can reveal the shift in quality as well. In some episodes, grain exposure is a bit more pleasing. It appears that some work was done to rebalance content that may have looked uneven, even rough, but I did not see any traces of problematic degraining/denoising work introduced by automatic settings. Image stability is either very good or excellent. Finally, various episodes reveal tiny nicks, blemishes, and even a few scratches. You do not have to worry, they are never distracting. However, a proper 4K restoration would have eliminated all of them. To sum it all up, while not perfect, I think that the content that is gathered in this big box set looks very, very good in high-definition. My score is 4.25/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Columbo: Seasons 1-7 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Each episode comes with an English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided and can be accessed via the main menu.

I mentioned elsewhere that the first seven episodes of Columbo have been remastered in 4K, but not fully restored in 4K. You will find more evidence confirming that it is so in the audio department. Indeed, while most of the lossless 2.0 tracks are very good, possibly even excellent, a few reveal minor and bigger issues. The minor issues range from balance and stability inconsistencies that most viewers will not even notice. The bigger issues range from background hiss to noticeable buzz that affects clarity and dynamic stability. The most obvious such issues that I encountered are in the second half of Steven Spielberg's episode "Murder by the Book". I am being very honest when I write that I did not find them distracting, but a proper 4K restoration, which would have included complete remastering audio work, would have addressed these anomalies. I did not encounter audio dropouts to report in our review.

Columbo: Seasons 1-7 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Music & Effects Track - each episode of the seven seasons in the twenty-disc box set comes with an optional music & effects lossless track.

• Etude in Black - a shorter version of Nicholas Colasanto's Etude in Black. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles. (71 min).

• Booklet - a 20-page illustrated guide for the multiple episodes in the first seven seasons of Columbo.

Columbo: Seasons 1-7 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Peter Falk's Columbo is one of the all-time greatest American TV characters, and this is why he will always be remembered. Throughout his career, Falk appeared in some pretty special feature films and played other memorable characters too, but it is not an exaggeration to write that he was born to play the odd lieutenant from LA. There is some incredible talent around Falk as well, so there is top-quality acting practically everywhere in Columbo. While I had a very difficult time keeping up with other viewing duties over the last couple of weeks, I had a blast going through the newly remastered episodes of the first seven seasons of Columbo. Some things could have been done differently to make them appear even more attractive, but I could not be happier to have Kino Lorber's massive box set in my library. Hopefully, while we are waiting for the remaining episodes to arrive, Banacek and McCloud are being considered for similar releases. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.