When it comes to Mrs. Columbo, we can play Good Idea/Bad Idea (you Animaniacs fans will understand the reference)...
BAD IDEA: The series in the first place! Columbo's wife should've stayed an imaginary character. Mrs. Columbo running around all over the place uncovering murders in her charming suburban neighborhood? She was better arguing with her hubby over the phone over what he should pick up at the supermarket on the way home or whatever, not getting in over her head as an amateur sleuth.
BAD IDEA: The casting of Kate Mulgrew. No disrespect to her as an actress, but she was too young and glamorous for the role. The producers wanted someone like Maureen Stapleton. One critic thought Brenda Vaccaro would have been better. Either one would have been a much better fit than Mulgrew.
GOOD IDEA: Pitting her against two of the better Columbo villains to start the series. In the first episode (pilot), it's Robert Culp, who hires Frederic Forrest to kill his wife. Unfortunately, Forrest also winds up killing Culp, which takes him out of the rest of the film, and now Kate has to deal with a maniacal killer who has no choice but to silence her. It goes from being a serviceable mystery to Panic Room at the drop of a hat.
The second episode features one of the better 'one-shot' killers from Columbo, Donald Pleasance, playing a very proper Englishman, an English police officer who turns out to be a killer on both sides of the ocean (albeit an unintentional killer in the crime in the Mrs. Columbo episode). Kate Mulgrew at least got decent guest actors to play off in those episodes.
GOOD IDEA: When the series returned for a second season, they dropped the Columbo angle and made her a divorcee, reverting to her maiden name of Callahan.
BAD IDEA: Bringing it back for a second season! Why couldn't they have just given up the ghost after the first five episodes?
It should be noted that this series was produced under the watch of the infamous Fred Silverman...the same guy who almost put the kibosh on Cannon when he was the head of CBS programming (fortunately, William Paley overruled him on that one) and the same guy who canceled the brilliant Harry O when he ran ABC. When he ran NBC, he green lighted a boat load of crap, not just this show, but Supertrain, to name another of his follies at NBC.
If you must torture yourself, the Mrs. Columbo episodes have turned up as extras on the individual season Columbo sets. After seeing the Lieutenant in action in his episodes, why would you want to bother with his wife's exploits?
