New Columbo Box Set is the Perfect Gift for Dad This Holiday

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The full original run of Columbo is finally coming to Blu-ray. The show, about an eccentric TV detective played by Peter Falk, ran off and on for about three decades, and this November you'll be able to grab the original 1970s run of the series on Blu-ray disc for the first time. It's not cheap at $150 retail, but it's loaded with 63 hours of stellar TV.

This will be easily the best quality that Columbo has ever been available in. Most of these episodes are available to stream--on Peacock and Amazon's FreeVee--but they won't look anywhere near as crisp on those streaming services as this new restoration will on Blu-ray. A compressed stream just isn't the same.

Unlike many similar series, like Murder She Wrote for example, episodes of Columbo start by showing you who the bad guy is and what they did, and the mystery is simply: how is Columbo going to outsmart this one? Between Falk's iconic and quirky performance and clever writing, the formula worked really well.

Now, Columbo isn't a TV series in the normal, modern sense. Instead, every single episode of Columbo is a TV movie built to fill a two-hour time slot, usually lasting 80-90 minutes without commercials. This set will include all the episodes/films from before the Columbo character went on hiatus for a decade in 1978, and that includes the original 1968 and 1971 pilot episodes. A second set featuring the "newer" Columbo episodes/movies will be released at a later date.

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