YMMV / Mrs. Columbo

• Audience-Alienating Premise: This was a series focused on Columbo's wife...and yet the producers cast a 24-year-old Kate Mulgrew to play the wife of a man who had clearly been married for a long time. Mulgrew was 12 when the first Columbo TV movie aired — and yes, Columbo talks about his wife in that very first movie, recounting how she gives him a pencil every day, which he always goes on to lose. Not surprisingly, the creepy casting decision alienated both fans (as the titular character made no sense) and non-fans (as after the retcon, where Mrs. Columbo is not Mr. Columbo's wife, it had no premise beyond "woman solves mysteries under a more popular character's surname".) There was no way to properly retool the show and it was cancelled after twelve episodes. Even had they cast the show well, it's likely there would have been problems; as the creators pointed out, the whole point to Mrs. Columbo is that the audience never sees her.
• Narm:
  • The killer in the first episode is genuinely creepy, except at the many points in which he begins chanting "Hickory Dickory Dock" for no discernible reason.
  • Also in the first episode Kate spends a full minute fumbling her hand around in circles for the doorbell button while the killer stumbles around her kitchen doing nothing.
• Questionable Casting: The most common critique by far of the show is the decision to have Kate Mulgrew play a character intended to be the wife of Columbo— a twenty-four-year-old playing the wife of a man in his fifties, who's clearly been married for decades? Even if one accepts the retool declaration that she isn't his wife, but rather just a Expy, it's still a rather strange decision, since the original show's formula was based in large part on Columbo looking like a homely, middle-aged, physically unimpressive dodderer and people underestimating him as a result. Notably, the actual dream choice of the creators was Maureen Stapleton, but the network demanded someone younger.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • David Rasche in "Falling Star".
  • Ted Danson in "Ladies of the Afternoon".

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