You know they've rumoured for years to either be remaking Columbo or shooting a movie. If they did, who would you like to see in the lead? I remember reading Mark Ruffalo was linked & yknow what I ain't mad.

as an actor and writer myself, i don't make a habit of inextricably tying actors to roles. i believe media is meant to be interpreted and reinterpreted freely.

but peter falk, man...peter falk was more than inextricable from columbo. he was columbo.

it's funny because the show's creators, levinson & link, had a totally different vision going in their heads during the casting process--they saw a much older, balding irish/anglo type. for reference, burt freed first played the character in a brief TV appearance; thomas mitchell first played him onstage; bing crosby was one of the first choices for TV.

then peter falk frantically waltzed in (quote: "i'd kill to play that cop") with his overpowering, mensch-y charm and sold them on columbo as the whimsical, dark-featured little guy we've come to know and love. falk's columbo was such an earth-shattering hit that NBC was practically on their knees begging him to sign a serial contract; when he did, he swept the nation. i don't have exact figures handy, but he was earning hand over fucking fist playing him, and NBC spent the better part of a decade kowtowing to his sometimes famously insane demands just to keep the hits coming. needless to say, despite the insanity, peter falk's dedication to his craft and the character of columbo was second to none.

on a decidedly darker note, i confess that i often think of it this way: when falk had alzheimer's in his twilight years, someone leaked from court documents that his doctor noted he could "no longer remember playing columbo". you can still find those news articles everywhere online; it was so widely reported and discussed that it was effectively treated as a death announcement. the public treated the "death" of peter falk's memory of columbo as effectively the death of both he and the character.

to me, it's pretty difficult to top that.

so yeah, frankly i'm just not interested whatsoever in seeing anybody else as columbo proper. if the character had to return, i'd rather see something actually iterative like a prequel/origin story or something. i'm also sick of reboots in general so seeing inspirations from columbo in new media rather than directly revived is a much more inviting prospect for me.

speaking of which, take natasha lyonne in poker face (you knew i was gonna go there!). she's a huge peter falk/columbo fan herself and was widely rumored to play "female columbo" in a reboot, but she did the far more creative thing and teamed up with rian johnson to devise a character/show inspired by columbo but fresh and new, neither a reboot nor carbon copy. if only the rest of mainstream flim/tv these days could take note.

tl;dr i would like to see absolutely nobody in the lead of a columbo reboot except for a terrible PS2 graphics render of peter falk clipping through the floor