I generally haven’t watched much in the way of television over the last decade or so – little bits here and there, occasionally bingeing on a series or seeing an episode or two at someone else’s house. Over the last week or so, though, I’ve downloaded and been watching through a lot of Columbo.
Actually, I’ve been on something of a mystery kick generally recently. I’ve been digging through the works of Agatha Christie – which, though they are all pretty fast and light reads, there are just so so so many of them. Even reading one a day it takes months to get through them all, so it’s nice to spend some time with something a bit less immediately demanding.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the show, Columbo is an odd sort of reversal of the mystery formula. Every episode starts with showing us, the audience, how a murder is committed – thus the drama is not in discovering how the crime was executed, but seeing how it is uncovered, and the often extremely clever countermeasures the murderer undertakes attempting, in vain, to keep from being found out.
What makes it especially satisfying, though, is that the cases Columbo ends up called into are invariably those where someone wealthy and talented believes that they can get away with murder. Sometimes it’s a momentary slip, a crime of anger and passion, and sometimes it’s a cold-blooded and premeditated killing, but in every case the killer is certain they’ve thought of everything, that they are beyond reach and past suspicion. And, in every case, they’re wrong, and what seemed like tiny inconsistencies in their story widen until they can no longer hide underneath the tale they wove.
I’m glad, not just that I began watching Columbo, but that I began watching now. It’s nice to see those who think they are beyond reach being slowly sniffed out, nice to see their transparent crimes revealed for all to see. The idea of an implacable justice, one that sees past money and talent and beauty, one that hunts the truth without rest, but never resorting to violence, always with kindness and consideration, is an idea that feels deeply appealing right now.
Maybe there aren’t policemen like that. The main role of the police is usually to protect entrenched power, to make sure the ruling class feels safe and secure. The kind of justice that matters is usually only the kind that serves as retribution against those who would harm the interests of wealth and power, and rarely the kind that serves as watchdog against that wealth and power. It’s an ideal, though, that is comforting to imagine, even if it’s a fantasy: In an era of seeing wealth get away with outrages and bald-faced lies, crimes unimaginable in magnitude and cruelty, to see the law work against them instead of for them, quiet, respectful, but unshakable.
You cannot hide. Truth will escape, and justice will find you. Someday.