Murder by the Book: A Conversation about Columbo

Professor Amelie Hastie and Associate Professor Melissa Hardie

Across its sixty-nine episodes airing throughout its original run and a later reboot, Columbo’s lengthy reign as a prime-time drama relied on its dense and ambitious plots and scenarios, the magnetism of Peter Falk as its eponymous humble yet brilliant detective, and most of all on its complex negotiation of historical shifts in the star system, technological invention, and a dynamic mediascape centred on Los Angeles and the interplay of film and television. Hastie’s forthcoming book on the series will be published in Duke’s Spin-Offs series, and the conversation will canvas the ways in which television currently figures as an object of academic analysis.

Venue
Room S226, John Woolley Building (A20)
University of Sydney