Columbo

1971 – 1978

Columbo (1968, 1971–1978, 1989–2003) was an American crime fiction television show about Lieutenant Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. He uses his deferential and absent-minded persona to lull criminal suspects into a false sense of security, by harassing and pestering suspects non-stop-- without letting them know that they're suspects-- under the pretense that he's simply being a pesky detective, in order to spy on them and agitate them into giving up clues.