TLDR: NBC launched Mrs. Columbo in February 1979 starring a 24-year-old Kate Mulgrew over the strong objections of series creator Richard Levinson, series co-creator William Link, and Peter Falk himself.
The show failed badly enough to rename itself three times. It lasted 13 episodes.
Falk’s response to learning he was supposedly married to someone young enough to be his daughter was to describe it as “disgraceful.” When the original Columbo returned on ABC, a line of dialogue was inserted to confirm she was an impostor.
One of the most beloved running jokes in Columbo was Mrs. Columbo herself.
She was mentioned constantly, she was clearly important to her husband, and she was never once shown on screen.
The character’s perpetual off-screen presence was intentional, a piece of the show’s mythology that added warmth to the detective without ever allowing it to become a domestic comedy. NBC decided to make it a domestic comedy anyway.
How It Happened
The original Columbo ended its NBC run in 1978. Peter Falk had grown tired of the declining script quality and chose not to continue.
NBC, unwilling to simply let the franchise go, approached Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link about developing a spinoff centered on Mrs. Columbo.
Both men opposed the idea, arguing it was exploitative of a successful premise and had no natural dramatic engine.
They recommended that if NBC was determined to proceed, they cast someone in the range of Maureen Stapleton, an actress of an appropriate age and weight to be plausibly married to Columbo.
NBC president Fred Silverman dismissed this suggestion. He wanted someone young and beautiful.
The network cast Kate Mulgrew, who was 24 years old when the show debuted. Falk was 52.
Producer David Levinson later summarized the problem precisely: “Peter went berserk. He didn’t like the idea of Mrs. Columbo anyhow, but now it looks like he’s Woody Allen. You know, that he’s married to this girl who’s young enough to be his daughter. Kate Mulgrew was a nice actor, but there was just no way to overcome the premise.”
Falk publicly called the spinoff a “bad idea” and “disgraceful.”
What the Show Was
Mrs. Columbo debuted on February 26, 1979. Kate Mulgrew played Kate Columbo, a newspaper reporter who solves murders while raising a young daughter named Jenny.
Lieutenant Columbo never appeared on screen. His Peugeot showed up briefly in the opening credits as a visual signal to audiences, but the character himself was kept entirely off-camera.
The show made clear that the Columbos had been married long enough to have a school-age daughter, a mathematical impossibility given the respective ages of Falk and Mulgrew that nobody at the network appeared to have worked out in advance.
Mulgrew herself was ambivalent about the premise from the beginning, later saying: “If they’d done it as Kate Loves a Mystery, it probably would have worked. But Mrs. Columbo, how could you possibly do that? The wonderful secret of Columbo was that we never saw her.”
The Identity Crisis
Poor ratings prompted a series of increasingly desperate rebranding attempts.
By the sixth episode, the show dropped the Columbo connection and renamed itself Kate Columbo. It then became Kate the Detective. By the second season, Kate had been given a fictional divorce, was now using the name Kate Callahan, and the show had renamed itself Kate Loves a Mystery.
Her ex-husband in this version was named Philip, which inadvertently gave the character Columbo’s alleged first name before the show’s creators had ever confirmed it.
The series was cancelled in December 1979. A final episode aired in March 1980. Total run: 13 episodes across two seasons.
Falk’s Response When Columbo Returned
When the original Columbo returned to television on ABC in 1989, Falk made his feelings about the spinoff clear within the text of the show itself.
A line of dialogue was written into the revival establishing that Mrs. Columbo was “still very happily married” to the Lieutenant, directly contradicting the spinoff’s divorce storyline.
A later episode went further, with Columbo saying: “A woman’s been going around pretending to be my wife, but it isn’t her.” The impostor was acknowledged and dismissed.
The original Mrs. Columbo, unseen and unnamed, remained exactly where she had always been: off screen, mentioned warmly, never shown.
Kate Mulgrew went on to forge an impressive career unbothered by the association, eventually playing Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager and Galina “Red” Reznikov in Orange is the New Black.
She later described the spinoff as a production that “didn’t have a leg to stand on,” while maintaining that she had no regrets about taking the role.
Who played Mrs. Columbo?
Kate Mulgrew played Kate Columbo in the 1979 NBC spinoff Mrs. Columbo, later known as Kate Loves a Mystery. Peter Falk never appeared on the show, and the original Mrs. Columbo from the main series was never given a name or shown on screen.
Why did Peter Falk hate Mrs. Columbo?
Falk opposed the spinoff from the beginning and was furious when NBC cast a 24-year-old actress to play the wife of a 52-year-old character, calling it a bad idea and disgraceful. He publicly dismissed it when Columbo returned on ABC by having a line of dialogue inserted to confirm the spinoff’s Kate Columbo was an impostor.
Why was Mrs. Columbo cancelled?
Mrs. Columbo was cancelled in December 1979 after poor ratings. The show went through three title changes and a full premise overhaul during its 13-episode run, eventually divorcing its main character from Columbo entirely, but none of the changes rescued its audience.
