Yes. I think the real ingredience is that the culprit is rich and has a beautiful house and Colombo is the underdog bringing them down.

Not just rich but often “smart people”. They might be professors or scientists etc.

I think my favorite aspect of the show is how there are still societal remnants of the fancy, Victorian era customs and Columbo uses breaking social norms to put people off-balance.

I loved his old car. I think it was a Volvo?

The show reinforced what I believed at the time--money dosen't buy happiness, and don't judge people by how they look.

Now--as an aging person--a bit of money would make life easier?

Peugeot 403 cabrio

https://www.cartalk.com/blogs/jim-motavalli/columbos-car-it-...

It's totally the rich people going down.

Beautiful for the era. Most of the houses on that show are a riot.

According to Hitchcock it just means Columbo is a Suspense show, rather than a Mystery: https://youtu.be/-Xs111uH9ss

I think the show would be improved if it did not use that device. I feel like it was almost like a detective show for dummies. You didn't have to (get to) match wits with the detective (or is it the writer?, ha ha) but did get to enjoy some justice porn, watch the guilty squirm.

I love the character of Columbo and he would lose nothing if they followed the more traditional detective format where all the bits revealed throughout are tied together in the end.

Because, after all, who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?

I used to try and miss the start of episodes so I wouldn't know exactly who did it. It's usually very easy to guess throughout in any case, but it's still an enjoyably journey even if you're almost 100% clued in.

Yes, the viewer has way more information than Columbo, so should be able to solve it even more easily. And yet it’s still extremely hard.