The Columbo format

I love Columbo. You get home from church or whatever and there he is.
Great early afternoon Sunday entertainment.
The weird thing about Columbo is that it is so different from any other crime fiction.
Because you know right from the start who did it. You would think that would totally spoil the suspense of a crime story, but for some reason in Columbo it doesn't.
You know who the murderer is right from the start, but the suspense comes from how Columbo is going to figure it out.
He usually homes in on some really trivial thing that no-one else would notice, and that's how he solves the case.
"There's just one thing that's bothering me. You see it just doesn't seem to add up."
And I love the way he always talks about his wife.
He doesn't have a wife.