In Miami Vice, Crockett and Tubbs were rolling up their suit sleeves, while four thousand miles away in the marginally less tropical climate of Jersey, Jim Bergerac, the cop with the sexiest squint this side of Calais, was leaning on his Triumph Roadster like the coolest divorced dad at the school gates. The eighties was the decade of the smart-casual copper, when the fustiness of the trench coat was shrugged off. While it’s Falk’s wonderfully pitched performance that makes Columbo the man we all love, there’d be something missing from the character if he didn’t have his raincoat, even though it’s microwave-dry in Los Angeles. He was a reel-to-reel supercomputer of deduction disguised as a scruffy teddy bear – at one point a nun even gives him money, thinking him homeless – and the raincoat was pivotal in that masquerade.įurther Reading: The Best Columbo Guest Stars Columbo was the shambling pantomime horse concealing a Sherlock in both the front and rear. Without a doubt the greatest detective of the twentieth century – and we’ll tell our dad on you if you disagree – Peter Falk’s Lt. Sure, the flasher briefly tried to co-opt it in the seventies, but not even frantically wagging genitals can detract from the iconic status of the trench, and to this day it remains the cliché clothing for many a copper. It’s waterproof, so a perp’s blood and tears will just run off in a dramatically timed rainstorm, but it’s also form-flattering, being able to conceal anything from a pistol to alcoholism, and all while still keeping the wearer looking professional.įurther Reading: How Long-running Shows Celebrate Milestone Anniversaries Fitting to their personalities, they wore no-nonsense clothing: suits, hats, and the now-cliché trench coat.Ī timeless wardrobe mainstay worn across the decades by sleuths of all ages, sexes, and nationalities, the authoritarian allure of the trench means it’s become the coat of choice for detectives, and no wonder. They were no-nonsense slabs of man-concrete who existed on a diet of red meat, cigarettes, and resentment. #Old school gangster stick em up trench coat tvThe first TV detectives were poured from the same tobacco-stained mold of pulp P.Is, leading to the creation of the likes Peter Gunn, Martin Kane, Dragnet’s Joe Friday, and other investigators who might crease a smile of nostalgia on your granddad’s face.
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