'Columbo,' other shows on DVD

Old TV series have flooded local DVD outlets this week, led by the respective shows that made stars of Peter Falk, Robin Williams and Tom Selleck.

• "Columbo: The Complete First Season" (Universal, 1971-72, not rated, $59.98, five discs). This excellent show was not an hourlong — or even a weekly — series. And it wasn't a murder mystery.

"Columbo" was a series of feature-length episodes that rotated with "McMillen and Wife" and "McCloud" as part of the "NBC Sunday Mystery Movie" in the 1970s. And each "Columbo" began by showing us the murder, and then it was up to the rumpled, excessively polite homicide detective — played perfectly by Peter Falk — to figure it out.

The shows were character-driven, well-plotted, laced with humor and wit. Included among the first season's seven movies is "Murder By the Book," directed by young Steven Spielberg. And guest stars include Robert Culp, Ray Milland, Suzanne Pleshette, Don Ameche, Leslie Nielsen and Roddy McDowall.

Also here are the 1967 TV movie "Prescription: Murder" (based on a stage play), which introduced a short-haired, not-quite-as-disheveled Lt. Columbo), and the TV pilot film that followed five years later, "Ransom for a Dead Man."

Extras: Full frame, seven episodes, two pilot movies, optional subtitles (English, Spanish), chapters.

• "Mork & Mindy: The Complete First Season" (Paramount, 1978-79, not rated, $38.99, four discs). The episode of "Happy Days" that introduced the world to space alien Mork — and improv wild man Robin Williams — is not in this collection. But the first hourlong episode includes a flashback sequence that has Fonzie (Henry Winkler) arranging a date between Mork and Laverne (Penny Marshall).

"Mork & Mindy" is broad, and the writing is only occasionally bright, but Williams, who ad-libs and riffs all over the place, is hysterical. Morgan Fairchild and Tom Poston have recurring roles — and check out David Letterman in one episode, as he proves himself to be an awful actor.

Extras: Full frame, 24 episodes, chapters.