Columbo and the case of the dinosaurs

Earlier this year I chanced upon something truly surreal. I was driving along a track in New Zealand, the way you do. There was a field on the left. In it there was a man sitting on a portable chair, a sketchpad in his lap, a pencil in his hand. Gathered in front of him, like a cluster of attentive disciples, was a tight semicircle of cows. The man was wearing a black suit in a style popular at the end of the 19th century.

The surreal bit is that, despite the grizzly beard, this man was Columbo. None other than.

I looked over his shoulder at a very pretty picture, and tried to engage the artist in idle chat. Ever so politely, the artist invited me to sling my hook. I must have blown his cover, as a woman came out of the farmhouse and shooed the cows away. Presumably she'd never seen Columbo, otherwise she'd have recognised the ragged detective, even in his cunning disguise. She shooed him away too.

How did Peter Falk come to be at the remote north-western tip of South Island, drawing heifers in a period suit? It's a long story. But the short answer is that he's God. OK, he's playing God. All right, he's playing someone called Theo, which means God in ancient Greek. In The Lost World, BBC1's big Christmas entertainment adapted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Boy's Own caper, Father Theo is a priest who by fair means or foul seeks to discourage a group of explorers from visiting a plateau where dinosaurs are rumoured to live. He takes the Old Testament very seriously, and tends to think that the stench of Darwinism can only be bad news for God.

It's a splendid adaptation, with computer-animated dinosaurs and a variety of senior actors working overtime to out-ham one another. I think Falk probably shades it as the most truly exotic creature on the screen. "I hadn't read The Lost World but if you mention Conan Doyle to me I am immediately interested," he says, in that highly imitable rasp of his. If he had read it, he would know that Father Theo is not actually in the book. The scriptwriter must have written the character in because someone had to put the case for God. Or maybe they just wanted Peter Falk.

Whatever, here he is in his caravan, having travelled halfway round the world at the summons of Conan Doyle. "The man who created Sherlock Holmes is a man who commands my attention. And that's all I had to hear," says Falk. "I've always said that Columbo was an assbackwards Sherlock Holmes. Holmes smoked the pipe. Columbo smokes cheap cigars, a dozen for three dollars. Holmes spoke the King's English. Columbo is still working on his English. Holmes wore beautiful tweeds. Columbo looks like an unmade bed. Holmes had a long neck. And Columbo has no neck."

It's true. He doesn't. He also has only one eye. Falk lost his right peeper at the age of three. When he became an actor, an agent told him he could forget about film and television work. "It never entered my mind to do either. In the mid-1950s in New York you only thought of the stage. Television was in its infancy. And the idea that I was ever going to be in Hollywood - I might as well be knighted by the Queen of England."

The Lost World is a rare chance to see Falk as a different character. There's another one in a comedy film due for release next year called Made, also starring Puff Daddy. He's been playing Columbo, with just one decade-long break, since 1967 - he still makes Columbo TV films in the States. Even in films such as Wings of Desire and The Player, he basically plays Columbo under a pseudonym. To all intents and purposes Falk and Columbo are the same person. The rumpled raincoat and the shoes were the actor's own. The only difference is that Falk has quit smoking and the detective hasn't. "I think I would probably be a better actor if I hadn't spent so much time playing Columbo."

It's hard to imagine that 40 years back he was twice nominated for an Oscar. He showed up at the Academy Awards in his Volkswagen Beetle, wearing a scruffy rented tux. "I remember saying to my wife, 'Honey, what do you think my chances are?' And she said, 'You'll be lucky if they don't take back the nomination.' When they said, 'And the winner is Peter ...' I was out of my seat. And when they said, 'Ustinov', I'm going down in my seat."

The role of Columbo almost went to Bing Crosby. "I know why he turned it down (for golf), and that's one of the reasons that I love golf." He plays the game himself, and draws whenever he can, mostly women. "I draw them with their hair up, their hair down, with their clothes on and their clothes off. The female figure is a magnificent thing." He's got an eye for them. Just the one, obviously. Not that he thinks his semi-blindness hampers him. "If somebody catches me off guard and says, 'Which eye is it?' I don't even remember. I have to think about it."

Columbo shows no sign of retiring. He and Falk are both in their seventies. "I can't kill him," the actor says, shaking his head at the sacrilegious idea. The practical outcome of playing one character for so long is that he hasn't had much experience of dying. It doesn't give too much away to say that Father Theo has a death scene in The Lost World and, one morning in a huge cave, Falk launches himself into it with the gusto of someone who hasn't done a death scene since 1960. That was in Murder Confidential, when his character was defenestrated. It was one of his Oscar nominations. Maybe he should die more often.

? The Lost World is on BBC1 on Christmas Day at 6.25pm and Boxing Day at 6.35pm. Made is to be released at cinemas on 1 February.

TV highlights this Christmas