Heady stuff.
I pretty much agree with what Rob said. There wasn't a thing called political correctness in the 70's but there was a thing called censorship. Now in the case of Make Me A Perfect Murder, with it's lesbian undertones and also The Conspirators with a possible gay relationship between Devlin and Kerry Malone, that was not political correctness which prevented the writers and producers to be more explicit..it was censorship. Then the 80's&90's came along and that is when all the PC stuff came about. And of course, as in all things in life it started as a very good premise, as you pointed out Jilted...but....then it was taken too far and it all got so out of hand that you were afraid to open your freakin mouth about anyone or anything. But now I think we have come full circle, with the added extra that there is not the strict constraints of heavy censorship.

OFF TOPIC ALERT
Ya know, Jilted, I visit your site every so often and it is really cool and interesting. I posted a few times there but you totally ignored me!!!

Interesting...the lesbian undertones in "Perfect Murder" were obvious to me but I never picked up on any kind of gay undertones in "The Conspirators."

In Dawidziak's (sp?) book, he mentions that none of the Columbo killers were black, yet there were some actors that would have made excellent murderers but perhaps producers were too afraid of going there (James Earl Jones was mentioned in the book as great potential). However, they tossed aside political correctness in "Identity Crisis" when Brenner frames a person whose race Columbo immediately mentions, perhaps the most politically incorrect statement in the series, aside from all those minority actors used to play servants ("Lady in Waiting," "Etude in Black").

Ëven though I know everyone hates talking about the 90's episodes, I just watched "Butterfly in Shades of Grey." I kept expecting Columbo to mention that he or his wife was a fan of Fielding's conservative radio talk show, but the writers obviously didn't want to paint Columbo as a conservative (although he had a relative that was a big fan). Speaking of "Butterfly" and gay characters, we see the first openly gay character as a victim, and the killer framing the boyfriend. Well, okay, I've prattled enough....

shomrig....you could never prattle enough!!! Prattle on!!