James Frawley was a director who took comic performers seriously, even when they were Muppets. We rate that care, and his willingness to accommodate both the quick cuts of The Monkees and the patient questioning of Columbo.
Fi1m perspective
The suspect in Columbo (1971) thinks the detective is beneath them, and Peter Falk gives that mistake time to develop. We laughed at the misplaced superiority, because his patient questions make the suspects' confidence look foolish. James Frawley was one of the directors working within that familiar routine. It is a useful place to begin with him: watching performers find the comedy in behaviour rather than merely getting through the plot.
Frawley's move into directing came with The Monkees (1966), where he directed roughly half the episodes. The quick cuts, improvisational comedy and breaks in the fourth wall suggest little interest in keeping a scene decorous. His acting background mattered here: the comedy allowed performers to behave as though the rules could change while a scene was running. The feature films followed, including The Big Bus (1976) and his Muppet film (1979).
On the Muppet film, he addressed the characters directly about their emotions and scenes. Working with Jim Henson's Muppets required technical ingenuity, but Frawley's approach also gave the performers something familiar to work with: a director asking what a character felt. We like the seriousness of that attention. It helps account for a film able to take its innocent, positive characters into real locations without treating their good nature as something to apologise for.
His Columbo episodes include Try and Catch Me and Murder, a Self Portrait. The series gives us a useful limit to this praise: its familiar routine can leave an episode stretched, and the questioning does not always need quite so much time. Our enthusiasm rests chiefly on Falk and the consistently funny spectacle of suspects who think themselves superior to him. Frawley's contribution deserves attention without making him responsible for everything that works, or everything that drags.
His later work concentrated on television episodes and pilots, including the pilot of Ally McBeal (1997). His reputation for pilots rested on establishing a programme's look and tone. Those television credits deserve attention alongside the features, particularly when considering a director so interested in how performers work together. Columbo is worth settling in for; just do not expect every episode to know when to stop asking questions.
Biography
James Frawley (1936–2019) was an American director and actor. He began his career as an actor with roles in television series including Perry Mason, The Dick Van Dyke Show and I Spy, and studied at the Actors Studio.
Frawley directed half the episodes of the 1960s series The Monkees, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1967. He went on to direct episodes of Columbo (1977–1978, 1989), Magnum, P.I., Law & Order, Smallville, Grey's Anatomy and other series, as well as the feature films The Big Bus (1976) and The Muppet Movie (1979).
