The film was a success and Falk began rehearsing the first series of Columbo in 1970. Columbo differed from every other police series on television in that the hero was an ordinary man who was unfit, worried about his wife, had a pet dog and wore ill-fitting suits. The producers of the series worried that viewers would tire of a show with complex plots and little action, and repeatedly tried to introduce elements of sex and violence. Falk made himself extremely unpopular by fighting these decisions and insisting on maintaining the quality of the original scripts.