This week, Amazon Prime suggested Barnaby Jones, and as I’d never watched it before, I decided to go for it. This is in part preparation for a planned column about the Standard TV Career By Decade, in part because I’d heard a lot about it but never seen it. Also I’d always gotten it confused with Barney Miller, a show I’ve loved since I was a kid with a similar name. Barnaby turns out to have come out of retirement following the murder of his son, to solve the case. He’s got a degree in forensics and does his own lab work, and his widowed daughter-in-law works as his secretary. Also, he practically only drinks milk.

And that is what sets Barnaby apart from other detectives. Kojak had his lollipops and his catchphrase. Columbo had the raincoat and the “howcatchem” nature of the show. Jim Rockford had his car and his dad and his working-class nature. Shawn Spencer had the fake psychic routine; other detectives have had “real” psychic abilities. Even going back as far as Sherlock Holmes, you’ve got a whole array of eccentricities to establish the character. The violin, for example, and the drug use.

Now, of course all fictional characters require enough information to make them distinct. But for detectives, it seems as though the gimmick is emphasized. Jim’s always dealing with bill collectors. People routinely express surprise at Barnaby’s milk, which he even drinks in bars. Of course Monk’s whole bit is the OCD, and he’s disabled enough that it would indeed control his life while also making him challenging as a detective. The whole of the genre uses gimmicks as enough to pull you into the character and give you a reason to keep watching them.

What’s even more interesting is that there are seldom duplicate gimmicks except in cases where they’re deliberately playing on a trope. Murdoch doesn’t play violin. Tom Barnaby doesn’t make a big fuss over facial hair. Father Brown doesn’t wear a monocle. Even some of the more mundane things are seldom repeated; you would think Jessica Jones would deal more with bill collectors than she does, but there we are. Oh, it would be a little pointed to see Jessica Fletcher sucking on a lollipop all the time, true, but she’s in the Miss Marple vein without the “everyone thinks she’s half-cracked” of actual Miss Marple.

Even if Barnaby Jones tends to share the “howcatchem” nature of Columbo, the milk sets him apart. Heck, Poker Face is a deliberate Columbo pastiche, and she’s still got the thing where she always knows if people are lying. Most of the various “Sherlock Holmes but” shows do things to make Sherlock Holmes in their version different. He’s got a memory palace or he’s a dog or he lives with, gasp, a woman. Because as Gypsy knew, albeit in a very different context, you’ve got to have a gimmick.

My gimmick is apparently asking you to contribute to my Patreon or Ko-fi?