Father Brown, Columbo, and Kevin O'Brien

Kevin O'Brien was interviewed by National Review Online Thursday about Father Brown and the audio book. The interview will be a podcast and will be put up next week sometime on NRO and also on itunes. (I'll give you the link when Kevin sends it.)

Also, Kevin'll be on "The Journey Home" live Monday night (Dec. 15) on EWTN talking about his conversion, and Chesterton's role in it. And he'll be on EWTN's "Bookmark" talking about the audio book as well - though he doesn't know when that airs.

One of the things he discovered in preparing for these interviews was confirmation that Columbo was based in part on Father Brown.

This is from "How We Created Columbo" by the creators themselves, Levinson and Link.

When we created Columbo, we were influenced by the bureaucratic Petrovitch in Crime and Punishment and by G.K. Chesterton's marvelous little cleric, Father Brown. But [Peter] Falk added a childlike wonder all his own. He also added the raincoat. We had given Columbo a wrinkled top coat in our play, but during the filming of "Prescription: Murder," Falk dug out one of his old raincoats from the back of a closet and never took it off. He wore the same suit, shirt, tie, and shoes for the entire 10 year run of the series, giving "Columbo" the somewhat dubious distinction of having the lowest budget for male wardrobe in the history of the medium, with the possible exception of Big Bird.

Kevin would like to give special thanks to Dr. Thursday who helped him prepare for the interview.

Be sure to watch EWTN tonight!