Peter Falk interview about Romania - David Letterman (March 1, 1995)

Peter Falk talks about his experience filming a promo for Romanian Television in 1974.
Apăsați CC pentru subtitrare în limba română.

What Peter Falk describes is mostly accurate, aside from the year (1974 instead of 1985) and the part about social unrest in Romania. There is NO evidence that there was any concern about people rioting over Columbo. Seems like it was an earnest effort to promote a popular show, though done in a fairly unusual manner (by having the US ambassador to Romania write to the US State Department, and having the State Dept. contact Peter Falk). The initial run of the show was indeed aired on romanian national television at the time (all 7 seasons), and the new series was only aired after the fall of communism, in 1989. Worth mentioning that this happened again with Telly Savalas and the show Kojak.

The story is mostly confirmed by this series of official communications, found on wikileaks:
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974BUCHAR01611_b.html
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974BUCHAR01912_b.html
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974STATE092006_b.html
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974BUCHAR01936_b.html
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974BUCHAR02051_b.html
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974STATE098769_b.html
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974BUCHAR02356_b.html
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975BUCHAR00850_b.html

Clip provided by Don Giller:
https://donzblog.home.blog/
https://www.youtube.com/user/dongiller

The full story (in romanian):
https://youtu.be/nJyPyVDWMcI

Видео Peter Falk interview about Romania - David Letterman (March 1, 1995) канала Radu Pericol Tiganas