Carrie Preston on ‘Columbo’-inspired CBS series ‘Elsbeth’: ‘Not whodunit but howdunit’

Newly minted “Elsbeth” star Carrie Preston welcomes comparisons to “Columbo” — which helped inspire series creators Robert and Michelle King to transplant Elsbeth Tascioni from Chicago to New York City.

“Robert and Michelle King told me that during the pandemic that they started watching ‘Columbo’ reruns and just loved them and found it comforting,” Preston, 56, told The Post about the ’70s-era series starring Peter Falk as rumpled, trenchcoat-wearing Lt. Columbo, whose scattered appearance belied a brilliant deductive mind.

“They thought, ‘Hey, that could be how we could create a new show for Elsbeth Tascioni,’” Preston said. “‘Put her in a Columbo role and make this a police show and not a law show.”

Preston and her onscreen alter-ego are no strangers to fans of “The Good Wife” and its spinoff, “The Good Fight,” both created by the Kings and both featuring Elsbeth as a quirky recurring character (a lawyer) based in Chicago.

In “Elsbeth,” premiering Feb. 29 at 10 p.m., our protagonist lands in New York City as part of a “consent decree” stemming from a lawsuit against the NYPD, in which she’s hired on a temporary basis to shadow the NYPD and its officers to make sure they’re doing everything by the book.

In this capacity, she’s no longer a lawyer but an observer — using her wiles, instincts, humor and razor-sharp intuition to help the NYPD solve tough cases. The series co-stars Carra Patterson as Officer Kaya Blanke and Wendell Pierce as NYPD Capt. CW Wagner.

In a throwback to “Columbo,” the villain in each episode is revealed early on — and the fun is then in watching as Elsbeth fits the puzzle pieces together as she by turns annoys, flusters and impresses her new NYPD colleagues. 

In the series opener, an acting teacher (“True Blood’s” Stephen Moyer) murders one of his students and stages her suicide — but Elsbeth senses, from the get-go, that he’s the killer as they play a cat-and-mouse game.

“I would say she’s tenacious, she’s unconventional, and I like to think of her as extremely present,” Preston said of Elsbeth. “She takes in everything around her with equal attention so she never knows what detail is going to be the one that unlocks the mystery … she somehow has the capacity to focus on a lot of things all at once — and has a brain that can hold it all.

“She’s a fish out of water and underestimated in a lot of ways, certainly in ways that a lot of women are [underestimated] in situations like that,” she said. “I think people will find that to be entertaining and want to know more about her and watch her mind work — and how she’s going to figure out not whodunit but howdunit.”

Preston said the idea to move Elsbeth from Chicago into a new universe was percolating for a while.

“When I first came on ‘The Good Wife,’ which was 14 years ago now, it hit a nerve with fans and critics. People were very interested in the character and seemed to take a shine to her,” she said. “By about mid-‘The Good Wife’ I would hear things from fans saying that the Elsbeth character would be a good idea for a spinoff.

“Of course, I ended up in ‘The Good Fight’ centering around Christine’s [Baranski] character, so they kept me in that world of coming in every once in a while … when they couldn’t figure out how to solve or win a case.”

Preston said that, as the season progresses, viewers will learn a bit more about what makes Elsbeth tick. 

“This is definitely going to be a show that’s structured around whatever the case is that week, in the same way that ‘The Good Wife’ and ‘The Good Fight’ were focused on that week’s legal case,” she said.

“Elsbeth will be in service to the work the same way she was in her legal cases … and I’m hoping we’ll see more of her in situations outside of work — friendships and past relationships — and perhaps learn a little more about her personal life.

“If you watch ‘Columbo,’ he always talks about his wife but we never meet his wife, so there’s something to be said of the mystery of Elsbeth as well,” Preston said. “I’m not sure what the writers have in store — it’s Christmas every morning when I get a script and I learn more about her in each episode.”

“Elsebeth” premieres 10 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 29 on CBS.