I believe it is considered to be a TV series, but one that tended to have a longer than standard time period between episodes, beginning with a couple of pilot episodes (1968 and 1971) and continuing for a while in a rotation with several other shows on The NBC Mystery Movie TV series (known as a 'wheel series'). After the rotating series, episodes of Columbo appeared sporadically with longer periods between episodes.

FWIW, I think both IMDb and Wikipedia treat it as a series, which makes sense to me. But I suppose if TMDb treats it differently, it wouldn't be the first time it deviated.

All of the sources I have found refer to Columbo as a television series.

Now I do take Letterboxd into this consideration where some of the "episodes" of Columbo are counted as "movies", and some are not.

Do you have examples of pages on Letterboxd for the Columbo episodes? If you click through to TMDb from the Letterboxd pages, you will likely find that it links to a movie page that has been removed on here. Letterboxd only automatically imports from the film section.

Now several if not all "episodes" or "short films" by Disney, Fleischer or Warner Brothers is counted as a singular "movie" in that database.

Do you have some examples? Off the top of my head, the Fleischer Superman shorts, Disney shorts, and 1940s Tom and Jerry shorts are all in the film section because they were originally released in movie theatres, not on television.

Also shows like Black Mirror and Love, Death and Robots are registered for each episode instead of like one series.

The Black Mirror and Love, Death and Robots episodes were incorrectly added to TMDb in the film section so they would sync over to Letterboxd. Once its added to Letterboxd, its up to the Letterboxd staff whether to remove them or not; that does not mean that the film pages stay on TMDb. You'll find both Black Mirror and Love, Death and Robots in the tv section.

Okey, well then that makes sense. So there’s basically been errors made here that has been corrected here but not on Letterboxd. Got it, thanks for the clearing up.

The examples you are refering to are correct, those where the ones i had in mind. Also I think the first three episodes of Columbo are "movies" on Letterboxd.

But also I might have not been so clear in my writing (lost in translation). I am wondering if previous notions of what constitues a movie and or an episode have changed over the time. In an academic sense I could make an argument that definitions have changed over the course of time, or I could even make a new definition over what constitues a movie or an episode in our contemporary times. Movies getting turned into mini series like Unknown Soldier for example. David Lynch refering to The Return as "a movie". Ofcourse this site probably have rigorous definitions, but I would love a discussion on the topic and just see where the land lays, what people think about this in general. Perhaps this is not the site for that kind of discussion, just tell me if that is out of line.

Either way, thanks for clearing that up! You have been most helpful.