Interesting choice of example. Columbo was a very low-tech guy, but he sometimes dealt with cases involving cutting-edge tech of the day, like the William Shatner episode where the rich murderer (they were always rich) used a rare, high-end gadget called a video cassette recorder to give himself an alibi, or the one from the '80s/'90s reboot where the discovery that a newfangled fax machine could reprint the last sent page provided an important clue. But at the same time, it was startling how primitive police forensics were as late as the early '90s, with cops still handling evidence with bare hands and smoking at crime scenes.
Bringing Natasha into a World War II set story might be a little more difficult.