It seems that Cardassians would probably be annoyed and bored by most historical earth procedural shows. Columbo though lets them know up front who is guilty and of what, and the rest of the running time is the investigator mentally toying with the perpetrator. I think it would be very appealing to Cardassians to watch a protagonist that forces a perpetrator to break down and confess their crimes in every episode.
Oh! Legate Damar, geez I’m sorry to bother you with this - I see you’re relaxing with the kanar there - it’s just that . . . well, sir, something about the explosion of that Antarean freighter just isn’t adding up, and I wondered if maybe you knew what I’m missing here . . .
Edit: adjusted to meme appropriate text
Oh, of course, sir - I didn’t mean to imply. It’s just, y’see . . . you reported the vessel’s core breach at 09:03 on 47821.6.
Well sir, the thing is that the Federation Sector Array which is right near there you see is recording that explosion at, uh . . 09:13 on 47821.6. Now how d’ya suppose that extra ten minutes got in there? It’s the darndest thing.
Now I thought - of course, I don’t know much about Sector Arrays and the like, but see I thought - maybe it was off, by ten minutes? That could account for it. But then my wife, y’see, she tells me that all the Sector Arrays are sequenced exactly to Federation Universal Time, and if it’s off by even a tiny little bit it throws all kinds of alarms, and they rush out there to take a look, and so on.
So anyways, I thought I’d check to see if maybe you remember something else that might help figure out what happened with that.
[Cue nervous drinking, which, while largely indistinguishable from regular “drinking” for Damar, carries with it a slight twinge of trepidation]:
Excellent in character and in universe interpretation!
“I’m a very busy man, Columbo - there are three reported Jem Ha’dar attacks in the DMZ in the last week alone! I don’t have time to remember every detail about some freighter I’ve never even heard of before!”