Barney Miller – The Complete Series (1975 – 1982/Sony/Shout! Factory DVD Box Set, incl. Fish
– Season One)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: B Episodes: A-
Barney
Miller remains one of the greatest TV series ever madder about
police work and police life, yet it is a comedy and especially after so many
years of zombie-like police procedural series and the technifying of the genre,
the show is more valuable and more obviously brilliant than ever before. Now only after seeing the first three seasons
issued on DVD, Sony and Shout Factory are releasing The Complete Series in a terrific 25 DVD box set. If you are not familiar with the series, you
can read more about it in our coverage of the following seasons:
Two
(including Linda Lavin’s run as Detective Janice Wentworth)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6463/Barney+Miller+%E2%80%93+The+Co
Three
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8371/Barney+Miller+%E2%80%93+The+Co
Seeing the show again, the analog videotaping of it and
the age of the time and its fashions, it is more than a time capsule but one of
the most clever, successful TV comedies of all time. Not just a sitcom, but an honest portrait of
police life in a way no one had ever seen before. Created by Danny Arnold (That Girl) and Theodore J. Flicker (The President’s Analyst), Hal Linden plays the head Captain of the
12th Precinct in New York
City trying to solve and resolve every crime,
situation, emergency and personal matter while holding the place together. It also become one of the most ethnically
diverse series ever made and remarkably remains so.
Abe Vigoda, Max Gail, Ron Glass and (until his death) Jack
Woo were the regulars throughout the series, with Gregory Sierra there from the
beginning until he left after Season Two. Linda Lavin did not stay and moved on to the
equally successful it series Alice,
Steve Landesberg, James Gregory and Ron Carey soon were added as regular
detectives, though Gregory left before the show wrapped.
Arnold wanted
to end the show after the sixth season, but ABC had already renewed if for two
more, both of which did well, ended the series after eight. What I got out of reviewing all these seasons
is how the show was deceptively simple and laid back, which helped it survive
the weekly TV grind very well.
Everything was done thoughtfully and slowly, with great acting, smart dialogue,
honest ideas and amusing situations that were like nothing TV had ever seen on
law enforcement. It was so smart, we
were not even seeing these people or stories in feature films about police,
which few have noted about the show, while it also continued the new breed of
smart TV comedy we have not seen much since the mid-1980s.
You never knew what was going to happen on the show, but
the station itself had a comfortable familiarity and density that made it very
welcoming even as the actual building seemed to have problems every week that
made you wonder if it would just slowly implode on its own or if the many
problems they were having there would cause the place to collapse in some other
way. Few TV show ever achieved this
unique sense of look and feel as this show did and that is another season it
holds up decades later.
Even with some cast changes, the feel and chemistry stayed
the course and until you see the shows in order, you cannot begin to see just
how well it did this. I liked all the actors
very much and this is also a show that did not need a laugh track, though it is
all over each episode and unlike the M*A*S*H
DVD sets, you do not get the option of a soundtrack without the laughs which
were obviously added later as only the first few episodes actually were taped
before a live audience. That likely
added isolated resonance to the series that only helped it to be more effective
still.
Yet this is also a comedy and in that, Barney Miller has comedy on several
levels. You get silly sitcom comedy,
dumb comedy, ironic comedy, truly funny moments and deep, smart realistic
comedy that all seem to co-exist seamlessly.
That gave the show depth and the actors do some of the best work of
their careers here, playing brilliantly off of each other and making the show a
great experience like the best TV ever made is supposed to. I’m glad Sony and Shout! Factory skipped
releasing separate fifth through eight season sets and just moved onto a Complete Series box. It’s time for people to rediscover the show
and catch onto why it is so great. In
the face of so many police shows soon, it turns out those many, many hits are
still in the shadow of this classic.
Nice to have it back!
The 1.33 X 1 image is softer for the first three seasons,
which literally just repeat the transfers and discs from the older Sony DVD
sets, but the transfers improve on the newer seasons. All were shot on professional NTSC video,
though towards the end, you can see how the opening shot of New York City is down a few generations in
color and detail in the last three seasons.
The original Life & Times Of Captain
Barney Miller pilot was actually shot on 35mm film when Abby Dalton was his
wife. It looks good and as good as any
show here, but this is a shot that works better on tape.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is better but still has recording
flaws, distortion, compression and harmonic distortion varying throughout from
show to show, but some shows could sound better, while others are as good as
they are going to get. For the record,
there are three versions of the classic instrumental theme song. The first season offers a cool jazz version
that is quiet and laid back, while Seasons Two through Four offers the famous
Funk variation ands the rest of the series breaks that up with an overplayed
guitar. I like the first two best.
Extras include an illustrated booklet with episode guide
and Salute To Barney Miller essay by
Howard Rosenberg, while the final DVD of the series has audio commentary on the
three-part final episode Landmark
with Writer/Producers Tony Sheenan, Jeff Stein & Frank Dungan, three making
of featurettes (Inside The 12th
Precinct, Salute To The Old One Two,
Inside The Writers Room) that
includes those men plus Linden, Gail, Steve Landesberg before his death and
Vigoda, who narrates at times, the aforementioned original Life & Times Of Captain Barney Miller pilot, an extended
version of Ramon, the final taped
pilot that launched the show in a longer cut, excerpt from a fine documentary
about the late, great Jack Soo called You
Don’t Know Jack and two DVDs containing the entire Season One of the series’ spin-off Fish.
Beginning mid-season like its predecessor, Fish (1977) was a hoped-for big hit for
ABC and they did promote it well, but it only lasted two seasons. Vigoda was back as Fish and Florence Stanley
was back as wife Denise, moving into a larger house to take care of five
children from an orphanage as part of anew project in their lives she wants far
more than he does. The great Barry
Gordon is a relative of Bernice helping out and the five children includes a
very young, small Todd Bridges (later of Diff’rent
Strokes, its lone survivor) who grows so dramatically that he is much
taller than he began (compare to his opening credits footage), John Cassisi (Bugsy Malone), Denise Miller (Makin’ It, Archie Bunkers Place), Len Bari (as a sort of cross between Fonzie
on Happy Days and Barbarino on Welcome Back Kotter, which this show
wanted to so capitalize on) and Sarah Natoli.
We get 13 half-hours of the show and you can see it had potential, but
needed to grow. I’m glad they included
these here, though I want to see the final season to see more clearly where the
show really went wrong and what still worked.
However, this box is dominated by Barney Miller which is rightly considered a classic and this Complete Series set is long
overdue. It is a must see, especially if
you like comedies or police dramas. It
is also easily one of the best DVD sets of the year.
- Nicholas Sheffo
