Flashpoint: The Fifth Season (2011 - 2012)/Gunsmoke: The Eighth Season, Volume One + Two (1962 - 63)/Have Gun – Will Travel: The Final Season (aka Season Six), Volume One (1962) + Two (1963)/James A. Michener’s Texas (1995/all CBS DVDs)

 

Picture: C+/C+/C+/C     Sound: C+     Extras: D/C/D/C     Episodes: C-/C+/B-/C

 

 

No one is more aggressively issuing TV on DVD than CBS Home Entertainment.  Here is a new set of titles they are issuing on the same day…

 

 

Flashpoint: The Fifth Season (2011 - 2012) is still somehow a police procedural hit, if not the biggest one, it apparently has enough viewers to keep it going.  We covered the watchable first season and flat fourth season elsewhere on this site, so would this season be worse, the same or better?  The 121 hour-long shows are more of the same as the last season, so the show is not a total bomb, but it is for fans only and with more real life terror attacks, the show strains credibility.

 

Still, there is some money on the screen as the SRU (Strategic Response Unit) does their best to protect the safety of the public.  To bad the teleplays are lacking and too formulaic throughout for their own good.  There are no extras.

 

 

Gunsmoke: The Eighth Season has been issued in the usual, separate Volume One and Two DVD sets.  They add up to the series’ 1962 – 63 Season and despite more Westerns and changes in the genre on TV alone, including more humor coming into the newer shows (not to mention comedies), the show stays the serious course leaving any humor as incidental.  That kept the show a huge hit at CBS following the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it policy that kept its huge audience happy.  By now, the cast played it as if they were always their characters and that also made the show so loved by audiences.

 

The show does show its age as a product of its time, sometimes seeming like two time capsules, one of pre-counterculture America and one of Western dramas that are book-like and talk at the audience at times.  Still, nice to see the show in such quality copies finally.

 

Extras on both volumes include Previews for Select Episodes and Sponsor Material.

 

 

Have Gun – Will Travel: The Final Season (aka Season Six) is also here in Volume One (1962) and Two (1963) separate DVD sets, but the show was more serious, cleverer and sharper than any other Western in its time. However, that was not enough to keep it on the air for a longer stretch and the series ended while it was on top with Richard Boone wrapping up things as exceptional gunfighter Paladin.

 

The teleplays were always trying to say and show more than the usual TV show of any kind, let alone Western and as a result, the show holds up better than any other black and white Western TV series made and you can see our enthusiasm on the series by seeing our previous coverage of the show on this site.  It even spawned one of the last radio dramas, but with William Conrad as Paladin.  Conrad even worked on this show as a director.  Each set has 16 shows and fans will be very happy now that they can have the series in such a quality form.

 

There are sadly, no extras, not even any of those radio dramas.

 

 

Finally we have James A. Michener’s Texas (1995) in a 3-hour TV event that actually made its debut on home video in what was hoped to be a precedent-setting move for that market.  It was greater than the cheapie straight-to-video junk we had seen happening at the time we only had VHS and 12” LaserDisc, but more big budget productions did not follow in its footsteps, in part because it was very, very long at 3 hours and despite a good cast that included Patrick Duffy, Benjamin Bratt and Stacy Keach (plus Charlton Heston as the narrator), it just did not work in its telling of the building of the state that some think of as its own country.

 

Too much of a melodrama for its own good, it was shot on 35mm film like the best TV Mini-series for which it technically qualifies, but the biggest problem is that we have seen just about everything here already this had to offer and I get the impression the makers expect the audience to have read the book to some extent.  That is always laziness to me, but this has a small following and this version is simply a reissue of the earlier home video release with no new upgrades or extras.

 

Extras include a Trailer, Extended Promo and a Making Of featurette.

 

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Flashpoint should be the best performer here and it looks decent considering the style choices, but that also means it is softer more often than I would have liked, though it would likely look better on Blu-ray.  As a result the decent black and white 35mm transfers on Gunsmoke and especially the detailed 35mm black and white 35mm transfers on Have Gun – Will Travel can more than compete with Travel more than ready for Blu-ray.  That leaves the 1.33 X 1 image on Texas riddled with aliasing errors and being an older analog master transferred too long ago from the 35mm film materials that undermine what looks like a sometimes impressive shoot.

 

The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Flashpoint should be the best release here sonically, but the soundfield is limited and sound itself too much towards the front speakers and even center channel, so the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Gunsmoke and Have Gun – Will Travel are able to compete despite showing their age.  That leaves the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Texas that is down a generation or two, watering down the audio and making seem more dated than the early 1960s TV Westerns covered here.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo