Bret
Maverick: The Complete Series
(1981 - 1982/Warner Archive DVD)/Dynasty:
The Eighth Season, Volume One
+ Volume Two
(1987 - 1988/CBS DVDs)/Laverne
& Shirley: The Final/Eighth Season
(1982 - 1983/CBS DVDs)/Little
House On The Prairie: Season Two
(1975 - 1976/NBC/Lionsgate Blu-rays)/The
Moneychangers (1976/TV
Mini-Series/CBS DVDs)/Rookie
Blue: The Complete Fourth Season
(2013/E1 DVDs)
Picture:
C+/C+/C+/B-/C/C Sound: C+/C/C+/B-/C+/C+ Extras: D/D/C-/C/D/C
Episodes: C/C/C-/C/C+/C
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Bret
Maverick
DVD set is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Here's
a big group of TV releases, most of which are classics or classics
revisited...
Bret
Maverick: The Complete Series
(1981 - 1982) has James Garner back for a third round of playing the
famed gambling cowboy, though this was not the first time since he
left the original early via a contract dispute. A 1978 TV movie The
New Maverick (reviewed elsewhere on this site, also from Warner
Archive) was an earlier attempt, but no TV revival series resulted.
This time out, Warner TV managed 17 episodes (if you count the Lazy
Ace
pilot) and despite shows hitting with a similar attitude (Warner's
Dukes Of Hazard),
it did not take and I can see why.
The
show has some amusing moments, but the idea of Bret being a slick con
artist was not as fresh or anywhere near a surprise as it was on the
original show and none of these shows are really that well written
despite attempts to be smart. The cast is decent, but not memorable
and Garner is able to easily step back into the role, but he has
little to do. This is for fans only and needed to be issued for
them, but the rest of us should just stick with the early seasons of
the original show.
There
are no extras.
Dynasty:
The Eighth Season, Volume One
+ Volume Two
(1987 - 1988) had the show long past its prime with everyone looking
bored, lame plot lines, what seems like less money on the screen, the
loss of Diann Carroll and like Dallas long before it, nothing m,ore
it really needed to do. ABC was owned by a desperate Capital Cities
whose cost-cutting put the network in the bottom of the ratings, so
they held onto anything resembling a hit as long as they could. The
result are episodes that go nowhere and a better network would have
axed it out of its misery at this point.
There
are no extras.
Laverne
& Shirley: The Final/Eighth Season
(1982 - 1983) was an even worse case of this over at ABC, a show that
was supposed to end after Season
Seven, but ABC (still in
better shape then versus five years later) ordered a new season at
the last minute, but the show would have an even worse loss as Cindy
Williams left after the first two episodes and what followed was a
sad mess for which no guest stars could save the show from.
For
taking place in 1967, it looked more like 1961 and the shows here are
never really funny, strained and just awful. Behind the scenes, it
was reportedly a mess and that comes through in the joyless set of
episodes over 3 DVDs. Penny Marshall obviously had the talent to
carry a TV show on her own, but just not this one. Hugh Hefner, Adam
West and Vicki Lawrence are among those who guested, but to no avail.
For the most diehard fans only, these were even worse than I
remembered.
Extras
include promos for each episode made for later syndication and a Gag
Reel that has more of Cindy Williams than expected.
I
was never a fan of Little
House On The Prairie: Season Two
(1975 - 1976), a hit for struggling NBC that somehow ran for nine
grueling seasons, but here is Michael Landon's biggest hit (though I
bet Bonanza
had better overall ratings) about the Ingalls family, loosely based
on the biographical book. Cutesy, boring, dull with illicit appeals
to family that likely helped make the phony side of the Reagan Era
possible, I liked it even less than The
Waltons (which never
seemed as condescending if as melodramatic) and now on Blu-ray, it is
as bad as I remembered it.
The
acting is not bad, but almost every show is the same thing, including
the 22 hour long shows in this 5 Blu-ray disc set. You can now see
if it plays better being clearer or not, but there are so many great
U.S. TV shows that should have been on Blu-ray before this one and
that will likely be the case for a few more years. See this at your
own risk and don't operate heavy machinery.
Extras
include Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes
capable devices and the second part of a Making Of featurette that
apparently began on the debut season set.
Boris
Sagal's The Moneychangers
(1976) is a potboiler of a TV mini-series based on the Arthur Hailey
(Hotel,
Airport)
book about a banking empire and the fight taking place within it.
Kirk Douglas and Christopher Plummer are the two men who might take
over the empire in New York City when their current boss announces he
has a serious health issue. But there are also many side storylines
and the soapy melodrama squeezes everything it can out of all of
them.
Joan
Collins shows up as Plummer's love interest, Timothy Bottoms tries a
financial scheme while in a relationship with a young hispanic woman
(Amy Trivell) that lands up getting him physically assaulted and
worse throughout the four episodes and all are backed by an
impressive cast that also includes Anne Baxter, Robert Loggia, Ralph
Bellamy, Susan Flannery, Jean Peters, Percy Rodriguez, Lorne Green,
Patrick O'Neal, James Shigeta, Helen Hayes, Woodrow Parfrey, Virginia
Grey and Marla Gibbs. Not great, but interesting enough to revisit
and deserving of a DVD release, you might want to see it just for all
the amusing moments, politically incorrect, dated and otherwise.
There
are no extras.
Finally
we have Rookie
Blue: The Complete Fourth Season
(2013), enough of a moderate police procedural hit that it has gone
this far, but not a great show and by this point, one that has
succumbed to the TV grind, especially in a subgenre that is so played
out to the tipping point. Especially here, the 13 episodes we get
have only so much to offer and are more than a bit codependent on the
previous seasons, so starting at the beginning is highly recommended
in this case.
Extras
include webisodes tied to the show and 5 Making Of featurettes.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on Little
can show the age of the materials used, but I am surprised they are
so detail limited and a bit waxy, not that they have been cleaned,
but are not as clear as other TV shows from the time that have hit
Blu-ray (The
Prisoner,
The
Persuaders,
The
Jackson 5 Animated Series,
the Retro-Action!
import compilation, Space:
1999)
though it was shot on 35mm film. Must be the stocks, since the color
is just fine and prints in decent shape throughout. That is still
enough to keep it ahead of the
1.33 X 1 image on classic TV shows here and unusually soft
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Blue,
which ties Moneychangers
(with its sometimes debris-prone prints that can look like 16mm when
it was allegedly shot in 35mm) as the poorest performers on the list.
Dynasty,
Maverick
and Laverne
look as good as they are going to in this format.
As
for sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix on Little
is inconsistent and not always warm, but still manages to just edge
out the rest of the entries here as the best sonic performer,
something the
lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Blue
could have done if its soundfield was more active and somewhat
fuller. Instead, that DVD
set is tied by the
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the rest of the DVDs, save the lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Laverne,
which is simply too low and a little compressed for its own good.
Earlier seasons sounded better on DVD, so why this one falls short
and lands up sonically last place here is odd, but that's how it
worked out.
You
can order the Bret
Maverick
Warner Archive DVD set along with all seasons of the original series
by going to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive
releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo