Dynasty:
The Final Season, Volume One + Volume Two
(aka Season Nine/1988
- 1989/CBS DVD Sets)/Spencer
For Hire: Season One
(1985 - 1986/Warner Archive DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+/C Extras: D Episodes: C-/C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The
Spencer For Hire: Season One
DVD set is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
ABC
in the 1980s went from being the #1 network to a network in trouble.
They held on to older hits longer than they should have and new ones
did not hold out as long.
Dynasty:
The Final Season, Volume One + Volume Two
(aka Season Nine/1988
- 1989) has the once great (and great fun) nighttime soap opera with
Linda Evans leaving early on and looking cheap like early seasons of
Dallas,
the show it outclassed in so many ways. A sad, silly, hollow shell
of the great show it once was, it finally lived up to the false
stereotypes of the show that were far from true in the peak of its
subversive glory. The failed Colbys
spin-off did more harm than good and ABC held onto this until there
were not more dollars to squeeze out of it.
Even
the actors look bored, tired and like they are just there to get
their paychecks. Joan Collins often outacts her co-stars and these
two volume sets are for completists and superfans only. As for the
rest of you, don't operate heavy machinery if you watch.
ABC
need a new hit and Vega$
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) was so big for them, they turned to
Robert Urich and with Warner TV licensed a series of Robert B. Parker
novels. Spencer For Hire:
Season One (1985 - 1986)
was the result, a moderate, consistent hit with Urich as the
troubleshooter, not as edgy as Edward Woodward's Robert McCall on The
Equalizer, but ABC got
some much-needed help. Avery Brooks played his streetwise friend
Hawk in a pairing that reminded me more than a bit of the failed spy
show A Man Called Sloane
with Robert Conrad, Barbara Stock played Spencer's love interest and
Richard Jaeckel as the police friend/contact.
The
problem is that the show was too safe, despite trying to pretend to
be edgy, which was a bit annoying and the Boston locales were never
really sued to best effect. I did not notice much of a shift from
the decent pilot to the shows in terms of quality or energy,
remembering the shows I saw only when I started seeing them again.
Not very memorable and the mystery plots were never that tough,
though this was a step removed from fuddy-duddy mystery TV (think
Jake & The Fat Man) that were comedy melodramas with bad
writing. Chuck Connors, Geoffrey Lewis, Patricia Clarkson, Angela
Bassett, Jay Thomas, Lonette McKee, D.B. Sweeney, Kasi Lemmons,
Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Walter Gotell, Stephen McHattie,
Jimmy Smits, Nancy Marchand, Eriq La Salle, Leigh Taylor-Young, Gail
Strickland, Greg Mullavey, John Davidson, Brad Dourif and Linda
Thorson also help make the debut season more watchable than it
otherwise would be. Action sequences are mixed and music is OK. Now
you can see for yourself in these first 22 hour-long shows.
The
1.33 X 1 image on both sets are in color and come from solid prints
you could imagine are HD-worthy, so they look nice, but they differ
on sound. Both offer lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sound, but Dynasty
sounds warm, full and normal for its time while Spencer
(barely older a season) is on the weak side for whatever reason.
There are no extras on either set.
To
order the Spencer
For Hire: Season One
Warner Archive DVD set, go to this link for it and many more great
web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
