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Category:    Home > Reviews > Comedy > TV > World War II > Hogan's Heroes - The Complete Third Season

Hogan’s Heroes – The Complete Third Season

 

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

 

 

Hogan’s Heroes - The Complete Third Season has the same fine transfers of the episodes as the previous sets, while the show stayed on track.  By this season, the trapped nature of the situation became problematic and even a tad stale.  However, the show still had its highlights, including a great Nina Talbot performance in The Hostage episode.  However, when the show got into its serious moments, those were betrayed by the hard reality that the Nazis were far more dangerous than a sitcom of the time could show.

 

Even with that, I stick by my statement on the show I will repeat again.  After arguing why the show was not absolutely insensitive or pro-Nazi in the last review, as well as the misguided revisionist thinking on the show the unreality of Political Correctness has given the show.  Again, this is a comedy, and I would argue one that was never derogatory of any of the characters, though The Nazis were buffoons.  The sitcom trappings made Klink and Schultz too likable, but that is the convention and only because they are patsies can Hogan and company fool them.  This is a dark premise and the intelligence of the teleplays actually are smart enough to play on this without denying the darkness of the situation, as much as a sitcom launched in 1965 would let them do it.  The half-hour slotted episodes for the 1967 – 1968 ran 30 shows this time and were still written better than many shows we see today.

 

The 1.33 X 1 full frame image continued to be shot on film and holds up very well for its age.  The first episode is shot in black and white, but the rest of the series is in color, and this color looks really good.  The series continued to be shot by cinematographer Gordon Avil, A.S.C., who had to come up with an approach that would make the show look distinct for the new color televisions that had just arrived to the market.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sounds good for its age.  The laugh tracks show their age, recycled from radio of the 1930s and 1940s, while the new music and dialogue fare better, even in this mix.  We get some extras again, including stills sections on all DVDs and Werner Klemperer on the ill-fated Pat Sajak Show discussing the show and his life.  That is not as good as the last set, but better than the first, which had none.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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