Remington Steele – Seasons Four & Five
Picture: C+
Sound: C Extras: C+ Episodes: C+
Remington Steele really had only four seasons,
but for some interesting showbiz politics, a few TV movies were made and they are often syndicated
as six episodes, which is a de facto fifth season. This happened in late 1986, early 1987, the
time period for which Brosnan was supposed to play James Bond. The series then head producer, the late,
great Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, picked him to replace Roger Moore. However, there was a clause in his MTM
contract that even after the series was over, they could option his return and
they did to the point that he lost the Bond role to Timothy Dalton. He did it, he was not happy about it and it
actually shows in this new Seasons Four
& Five set.
At the
beginning of this season, Remington has disappeared for stupid reasons and
suddenly surfaces for others. This was
the 1985 – 1986 season. Event he
producers knew that this had to be the final round with these characters if
they had to separate them, then they made things worse later by doing that
worse possible thing of marrying them.
Bond girl
Cassandra Harris (Lisl in For Your Eyes
Only) is here in the two-part Steel
Searching and fans of both franchises know that this was also his wife at
the time who0 later died too soon and too young of Ovarian Cancer in 1991. This was her last professional work. The “Jack The Ripper” storyline also offers
veteran British actor Simon Oates, who has surfaced in several episodes of The Avengers, a series Remington
Steele could have thought more about
aspiring to at times. It also has Julian
Glover, also from For Your Eyes Only, The Avengers and Star Wars:
The Empire Strikes Back. This is the
highlight of the box.
Kenneth
Mars, Chris Mulkey, Terry O’Quinn, Paul Mantee, Jennifer Tilly, Louie Anderson,
Susan Strasberg, Dan O’Herlihy, Sab Shimono, Gary Frank, Jack Scalia and (yes)
Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. were the big guest stars for what amounts to 27 final
hour-long shows. The series was getting
long in the tooth, but there are still some interesting moments and it survived
much longer than even the network could have imagined.
The 1.33
X 1 image is not bad for its age and better than most 1980s TV series we have
seen, meaning MTM did not skimp on quality and/or use cheap videotape
tricks. It is also very comparable to
the transfers Sony just issued for the first season of Hart To Hart, so
fans of both should be pleased. The
Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is monophonic on the episodes, but the sound is
poorer than the previous set, sounding lower and more limited in what little
range the last set had. Extras include
two audio commentaries (on Steele On The
Air and Bonds Of Steele) and four
featurettes: Steele Fanatics, Steele Stars, Steele On The Road and Steele
Farewell. This set wraps up the
entire series and Brosnan did move on to Bond, while Doris Roberts landed up on
the ever-annoying Everybody Loves
Raymond, so I guess her first hit TV series Angie should be on the horizon somewhere. Next, Fox and MGM will release HD upgrades of
all 20 Bond films, including the four Brosnan did, which we look forward to
soon.
- Nicholas Sheffo
