Saturday, November 10, 2012

Digital Digest: Night Court, Eight is Enough, Return of the Beverly Hillbillies, and more to DVD; The Streets of San Francisco - Season 5 (Volumes 1 and 2) DVD Review


Welcome to Digital Digest! We've got a lot of news for you this week (quite a change from the past few weeks), along with our review of The Streets of San Francisco - Season 5 (Volumes 1 and 2). Let's get going!

DIGITAL NEWS

Get ready to cue the sax as bang the gavel as Night Court returns to DVD once again! This week, Warner Archive brought the series one season closer to completion with their release of Night Court - The Complete Seventh Season! We'll have more about this set in the upcoming weeks as we learn more information. By the way, remember last week when we said that we had a Warner Archive announcement that we couldn't disclose just yet? Well, you're probably thinking that Night Court was, in fact, that release. However, it is not! We can now tell you that this "mystery release" coming soon from Warner Archive (we don't exactly know when it'll be out, but we anticipate it being very soon) is the second season of Eight is Enough. We'll have more on this when the time is appropriate, but for now, we can tell you that it'll be released as two separate volumes on the same date.

MPI released My Favorite Martian - Season 3 on DVD a few weeks ago, but the set came with an insert that provided a bit of news... and we honestly don't have a whole lot of details about two of the releases mentioned on it. First, it showed packaging for the made for TV movie Return of the Beverly Hillbillies. This was recently made available as a MOD offering on amazon.com, but this MPI offering, whenever it appears, could be more interesting. The problem is, we really have no clue about any details regarding this. We have even fewer details about the packaging shown for Petticoat Junction: Return to Hooterville. Honestly, we're not sure what it is (Is it a retrospective? A collection of episodes?), but it has a banner on it that says "50th Anniversary Collection" which leads us to believe that it may just be a collection of episodes, perhaps similar to the set they released a few years ago. You can see the entire insert (the remaining releases are things that have been out for a while) below.


Mill Creek made a few announcements this week, including one surprise announcement of a complete series of something that they've never released before. On January 8, they'll release the final two seasons of one of the Carsey-Werner sitcoms with 3rd Rock from the Sun - The Complete Season Five and 3rd Rock from the Sun - The Complete Season Six. The big surprise, though, is their announcement of Hearts Afire - The Complete Series. The show itself isn't new to DVD, but the season sets were previously released by Image, which makes this Mill Creek announcement surprising.

Shout! Factory has made many licensing deals, few of which are ever completely surprising, but this week they made a licensing deal which is, in fact, surprising. This week, the studio announced a licensing deal with Warner to release season 2 through 5 of MADtv. This is huge, since Warner almost never does these licensing deals (although they did make a similar one for Max Headroom and Norm with Shout! a few years ago). The deal also includes the animated Beetlejuice series.

Finally, we have some MOD news this week, as Fox recently released Raising Hope - The Complete Second Season as a MOD title. The first season was released as a standard release, so it seems likely that it didn't perform as well as hoped... but nonetheless, fans will get more of the series on DVD.


UPCOMING WEEK PREVIEW

Tuesday (November 13) is a huge re-release day, where there isn't actually anything completely new to home media, but instead things upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray or are simply re-released in new packaging. There are two big complete series sets being released on Blu-ray for the very first time, with The Dick Van Dyke Show - The Complete Series (Blu-ray) and Friends - The Complete Series (Blu-ray). Warner Home Video re-releases another complete series on DVD with The Flintstones - The Complete Series. And finally, Inception has a re-release of The Real McCoys - Complete Season 2.


BLOG FEATURE REVIEW

The Streets of San Francisco - Season 5, Volumes 1 and 2

DVD Review: The Streets of San Francisco - Season 5, Volumes 1 and 2 (CBS, $45.98 each or $89.98 together)
by skees53

Lt. Mike Stone (Karl Malden) returns to fight crime in San Francisco in The Streets of San Francisco - Season 5 (Volumes 1 and 2), but this time, he is without his original partner. By the fifth season, Michael Douglas was beginning to see his own career take off (a successful career that continues even through this day), so the producers wrote off the character of Steve Keller, explaining that he had taken a job teaching at a local college, and introduced a new partner for Stone: Inspector Dan Robbins (Richard Hatch). These changes weren't popular for the series at all, and this season ended up marking the last for the series... but regardless, the fifth season still produced many excellent episodes (nearly all of them) that are worth watching again.

The final season begins with the two-part episode "The Thrill Killers," where a murder trial becomes a hostage situation. Michael Douglas appears in this episode as a "special guest star" to explain why he leaves the police force. A millionaire wants his daughter's murderer... dead or alive... in "Dead or Alive." Stone could be the target of a murderer in "The Drop." The father of a 16 year old girl is murdering her "johns" one-by-one in "No Minor Vices." A singer-songwriter could be a murderer in "In Case of Madness." In "'Til Death Do Us Part," Stone is charged with protecting a former bookkeeper's wife. In "Child of Anger," Stone and Robbins have a bigger mystery on their hand after the daughter of a clothing designer confesses to murdering her latest fling. Stone and Robbins are in hot pursuit of a motorcycle gang wreaking havoc on the city in "Hot Dog." Paranoia leads to a cop being shot in "Castle of Fear." In "One Last Trick," a prostitute goes back to work to smoke out the killer of a "coworker." In "Monkey is Back," Stone has to stay one step ahead of an ex-con who is released and now out for revenge.

Volume 2 begins with "The Cannibals," where a mobster steals loot from his father and buys immunity from the Feds by offering to testify against his dad. Stone investigates a domestic violence situation that leads to more complications in "Who Killed Helen French?" In "A Good Cop... But," Stone needs to find a cop killer before it is too late. A dirty copy places a weapon on a drug dealer he roughed up in "Hang Tough." In "Innocent No More," Stone wants to get violent youth gang members tried as adults. Stone has doubts when an ex-con in the midst of rehabilitation is accused of murder in "Once a Con." Stone is on the search for a man who escapes from a mental institution looking for the wife that he allegedly killed in "Interlude." A bodybuilder's short fuse leads to murder in "Dead Lift." A divorce gets very complicated in "Breakup." In "Let's Pretend We're Strangers," Robbins gets romantically involved with a public defender, which throws some more complications into a case she is representing. A San Quentin guard is on the hunt for convicts who escaped under his watch in "Time Out." The series ends with "The Canine Collar," where a jewel thief is determined to find a missing dog collar containing stolen diamonds.

Typically, I like to list guest stars with the episodes, but there were way too many in this set... so we'll just list a few here: Susan Dey, Patty Duke, Norman Fell, Paula Kelly, Doris Roberts, Dick Van Patten, Marion Ross, Ron Glass (the ones listed so far were just in the first episode of the season), Tom Bosley, Max Gail, Dabney Coleman, Eugene Roche, Parker Stevenson, Maureen McCormick, Desi Arnaz Jr., Gerald McRaney, Don Johnson, Ned Beatty, Mark Hamill, Carl Weathers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pernell Roberts, and many, many more!

Although there are standard disclaimers on the packaging, the episodes seem to be unedited. I couldn't say for sure, though. One slight exception is the season premiere, which originally aired as a two hour episode, but from what I understand everything is still there, it is just that the episode was split in to two parts. Runtimes are as follows:

Volume 1:

Disc 1:
1. "The Thrill Killers (Part 1)" (50:11)
2. "The Thrill Killers (Part 2)" (48:14)
3. "Dead or Alive" (50:16)
4. "The Drop" (49:46)

Disc 2:
5. "No Minor Vices" (50:15)
6. "In Case of Madness" (50:15)
7. "Till Death Do Us Part" (50:17)
8. "Child of Anger" (50:15)

Disc 3:
9. "Hot Dog" (49:03)
10. "Castle of Fear" (50:16)
11. "One Last Trick" (50:14)
12. "Monkey is Back" (49:04)

Volume 2:

Disc 1:
1. "The Cannibals" (50:15)
2. "Who Killed Helen French" (50:16)
3. "A Good Cop... But" (50:15)
4. "Hang Tough" (50:14)

Disc 2:
5. "Innocent No More" (50:01)
6. "Once a Con" (50:16)
7. "Interlude" (50:18)
8. "Dead Lift" (50:07)

Disc 3:
9. "Breakup" (49:16)
10. "Let's Pretend We're Strangers" (50:14)
11. "Time Out" (49:44)
12. "The Canine Collar" (50:05)

Both of these sets have standard packaging that is very much in line with the previous releases. Both volumes have cover art with Hatch and Malden (different poses) with San Francisco skylines in the background. The back of each Viva case has a few episode snapshots and a brief description of the episodes on the particular volume. Inside the case for each volume, you'll find the three discs, each containing four episodes. The discs are the standard CBS discs with the series title and episodes listed on a gray background. Episode titles, descriptions, and airdates are listed inside each case.

The menus for the set are basic and functional, just like all of the previous releases. On the main menu of each disc, there are stills of Malden and Hatch, while the theme song and clips from episodes play in the background. Options on the main menu include Play All, Episodes, and Subtitles. There are animated transitions to each menu. Upon selecting Episodes, you get a menu where all of the episode titles are listed. Chapters are placed throughout each episode.

Like the previous releases, the episodes on this set have been remastered. However, something is just not quite right about the remastering this time. The first two episodes of the season (which actually aired as a double length episode originally, but are split up here) really do not look all that great, with a lot of artifacts on the video. However, the remainder of the set appears to be fine, and the audio is fine throughout. Each episode has English subtitles.

The video and audio quality of the episodes on this set is excellent. The episodes do show some age, of course, but I honestly do feel that they look and sound as good as anybody could possibly expect. Unfortunately, the set is lacking on subtitles or closed-captioning.

I was hoping that they'd end the series with a "bang" considering that there have been no special features on any of the sets, but unfortunately, they didn't. It would have been nice to have had some sort of special feature about the introduction of Hatch's character in this season.

Once again, we've got another series wrapped up on DVD! It is always nice when these series get completed on DVD, but also a little sad because it marks the end, at least for now. In general, I think CBS did a great job with this series as far as quality (with a few exceptions, most of the episodes of this series have looked absolutely flawless on DVD), but they certainly did manage to disappoint on the special features. In any event, this is one of those series that I never would have expected to see completed on DVD a few years ago, and in the early days of DVD, I would have never even expected to see it on DVD. Now, the whole series is complete. I actually first discovered the series on DVD, and I've been impressed with the series. It goes without saying that the first four seasons with Michael Douglas were better seasons, but I honestly don't think that this season was bad at all, and it is a shame that it had to end here. If you are a fan of crime dramas in general (particularly the "big ones" of the '70s), you really can't go wrong with this set.

(4/5 stars)

To purchase Volume 1, click below and help support SitcomsOnline.com:
Amazon.com

To purchase Volume 2, click below and help support SitcomsOnline.com:
Amazon.com

To purchase Volumes 1 and 2 together, click below and help support SitcomsOnline.com:
Amazon.com

Related links:
SitcomsOnline.com Main Reviews Page
The Streets of San Francisco TV.com Page


FOLLOW ME

Who to Follow: Bob Saget (Twitter), "I like long walks on the beach...and then to be dragged through the sand by an off-road vehicle, and then hurled off a catapult."
Claim to Fame: Danny Tanner from Full House, original host of America's Funniest Home Videos, and currently the voice of future Ted on How I Met Your Mother.
Why You Should Follow Him: For a long time, I always had a pretty low opinion of Bob Saget. His claim to fame began with his days on Full House where he played the squeaky clean good father Danny Tanner, and I always believed that his range was just incredibly limited to being one of TV's lamest characters (regardless of what anybody thinks of Full House, Danny Tanner was pretty lame). It wasn't until I saw Saget's appearance on Saturday Night Live in the mid '90s (see his opening monologue) that I realized that Saget has much more dynamic appeal than he demonstrated on Full House, and is actually a very funny person. When you follow his Twitter feed, you get some of his comedic gold every single day, and it is certainly worth reading. You'll find a lot of Tweets on topics including his (seemingly depressing) dating life, his 87 year old mother, politics,
Pick of the Tweets: (well, at least of the G-rated ones) "Excited my grandmother's coming to visit today. A little scared too, cause she passed away fifteen years ago." (June 1, 2011)

That's all for this week. Until next time, keep it digital!


Sitcoms Airing Tonight / Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows

Sunday, December 8

Universal Basic Guys - "Sheet Shock" (Fox, 8:00PM ET/PT)
After feeling slighted by a Navy recruiter, Mark sets out to join an elite unit of the Marines, only to be thwarted by his inability to properly make a bed; David teams up with a veteran, who reveals stories that are stranger than fiction.

The Simpsons - "Convenience Airways" (Fox, 8:30PM ET/PT)
The Simpsons are trapped on a flight with the most unruly passengers in America.

Bob's Burgers - "They Slug Horses, Don't They?" (Fox, 9:00PM ET/PT)
Tina and Louise get into an argument.

Krapopolis - "Shlub$" (Fox, 9:30PM ET/PT)
Shlub is sick -- well, one part of Shlub is sick -- so the family uses Hippocampus' new invention to extract and replace the ailing part, but might just need to operate on themselves in order to save him.

The Neighborhood - "Welcome to the Name Drop" (CBS, 10:30PM ET/PT) (Repeat)
Marty and Courtney’s baby name gets spread around because nobody can keep a secret. Meanwhile, Dave is assigned the ever-complicated task of assembling the diaper changing table.

The Conners - "Smoking Penguins and Santa on Santa Action" (The CW, 9:00PM ET/PT) (Repeat)
Dan is disappointed when everyone but Becky forgets about his birthday; Darlene faces another issue; Dan excludes Jackie from the family Christmas Santa photo for mistreating Louise.

The Conners - "Yard Sale, Phone Fail, and a College Betrayal" (The CW, 9:30PM ET/PT) (Repeat)
Louise starts to move into the Conners' home; Dan decides to sell the furniture set he bought for Roseanne when they were first married; Dan soon finds parting with the furniture harder than he thought it would be.

Complete TV Listings


Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows (Week of December 2)

Sunday, December 8

  • Aisling Bea (Living with Yourself) - Catch Aisling on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen at 10pm on Bravo.


New on DVD and Blu-ray

Friends - The Complete Series (4K UHD) Young Sheldon - The Complete Series Veep - The Complete Series (Blu-ray) I Love Lucy - The Complete Series (Blu-ray) Seinfeld - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)

09/10 - Rick and Morty - The Complete Seasons 1-7
09/10 - The Ropers - The Complete Series (VEI)
09/10 - Ted - Season One (Blu-ray) (DVD)
09/17 - The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet - Video Scrapbook
09/17 - Top Cat - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
09/24 - Friends - The Complete Series (4K UHD)
09/24 - Young Sheldon - The Complete Seventh Season (DVD) / The Complete Series (DVD) (Blu-ray)
10/08 - Curb Your Enthusiasm - The Complete Twelfth Season / The Complete Series
10/22 - Veep - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
11/05 - I Love Lucy - The Complete Series (Blu-ray)
11/12 - The King of Queens - The Complete Series (Blu-ray) (2024 Release)
11/19 - SpongeBob SquarePants - The Complete Fourteenth Season
11/26 - Looney Tunes Collector's Choice - Volume 4 (Blu-ray)
12/03 - Angel (1960-1961) - The Complete Series, Volume 1
12/17 - Seinfeld - The Complete Series (Blu-ray) (4K UHD)
02/04 - Bewitched - The Complete Series - 60th Anniversary Special Edition (Blu-ray)

More Recent and Upcoming TV DVD and Blu-ray Releases / TV Shows on DVD, Blu-ray and Prime Video / DVD Reviews Archive


Recent SitcomsOnline.com News Blog Posts

12/08 - Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows; This Week in Sitcoms (Week of December 9, 2024)
12/07 - SitcomsOnline Digest: Scrubs Reboot in the Works; Family Guy Returning to Adult Swim
12/06 - Apple TV+ New Comedy Government Cheese; Prime Video Sets Half-Hour Police Drama
12/05 - Marlon Wayans to Guest Star on Poppa's House on CBS; Mo Returning to Netflix
12/04 - STARZ Comedy Thriller Sweetpea Renewed for Season 2; Bel-Air to End After Next Season
12/03 - Pluto TV Holiday Schedule; SNL December Hosts and Musical Performers
12/02 - Scripps Networks (Laff, Bounce, ION) Holiday Schedule; First Look at Watson on CBS
12/01 - Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows; This Week in Sitcoms (Week of December 2, 2024)
11/30 - SitcomsOnline Digest: Desperate Housewives Creator Has Prequel Idea; Finale Date Set for The Talk
11/29 - Abbott Elementary Aces the Test on Multi-Platform; Dancing with the Stars' Resurgence
11/28 - 2024 Thanksgiving TV Marathons
11/27 - Henry Danger The Movie Premieres in January; Dexter: Original Sin Trailer
11/26 - The Way Home Returns for Season 3; Matthew Broderick and Son to Guest Star on Elsbeth
11/25 - Peacock's Laid Premieres December 19; Jon Hamm Drama Gets Season 2 Before Series Premiere
11/24 - Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows; This Week in Sitcoms (Week of November 25, 2024)
11/23 - SitcomsOnline Digest: HBO Renews It's Florida, Man; Simpsons Voice Actor Announces Retirement
11/22 - NBC's Happy's Place Gets Full Season; HBO Renews It's Florida, Man for Another Zany Season
11/21 - The CW Midseason 2025 Schedule; Voice of Milhouse Leaving The Simpsons
11/20 - NBC Midseason 2025 Schedule; Apple TV+ Announces The Studio
11/19 - Antenna TV's Thanksgiving on the Eastside: The Jeffersons Marathon; Fox Midseason 2025 Schedule
11/18 - Conan O'Brien to Host Oscars for First Time; Celebs for Season 3 of Special Forces: World's Toughest Test
11/17 - Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows; This Week in Sitcoms (Week of November 18, 2024)
11/16 - SitcomsOnline Digest: HBO Orders Kaley Cuoco Comedy from Hacks Creators; Reboot of Friday Night Lights in the Works
11/15 - Bookie Season 2 Premieres December 12 on Max; Apple TV+ Mythic Quest Is Back in January
11/14 - CBS Midseason 2025 Schedule; Reasonable Doubt Renewed for Season 3 on Hulu
11/13 - Harlem Season 3 Drops in January; James Acaster HBO Comedy Special
11/12 - ABC Midseason 2025 Schedule; Jim Gaffigan Gets First Hulu Comedy Special
11/11 - We Got Time Today, A New Tubi Talk Show; Bill Maher Gets 13th HBO Special
11/10 - Sitcom Stars on Talk Shows; This Week in Sitcoms (Week of November 11, 2024)
11/09 - SitcomsOnline Digest: Two New Sitcoms in the Works at CBS; The CW Adds Bob ♥ Abishola to Lineup
11/08 - CBS Orders Full Season for Poppa's House; The CW Acquires Bob ♥ Abishola Reruns; Remembering Alan Rachins of Dharma & Greg