If anyone ran out last Tuesday looking for Infinity Entertainment Group’s The Jerry Lewis Show Collection and couldn’t find it, please take a moment to read over this article at TVShowsOnDVD.com that explains what might have happened. There’s another potentially confusing release from Infinity Entertainment Group this week: The Judy Garland Show Collection, which may or may not be a new release of a set first released in 1999 by Pioneer. TVShowsonDVD.com states the collection is four discs while the product page at Infinity’s website states there are three discs, with one of those discs apparently consisting of “never-before-seen outtakes and bloopers.”
Also out today is The Fugitive: Season Three, Vol. 2 from Paramount Home Video, with the final 15 episodes of the 1965-1966 season and Perry Mason: Season Four, Vol. 2, with the final 12 episodes of the 1960-1961 season. Finally, you can pick up Get Smart: Season 5 from HBO Home Video, with all 26 episodes from the 1969-1970 season, the show’s last. Recall that the complete Get Smart series was released exclusively by Time-Life in November of 2006 and then by other retailers in November of 2008.
On a related note, TVShowsOnDVD.com reports that NBC’s Van Dyke and Company, which ran for 15 episodes during the 1976-1977 season, will apparently be getting a complete series release during 2010.
I will say this about “VAN DYKE AND COMPANY”- it was a damn good variety show in a rotten time period, and NBC just let it slide off their schedule. Dick was disappointed, I’m sure…
Paramount Home Video is releasing “THE FUGITIVE” because ABC Films, who had the rights to syndicate the series after it left the network in 1968 [ABC’s daytime repeats], became Worldvision in 1972…which was eventually sold to Taft Broadcasting…which became part of Spelling Entertainment….which was devoured by Paramount/VIACOM. “PERRY MASON” was always a “CBS property”, initially distributed in syndication by CBS Films, which became VIACOM in 1971, which merged with Paramount years later, which then swallowed CBS years after that…you get the idea.
“GET SMART”, however, is NOT controlled by VIACOM/Paramount {even though, through various mergers and acquisitons, it was linked to its original pre-1971 distributor, NBC Films}, although CBS originally owned the copyright when the series moved to their network for its fifth and final season. Time-Warner controls the rights to the series, which is why they’re releasing it on home video through their HBO division. Got that?