Every Tuesday I take a look at obscure and/or classic television programs, specials, miniseries or made-for-TV movies being released on DVD. For the record I consider anything broadcast prior to 1980 to be classic or else there wouldn’t be much to discuss. The releases referred to in these posts are encoded for Region 1 use in the United States and Canada.
Out today from Paramount Home Entertainment is Barnaby Jones: The Complete First Season, with the first thirteen episodes of the long-running detective series starring Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether, originally broadcast between January and May of 1973. The series ultimately ran for eight seasons and 178 episodes, ending in 1980. The only review I’ve been able to find can be found at the Home Theater Forum. Also out today from Paramount is Cannon: Season Two, Vol. 2, with the final twelve episodes of the 1972-1973 season. The first half of the season was released on DVD last June. There are three more seasons to go and at this rate it could be quite a while before the entire season makes it to DVD.
From Timeless Media Group comes Best of The Loretta Young Show – Seasons 3 & 4, containing 31 episodes from the third and fourth seasons of the half-hour anthology series. Timeless has previously released “best of” sets from the first two seasons: 30 of the 36 Season One episodes were released in February of 2005 and 30 of the 34 Season Two episodes in June of 2007. Now you can get 31 of the 64 Season Three/Season Four episodes. I’m sure fans of the series would prefer complete seasons but I suppose this best of collection is better than nothing. Finally, if you haven’t purchased either season of Branded on DVD from Timeless (they were released in 2004 and 2005) now you can buy Branded – The Complete Series, also from Timeless.
I believe the “LORETTA YOUNG SHOW” episodes Timeless Media are releasing on DVD are primarily those featuring Loretta in the “evening’s story”. She played the lead in every episode during its first two seasons (1953-’55), but then her health collapsed at the end of season two because she almost “overworked” herself to death. By the time she resumed her role as hostess at the end of 1955 (after a parade of close friends filled in for her until she recovered), she decided her featured roles would be limited to about half the episodes each season, a schedule she continued to maintain until the show ended in 1961. By the way, if Loretta hadn’t saved her 16mm copies of virtually the entire series [keeping them in her garage until she authorized the release of several of them on VHS in the ’90s], you wouldn’t be seeing them today. NBC certainly didn’t maintain copies of their ’60s “daytime reissue” version, “THE LORETTA YOUNG THEATER”, in their Fort Lee storage facility.
The “BRANDED” episodes are probably the same edited versions King World syndicated in the ’80s, ’90s and early ’00s.
And you’re probably wondering how Paramount/CBS wound up with all rights to “BARNABY JONES” and “CANNON”. Well, producer Quinn Martin eventually sold them to Worldvision, which, after a series of numerous mergers and acquisitions over the years, wound up as a part of Viacom [Paramount/CBS].