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 Acorn Media is I, Claudius: The Complete Series (30th Anniversary Edition). The award-winning miniseries, produced by the BBC in 1976 and broadcast in the United States as part of Masterpiece Theater on PBS in 1977, has been released on DVD a number of times in the past. Judging from the negative reviews at Amazon.com, those releases featured edited episodes. Apparently, when the BBC originally aired the series, the first episode ran close to 100 minutes. That episode was cut in two for Masterpiece Theater (meaning there were 13 episodes on PBS compared to 12 on the BBC).
This new set contains both the unedited first episode and the two PBS episodes. The set includes several bonus features, including documentary on the miniseries as well as a separate documentary focusing on a failed 1937 attempt to adapt Robert Graves’s novel I, Claudius (which, along with Claudius the God, formed the basis for the miniseries). I am unsure whether any of these bonus features are new to this set or simply held over from previous sets.
That’s it for classic TV out today but Alpha Video released two sets earlier this month that I failed to mention: The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet – Volume 18 and Racket Squad – Volume 10.
