CBS to Air Colorized I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke Show Specials

Next month, you’ll be able to watch episodes of both I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show in color. For the fourth year in a row, CBS will air an hour-long I Love Lucy special featuring two colorized episodes. A similiar special features two colorized episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show.

The Dick Van Dyke Show thus becomes the third classic sitcom CBS has dusted off and colorized for the benefit of modern audiences. The network started its color craze in December 2013 with I Love Lucy. The Andy Griffith Show got the color treatment in December 2015.

I Love Lucy Christmas Special

This year’s “I Love Lucy Christmas Special” airs Friday, December 2nd from 8-9PM ET. It features “The Christmas Episode” (aka “The I Love Lucy Christmas Show”) from December 1956 and the newly-colorized “Lucy Gets in Pictures” from February 1955.

Here’s a look at the various I Love Lucy color specials CBS has aired since 2013:

December 2013
“The Christmas Episode”
“Lucy’s Italian Movie”

December 2014
“The Christmas Episode”
“Job Switching”

May 2015
“L.A. At Last!”
“Lucy and Superman”

December 2015
“The Christmas Episode”
“Lucy Does a TV Commercial”

May 2016
“Lucy Visits Grauman’s”
“Lucy and John Wayne”

“The Christmas Episode” and “Lucy’s Italian Movie” were released on DVD in November 2013 alongside a third episode (“Lucy Goes to Scotland”) colorized in 2007 for the I Love Lucy complete series DVD box set.

An official press release for the “I Love Lucy Christmas Special” can be found here.

The Dick Van Dyke Show – Now In Living Color!

CBS will air “The Dick Van Dyke Show – Now in Living Color!” on Sunday, December 11th from 8-9PM ET. The special includes two episodes of the classic sitcom: “That’s My Boy?” from September 1963 and “Coast to Coast Big Mouth” from September 1965.

As has been the case with all the CBS colorized specials, the two episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show will air “seamlessly” with one set of opening credits at the start and one set of closing credits at the end. Carl Reiner, creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, is one of the executive producers of the new special.

An official press release for “The Dick Van Dyke Show – Now In Living Color!” can be found here.

A Word About Colorized TV

I watched the very first colorized I Love Lucy special back in 2013. I suppose I felt like I was supporting classic TV. That said, I’m not a big fan of colorizing TV shows and movies. Obviously, CBS sees value in continuing to colorize episodes of various sitcoms from the 1950s and 1960s or else it wouldn’t keep doing it.

If these specials raise awareness of classic TV among younger viewers, I guess it’s worth it. I’m not sure it does. It helps that every one of the colorized episodes has been released on DVD in their original black-and-white format.


Hit the comments with your thoughts. Do you enjoy these color specials? Are you horrified at the prospect of The Dick Van Dyke Show being colorized? Will you be watching the special on December 11th? What other shows do you wish CBS would colorize?


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13 Replies to “CBS to Air Colorized I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke Show Specials”

  1. I love that Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, and Mary Tyler Moore are still with us to watch their shows together in color if they so choose.

    1. They surely pick out the DVD episodes, since those two are in the Top Three Episodes of any fan, alongside “It May Look Like a Walnut!”

  2. Orson Welles denounced then-new colorization shortly before his death, viewers rejected it, and even Ted Turner eventually started to release movies on video “in glorious black and white,” but some people still insist on trying to force a technology that people clearly don’t want.

    1. I cannot agree more. As, I must admit, a classic media “snob,” colorization and, also dubbed-over dialogue, make me cringe. These technologies most especially downgrade the otherwise good quality material on view. Give me black and white and subtitles any day. I do not agree with critics very often, but on this matter I am 100% alongside them.

    2. There is nothing wrong with colorizing, a classic, give people a choice, my granddaughter, love’s it, seeing the classic background and the beautiful furniture, they had back then. She wants to do her apartment like that. Always a negative ass out there.

  3. Thank you, C,B,S,for colorizing some wonderful classics, I’ve been requesting it for years now, keep going with it, Don’t let the childish negative comments change your mind. There’s always a bad apple in the barrel, to run their mouth. I’ll look forward to seeing more.

  4. Can you please let us know, when you colorize any more, I don’t want to miss any. Looking forward to it . again thank you C.B.S.

  5. Does anyone have a contact number/email for CBS? My DirecTv service is out because of the weather and I was not able to watch or record the Dick Van Dyke show and was wondering if they would consider airing it again because of the hundreds of thousands of customers without service tonight in the midwest due to the snowstorm.

  6. I think it’s all right to colorize classic tv shows since the technical process has obviously improved over the years. If a fan chooses to watch a particular episode in black and white, that’s fine too.

  7. Also the honeymooners , season 1 Gilligan’s island and leave it to beaver , Mr. Ed , my favorite Martian among others. New generations can also enjoy them also. Money to be made here. Fun to watch!!!

  8. Those colorized episodes were fascinating. The same shows that I watched over and over were reborn. More, please. I could not stop checking every little detail on the set. I loved it.

  9. I would LOVE to see the entire I Love Lucy series colorized! I would buy the whole thing! I’m a huge fan, but I would also love to see Dick Van Dyke colorized! I like watching series both in original black and white, and in colour. Whoever does the colorizations at CBS is so good at their job, and I wish I had the job myself :)
    My Nana was a makeup artist for movies and she’s done so much research into several eras of beauty and the culture at the time. It’s because of her influence and my natural artistic sensibility, that I love to see Classic TV shows as close to the way they actually were in real life, and obviously colour actually existed back then! I love finding out what colours were popular in home decor, clothing, and makeup back then, and feeling like there is no longer a dividing wall between me and the characters, but that I have just stepped into their world, the 1950s, 60s, whatever, and get a much better taste of the environment of the world at that time. It’s Fascinating! Please keep going! And please finish complete seasons of I Love Lucy!
    Thanks

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