CBS Airing Colorized I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke Show Specials December 22

CBS will once again broadcast holiday specials featuring colorized episodes of I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show this month. The two hour-long specials will air back-to-back from 8-10PM ET on Friday, December 22nd. Both specials will “seamlessly combine” the opening and closing credits for the episodes included.

CBS began airing colorized specials in December 2013 with a pair of I Love Lucy episodes. The Andy Griffith Show got the color treatment in December 2015. The Dick Van Dyke Show became the third classic CBS sitcom colorized for modern viewers in December 2016.

I Love Lucy Christmas Special

The fifth annual colorized “I Love Lucy Christmas Special” will include “The Christmas Episode” (aka “The I Love Lucy Christmas Show”) from December 1956 alongside the newly-colorized “The Fashion Show” from February 1955. An official press release can be found here.

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

Colorized I Love Lucy Specials, 2013-Present

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”

December 2016
“The Christmas Episode”
“Lucy Gets in Pictures”

May 2017
“Dancing Star”
“Harpo Marx”

December 2017
“The Christmas Episode”
“The Fashion Show”

“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.

The Dick Van Dyke Show – Now In Living Color!

This year’s special will present “My Blonde-Haired Brunette” from October 1961 and “October Eve” from April 1964 in color. Creator Carl Reiner picked the episodes himself in honor of the late Mary Tyler Moore. Reiner also serves as an executive producer for the special.

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

Last year, CBS offered “That’s My Boy?” from September 1963 and “Coast to Coast Big Mouth” from September 1965 in color. The 2016 edition of “The Dick Van Dyke Show – Now in Living Color!” is available on DVD and Blu-ray.


Hit the comments with your thoughts. Has watching I Love Lucy in color become a holiday tradition for your family? Will you be watching this year’s colorized specials?


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6 Replies to “CBS Airing Colorized I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke Show Specials December 22”

  1. Now that CBS owns the Ten Network in Australia I wonder if we might see similar retro programming make its way here.

    1. I did a Wikipedia check, and they list the episodes as being black & white.

      I’m not sure why colorizing black & white television shows would seem like a good idea to anyone, but if it makes the folks at CBS happy then best to them. Perhaps they did a big survey and discovered hordes of young people pining to watch 1950s and 60s television, but only if the shows are in color …

  2. I had once read that when production of the 1965/66 season of “Dick VanDyke” began, the cast and producers agreed that the show would end at the conclusion of that season, and for that reason, they decided to keep the show in black-and-white, even though a little more than half of CBS-TV’s Fall 1965 prime-time schedule would be broadcast in color (and the percentage of the network’s prime-time schedule in color increased in January of 1966).

    According to what I recall reading, had the cast and producers decided to keep the show going past the spring of 1966, the 1965/66 season would have been filmed in color.

    1. I’ve read that THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW was considering switching to color as early as Season 3 (1963-64, which is when THE LUCY SHOW started filming in color, though CBS aired it in B&W until 1965-66), but when Carl Reiner heard that it would cost an extra $7,000 per episode, he decided not to do that.

      Only 3 CBS sitcoms remained in B&W for the 1965-66 season, THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, THE MUNSTERS, and THE [sitcom] SMOTHERS BROTHERS SHOW. All other CBS sitcoms, including THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, GOMER PYLE, USMC, GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, and the 3 Paul Henning sitcoms, went from B&W to color that season.

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