The Fugitive Season Two, Volume One (1964/CBS DVD)
Picture: C+
Sound: C-* Extras: D Episodes: C-*
We should be happy this classic version of the original Fugitive is continuing its ways on DVD,
but like some of their comedy titles, CBS DVD has stripped the original music
out of this new Season Two, Volume One
set and replaced the music with really, really, really bad, overdramatic junk
filler unworthy of the show. We like the
show, as this link will prove:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5892/The+Fugitive++Season+One,+Vol
Instead, we get a DVD set that should have never hit store
shelves, with contradictory information on the back of the case. In larger print, it says Transferred from the original negative with
restored audio while the microscopic print in the bottom of the box above
the copyright information says Some
music has been changed for this home entertainment version.
The result is a massacre (not unlike the upgraded original
Star Trek shows) of any and every
good moment across the 15 episodes included here. Fans are furious, they are complaining and
CBS should know that this will even be a bigger disaster if they try this with Blu-ray.
Sure, the full frame 1.33 X 1 image is in very crisp shape
and clean black and white transfers with good video black and only suffers
slight softness throughout, but the sound ruins everything and the newer nature
of the recordings is as obvious and characterless as it is distracting. That makes these failures all the more
frustrating.
There are no extras.
However, this brings up one more point. If the company can upgrade the original sound
to at least good Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono and can go bonkers adding new music to
a show as old as this (older than Happy
Days or Laverne & Shirley,
where CBS did this previously) then why do old shows have to sound so poor so
often and why cant they do more 5.1 upgrades without messing the shows up as
in the case (by CBS!) of the original Mission:
Impossible TV series?
It is time to get some priorities straight for classic TV
as the studios eventually did for feature films.
- Nicholas Sheffo
