Bewitched Season 1 (1 Viewer)

[Charles Ellis]

Juan, Bewitched is a beloved classic with a huge fan base. The odds are in our favor for a full run release. BTW, Sony does not have the worst record for classic TV releases. Fox wrote the book on it: where are the second seasons of Malcolm In The Middle (still no news after a couple of years!) and Mary Tyler Moore? (OK, a pending release has finally been announced, but you get the idea)

Fox has a lot of vintage shows that are gathering dust in the vaults as the other studios beat them to the punch!

 

[david_slater]

alright... Sony will offer the series in its original black-and-white form, or colorized.
we can pick what we want...
way to go sony!!!
i for one want the colorized set.
now if i could just get the other shows i want that was colorized.

 

[Juan Books]

Douh!

Still, no other studio out there has a higher abandoned shows/released shows ratio than Sony.

And Charles, I think there is little arguing that Fox is the best TV studio out there. They did procrastinate with Mary Tyler Show, but finally came through. The quality of their product is always satisfactory. Just imagine them putting out a release with the picture quality of Sony's Dawson's Creek or Mad About You. Not gonna happen!

 

[Charles Ellis]

Sorry, Juan, but when it comes to TV releases, nobody does it better than Warner Bros. and Paramount. Fox has lagged terribly behind. Just look at all the releases these two studios have had in the past year alone compared to Fox. At least Warners and Paramount have been digging through their vaults more and more, something that Fox has miserably failed to do.

From Paramount: Brady Bunch, Andy Griffith, MacGyver, various Star Trek series, I Love Lucy, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, new volumes of Fraiser and Cheers.

From Warner Bros.: Full House, Gilligan's Island, Wonder Woman, Night Court, Murphy Brown, more seasons of Friends, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, MAD TV, animated classics like Looney Tunes, The Flintstones, and The Jetsons, more seasons of The Waltons and ER. And that's just the beginning. Soon we'll see Lois & Clark and even the George Reeves Superman series later this year.

BTW, where's Batman? Oh, right- Fox has THAT title......

 

[David*P]

Rita Piro, author of the new Elizabeth Montgomery book, posted some screen captures comparing the colorized versions of episodes to the black and white (though she admits she merely turned the color off to get the b&w) on her website. But it's amazing how much things pop in color.



You may be interested to note that Dynacs Digital, the company who colorized, got the color of Samantha's dress in this episode wrong. It's really supposed to be blue. And in the first half of the first season (approx) Endora's witch gown was not purple and green like we are used to seeing in seasons three - eight. It was actually all one color, pale green.

 

[David*P]

VideoETA.com has posted that the suggested retail price for each of the first season sets of BW will be $39.95 available on 6/21/05. They post the release dates for movies and DVDs. I've never been to that site before so forgive me if you all ready knew what they're about.

 

[Jeff Willis]

That's great news on the release date. I was wondering how firm it is since I haven't seen it posted on TSoD yet, or did I miss it there?

 

[David*P]

TSoD posted about what Variety had reported on 3/29/05. http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=3182

Take note that David L. also said that Sony will release an official announcement next Monday, April 11 WITH cover art! I can't wait!

 

[David*P]

I just found a "movie" trailer for the first season set over at Video Detective.

It's freakin' sweet!

It shows the disc art and some of the menus which look just like the menus used for the Japanese release.

 

[Jeff Willis]

"These HTF'ers amaze me how they come up with this stuff on other sites" Thanks, DaveP

You got that right (about the BW DVD release) This is one series where I'll get most of the season's. I admit that I thought the series was wearing out a little in the last 2 seasons but then, I feel that way about some other series too. I seemed to like the early seasons of BW a lot better than the later ones.

Any BW fanatics out there know how many seasons were in B/W and when they started to air in color?

Another question that I have is, what season did Dick Sergeant take over the "Darrin" role?

 

[Greg_S_H]

It went to color at the start of the third season. Sargent took over at the start of the sixth season and was with the show for three seasons.

 

[David*P]

Yes, the last few years of BW weren't that great, but in my opinion still better than much of what is on TV now-a-days.

When watching that movie trailer you must make note that all though they mention Uncle Arthur making an appearance, that character is not in the first season at all. What they show were clips from episode #26: "Driving is the Only Way to Fly" where Paul Lynde (who later played Uncle Arthur) plays Samantha's mortal driving instructor. It's one of the funniest, if not funniest episodes, of the first season.

 

[Mark To]

You know, this started in another thread as well and just so we can argue it out separately and not under a Bewitched thread or Tarzan thread, I'm going to start a new post about this. I won't be able to get away with Fox Sucks, although they do, as the title, but that'll be the gist of it.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Lynde was great in his Munsters appearances as well. "Oh, I see you brought your doggie!"

 

[Anthony Neilson]

All the clips in that trailer are in colour. Are they colourised or are the clips from later episodes ? Bit misleading if they are. If not, the colourisation looks pretty good.

 

[Jeff Willis]

Thanks for the info, "Greg_S_H" If the releases get to the 6th Season, it'll be a little bit of a decision on those remaining 3 (for me, anyway). I just didn't like the other Darrin as much as the original for some reason. I didn't realize that the run on this series was 9 seasons. I did remember that it was one of the few (at that time) series that reached syndication while it was still airing original eps in prime time.



That's for sure! Well said

 

[David*P]

No, there are just eight seasons of Bewitched, containing 254 episodes. Dick York was Darrin for seasons 1 - 5 and Dick Sargent was Darrin for seasons 6 - 8, like Greg had mentioned earlier.

Elizabeth Montgomery and Bill Asher had actually signed on to do through season 11 but by the end of eight EM was tired of it, and frankly it seemed the writers were too. Plus Agnes Moorehead (Endora) was quite ill with cancer and ended up passing away in April 1974.

 

[JohnMor]

I simply cannot wait until June. That preview looks awesome. I know I could have my film lover's badge taken away for this, but I LOVE the colorization on the B&W episodes. A really remarkable job.

 

[Angela_K]

I'm going to chime in here for a second

Is Season 1 the only season that was done in black and white? I can't remember, if it's not, then I'm afraid if the colorized versions outsell the black and white, then I'm afraid any future sets Sony releases they might release only colorized versions for the b&w seasons.

Overall it's a good thing, but in the long run, it could be bad

 

[JasonPW]

The first two seasons of Bewitched ('64-'65, '65-'66) were in black and white.

I'd like to think that by offering season one in color and B&W, Sony is setting a precedent for season two, regardless of how the final numbers turn out.