How about Darren McGavin's The Outsider (1 Viewer)

I was reading an article regarding James Garner's passing, and the author compared him to Darrin McGavin, noting that the premise of McGavin's The Outsider was very much like that of Rockford Files. I did some research on the show as I knew nothing about it, and it looks great. This is from the official DM website: http://www.darrenmcgavin.net/the_outsider.htm. As McGavin has two successful tv show on DVD releases, perhaps he could get a third. What do people here think? How about it Universal?

I would give it try. I have grown to appreciate Darrin McGavin over the years and in 1968, there were still pretty good shows (from my viewpoint) available on television. But with Universal, is there even a chance?

At present, no remastered elements on this one. I doubt that Shout/Timleless would cough up the money (at Universal's prices) for transfers. And Universal themselves aren't exactly showing much product from their back catalogue these days. Unless Shout/Timeless wants to pull the 16mm prints from UCLA and work with those.

Does UCLA have a complete set of 16mm prints for the series? If so, that would fit Timeless's standards for releasing Universal shows like Checkmate, and Universal would only have to sell their permission. I'd love to see this series released, and don't have much hope, but if there really is a complete set of 16mm prints right there in LA, maybe...

I thought about it being a fit for Timeless, but I'm not sure where Timeless is fitting in anymore. A few years ago it would have been definitely a good fit for Timeless; now, I'm not so sure. And without Timeless, I'm not sure this ever has a chance.
If we could get a set from decent 16mm prints, that would be OK, although I'd love to have better.

I didn't know whether transfers existed or not (I sort of expected Neil Brock to be the one to chime in as he seems to keep up with that sort of thing). It is only one season, and I think it would probably do better than the average Timeless release. Where did the transfers of The Name of the Game come from?

I heard that Universal had two different kinds of transfers for Name of the Game, one set from syndication and one from the Encore run in the 1990s. The Encore transfers were better but were only available for a little more than half the episodes. But they did have transfers for all the episodes and didn't need to go back to the 35mm originals. (I wonder if the picture quality on the episodes will vary widely because of the different sources.)Again, if there is a complete set of 16 mm prints of The Outsider, I think we might have a chance. If not, there's no way those 35 mm originals are getting transferred for the series unless and until technology changes a lot.

Here's your reference:

http://cinema.library.ucla.edu/vwebv/search?searchArg=Outsider&searchCode=FTIT&limitTo=none&recCount=50&searchType=1&page.search.search.button=Search

Thank you, John! They do have all the episodes (although I didn't see the pilot there). So now it's a question of getting someone interested...

Appears that the odds on this grow ever slim, unless one of the vintage channels picks it up. Was it ever syndicated? Even the "collector" sets I've seen offered in the past 10-15 years have at best a handful of episodes.

I enjoyed the show when I was a kid and McGavin is always great. The character he plays in this is like a warm-up for Kolchak, his most famous character, in the same way as Trials of O'Brien was Peter Falk's warm-up for Columbo. But there was great pressure put upon the producers to tone down and eliminate a lot of the violence inherent in this type of show, causing a lot of episodes to be a bit ponderous. As for a release, I can't say I've ever heard of any company showing any interest in this 50 year old show. And I'm not sure if all of UCLA's prints are color or not.

Just as a side note, when Universal was on their re-editing failed series into movies kick, there were 2 Outsider movies floating around, consisting each of 2 unrelated episodes. The were called The Forty-Eight Hour Mile and Anatomy of a Crime. Also, the 2-hour pilot movie ran regularly in syndication as well.

Neil Brock said:

I enjoyed the show when I was a kid and McGavin is always great. The character he plays in this is like a warm-up for Kolchak, his most famous character, in the same way as Trials of O'Brien was Peter Falk's warm-up for Columbo. But there was great pressure put upon the producers to tone down and eliminate a lot of the violence inherent in this type of show, causing a lot of episodes to be a bit ponderous. As for a release, I can't say I've ever heard of any company showing any interest in this 50 year old show. And I'm not sure if all of UCLA's prints are color or not.

Just as a side note, when Universal was on their re-editing failed series into movies kick, there were 2 Outsider movies floating around, consisting each of 2 unrelated episodes. The were called The Forty-Eight Hour Mile and Anatomy of a Crime. Also, the 2-hour pilot movie ran regularly in syndication as well.

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Anatomy of a Crime is available at Rarefilmm.com.

rcmeserve said:

Anatomy of a Crime is available at Rarefilmm.com.

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Bootleg?

Neil Brock said:

Bootleg?

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He’s not selling it. Just making it available for viewing or downloading. I should add that the two episodes are VERY clumsily spliced together, and connected with some awkwardly looped-in dialogue. But the PQ isn’t bad. Watchable, anyway.

Periodically someone will be offering a DVD on one of the grey market sites, which seem to be either just the pilot or a couple of the re-edited movies and 1-2 other episodes. I've seen a couple over the years on youtube, great show, and McGavin is one of a favorite in about anything he does.

Here's a story which ran explaining how the big concern over TV violence affected the show and how the nervous NBC execs edited out scenes. This may be one reason why, even with the great McGavin, the show was ponderous:

https://www.tvobscurities.com/2009/10/tv-violence-in-1968-the-outsider/

Great article. Would have been interesting if it had been re-launched post-Kolchak in the more permissive 70's landscape.

Neil Brock said:

Here's a story which ran explaining how the big concern over TV violence affected the show and how the nervous NBC execs edited out scenes. This may be one reason why, even with the great McGavin, the show was ponderous:

https://www.tvobscurities.com/2009/10/tv-violence-in-1968-the-outsider/

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Very interesting details in that article. I know the Networks went into some kind of collective virtue signalling panic about violence in the aftermath of RFK's shocking and tragic assassination on June 5, 1968. Early June would have been too late, presumably, to influence show renewals for the coming Fall 1968-69 season, a lot of series started filming in early April for the coming season...and we're told in this article that 8 to 10 episodes of The Outsider were either completed or in editing and post production by August, needing to be re-cut and overdubbed...but I wonder if any of this played into Rat Patrol not being renewed by ABC for a third season? In Rat Patrol's second season, it was up against the arthritic Lucy Show and the last half hour of The Man from UNCLE, which had already overstayed it's welcome, both shows in their last seasons (Lucy would return with Here's Lucy in the same timeslot) Rat Patrol, pure hokum as far as actual WW2 accuracy was concerned, but an immensely entertaining series I love with terrific action and stunts, was probably the most violent show on network television at the time.

I watched The Outsider first run and loved the show...I don't honestly remember it being neutered in it's violence and action, but I might not have noticed that because The Outsider had such wit and charm in it's writing. McGavin was great as always. And even as a 12-13 year old, I could see it's depiction of a depressed and neurotic ex con private investigator, was (at least to me), a unique and groundbreaking character on television at that time. Thank goodness Roy Huggins had another opportunity to explore the same themes later in the '70s with the superlative Rockford Files...

I do remember the big hit to violent action that a show like QM's The FBI took going into the next season, same thing with The Virginian, where the lack of violent action was even more noticeable because of the 90 minute format drawing that out into a tedium for some episodes.

The annotated notes in that interesting article that cite the magazine Broadcasting for source articles leaves me wondering if the magazine's article archive can be accessed anywhere online? I think I'll search for any, sounds like a great resource for fans too.

Vintage Universal TV series-wise, I wish we could get a decent release of both The Outsider (for Darren McGavin) and The Psychiatrist (for Roy Thinnes).

Universal churned out so much product and there's still a great many worthwhile series locked away in their vaults. Just off the top of my head, Owen Marshall, Name of the Game, Run For Your Life, Toma, the rest of Baretta, 1950s Dragnet, Love That Bob, Bachelor Father, and I'm sure dozens more if I took the time to look it up.