What are your top 5 favorite shows from the 1960s? (1 Viewer)

[cherisland]

My top five neglected Sixties shows that most need a DVD/Blu release would be:
The Pruitt's Of Southampton
It's about Time
Surfside Six
He And She
Ghost & Mrs. Muir (a Region 1 release)
My top five animated shows from the Sixties:
The Flintstones
The Jetsons
The Bugs Bunny Show
Mister Magoo
Woody Woodpecker Show

 

[kingfish]

combat
bonanza
star trek
voyage to the bottom of the sea
the fugitive.

 

[Dave Lawrence]

The original Dallas featured lots of outdoor scenes with plenty of extras walking around; or the camera would follow Sue Ellen driving into Southfork, exiting her vehicle and walking into the house, etc. Today's directors and editors can't be bothered with what they assume are mundane scenes and are too lazy to choreograph scenes with extras. It makes these shows feel less real to me. The excessive editing is a turn-off.

I loved the original Dallas and like (but don't love) the revival. And the current show does have its issues. However, I wouldn't say that lack of establishing shots and lots of extras is one of them. At the very least, I wouldn't criticize the directors and editors as lazy because of it.

This is an issue with scripted shows in general now. With ever increasing time taken away from shows to air more commercials, there isn't the extra time to spend on anything not directly related to that episode's storyline(s).

With Dallas, the original series had 48 to 50 minutes per episode. The current version has roughly 44 minutes per show. (If it was on ABC, CBS or NBC instead of TNT, it would probably have closer to 40 minutes.) We're also dealing with 12 to 15 episodes per season rather than 25 to 30 shows like in the original, so every moment counts. Things like the time spent showing cars (and helicopters) coming and going from Southfork is a luxury of time that simply isn't available on a regular basis anymore.

I'm just happy we actually get an opening credits sequence and not just a title card, like most current shows. (And that the DVDs have included additional scenes that didn't make the final cut due to lack of time.)

You're also not likely to have a lot of extras showing up in the background because the show (and most shows today) don't have the budgets that they had in the 80s. Even the last couple of seasons of the original Dallas saw fewer extras as the budget was increasingly cut.

The real concern with the Dallas revival (IMO) is that writer/e.p. Cynthia Cidre often seems more interested in putting on a show about her original characters (the Ramos family and the Ryland family) and uses the Ewing and Barnes families as a backdrop because she knows she couldn't sell anyone on a show about her original characters alone (see her very short-lived series Caine).

 

[Ron1973]

Call me a prude (and not to get totally off-topic) but the new Dallas just seems to border on soft porn. Don't get me wrong.....the old Dallas had it's share of sex in it, too, but it seems the envelope is really pushed on the new one.

 

[benbess]

In terms of which shows from this decade would be good for blu-ray, how about....

Gilligan's Island, 1964-1967
As we all know, there were only 3 seasons of this classic comedy, the last two in beautiful color. Each season of the Dick van Dyke show fits on just 3 blu-rays, and so I assume the same could be done for this show, making a nice 9-disc set. Which network or studio now owns this show?

The Fugitive, 1963-1967
Several people on this thread had listed this as not just their favorite show of the decade, but perhaps their favorite of all time. CBS has already created HD masters for it. If they can let go of their crazy $129 a season price point, and make this a more reasonable, say, $199 msrp for all 4 seasons ($99 street price) they might do fairly well.

The Wild Wild West, 1965-1969
This show still has quite a following. CBS still needs to remaster the first season, the black and white one, but HD masters for the other seasons already exist.

High Chaparral, 1967-1971
This high quality late Western is right now getting the HD treatment at CBS. And this one has never even been out on DVD. Again, I think success with this would mean letting go of the crazy price point and releasing it as a full series set for an msrp of c. $199 on blu-ray, and maybe $149 on DVD.

Get Smart, 1965-1970
I used to own this show on DVD, but I thought the PQ was sometimes a let down, with a sometimes grainy and dirty picture. Were parts of this filmed 16mm? Maybe that would explain it. Anyway, perhaps an HD remaster could fix the issues.

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 1962-1965
I may be one of the few, but I think the last three years of this show were maybe even better than the half hour version. Saw some in HD streaming a few years ago, and they looked great. Not sure who owns this show.

I'm sure there are several more shows from the 1960s worthy of blu-ray, some of which have been mentioned by others, but for me these titles come to mind right now.

In terms of the long-running Westerns Bonanza, Have Gun, Rawhide, and esp. Gunsmoke, I wonder if "greatest episode" collections would work. I'm not sure many believe the market can handle 20 seasons of Gunsmoke on blu-ray, or 430 episodes of Bonanza, esp. at the prices CBS seems to want.

And yet CBS is already making, or has already made, new High Definition masters for all of these shows. I think it might be interesting if they could get the fans of these shows to vote for their favorite episodes for a "special collectors blu-ray set"—or sets plural for the really long-running shows. This would begin to get psychological buy in from the fans even before the sets were sold. For Gunsmoke it might divide roughly into three sets—the 6 seasons of the half hour show, the 5 seasons of the hour-long black and white show, and then the 9 seasons of the color show. What if fans as well as CBS selected the best c. 20% of the show? With well over 600 episodes, that would still mean brining c. 130 episodes to blu-ray, which is longer than the complete runs of some of the shows listed above....Just a thought. Or, maybe I'm wrong and complete season sets are the way to go? Or just release these on streaming in HD, as was done with Hawaii 5-0?? Not sure.

My favorite Western, The Virginian, isn't owned by CBS but by NBC. The DVDs for these, put out by Twilight Time, are quite good and highly recommended. The PQ is mostly strong, but there's a bit of clean up that might be done if it's ever scanned for HD. Perhaps it'll never be done for HD. Or if it is done, maybe it would only be streaming. But again, in the highly unlikely event it was ever done for blu-ray a "best of" would make sense imho. Out of nearly 250 movie-length shows for this program, a top 50 would be an awesome set of these sometimes impressively good Western movies for television.

But, that's almost certainly never going to happen. For anyone curious about the Virginian, however, I strongly recommend the first season DVD set, which can now be had for the bargain price of around $20 from various vendors associated with amazon. There were 30 episodes in the strong first season, and so it's less than a buck per movie. There's a detailed episode guide for the show here:

http://ctva.biz/US/Western/Virginian/V-homepage.htm

Finally, anyone up for a top 5 favorite shows from the 1950s?

 

[JMas]

Having already purchased the first 9 seasons of Gunsmoke (a total of 17 releases since all but the first season were broken into 2 volumes) and being very satisfied with the quality of the DVDs, I am only interested in seeing Seasons 10-20 released. I will not start over with Season 1 on blue-ray.

 

[John Maher_289910]

Barbara Eden and Elizabeth Montgomery both were gorgeous ladies and I hear lots of love for them. Mary Tyler Moore is quite unsung in my opinion; I think she's better looking than both!

I have worked with Barbara Eden, and I can assure you, pretty much no one who ever lived is as good looking. Her face is so beautiful, and her body defies description! She's also extremely nice. I like MTM and I adore Elizabeth Montgomery. Of the three, EM is my favorite, overall. Combination of talent and looks. She's my favorite actress of the three.

 

[Charles Ellis]

I agree re: Miss Eden. I met her a few years ago- very much a lady!!!! There are so many shows to choose from the 1960s, but those of you who know me on this forum that my top two choices are Dark Shadows and Peyton Place!!!!!

 

[BobO'Link]

Several people have commented along the lines of: is making/has made High Definition masters for .IMHO they are *not* doing this for BR or other physical media but rather to "future proof" their collections and be ready for mass acceptance of streaming/downloading of content. Yes, it's possible to realize a physical release, be it DVD or BR, from the transfers but I tend to think that's mostly a after thought as someone realizes, for certain "higher profile" series, they may be able to get back a few $$ from the process with a physical release.

That said I think the re releases of product on BR do the era a disservice. After all, how many copies of I Love Lucy, for example, will they sell where *one* season costs as much or more than most people paid for the *entire series*? Plus we get back to a "The DVD looks OK to me" aspect for many viewers. The studios really need to smarten up and release product that has either *never* had a DVD release *or* corrects major issues that were present on a DVD release.

 

[smithbrad]

Several people have commented along the lines of: is making/has made High Definition masters for .IMHO they are *not* doing this for BR or other physical media but rather to "future proof" their collections and be ready for mass acceptance of streaming/downloading of content. Yes, it's possible to realize a physical release, be it DVD or BR, from the transfers but I tend to think that's mostly a after thought as someone realizes, for certain "higher profile" series, they may be able to get back a few $$ from the process with a physical release.

That said I think the re releases of product on BR do the era a disservice. After all, how many copies of I Love Lucy, for example, will they sell where *one* season costs as much or more than most people paid for the *entire series*? Plus we get back to a "The DVD looks OK to me" aspect for many viewers. The studios really need to smarten up and release product that has either *never* had a DVD release *or* corrects major issues that were present on a DVD release.

I completely agree about the motivation behind studio's making High Definition transfer to "futire-proof" their collections, and I've been saying the same thing for a while now.

I'm not sure I would go as far as to say it is a disservice to re-release product on Blu-ray that has already been released on DVD, if done appropriately. Liongate is successfully re-releasing LHOTP on both DVD and Blu-ray in what I would at least consider in an acceptable manner. They have shown that once remastered a Blu-ray season release does not have to be expensive by pricing the LHOTP Blu-ray seasons at around $40 retail with a discounted price of $20. Now they are correcting flaws from the original DVDs so they would expect more sales, but by re-releasing DVD's as well as Blu-ray's many might still be content with just the DVD's, which competes with potential Blu-ray sales. In addition, the Twilight Zone and Dick Van Dyke Show Blu-ray releases have been well received by many by providing decent discounts and complete series packaging.

The problem here is primarily just with CBS/Paramount. They have established a pricing strategy with Star Trek (mostly TNG) due to all the rework in redoing all the SFX's. Star Trek has a strong following and consumers into it are used to paying a bit more. So when they priced it at $100+ retail with discounts betweem $50 and $75 it still sold well. Mainly due to the understanding of what is going into it, the lackluster quality of the previous DVD release, and its Star Trek afterall. Star Trek Enterprise has been met with a bit of resistance because the pricing is the same, but there is much less work involved. Now we have three more releases (i.e., Honeymooners, ILL, and TAGS), all following the same pricing strategy. CBS is trying to add more to the releases with "on broadcast night" versions but with the additional content not remastered (while nice to have and enjoyable to see) it is a bit of a hack job for the premium pricing, especially when considering the effort put forth for Star Trek TNG.

I think CBS is just desperately gambling on trying to set an artificial market value for their releases based on the successes with the Star Trek franchise. They are scrambling to justify the higher pricing by throwing new content into the releases that haven't even been prepared with the same care. They know the DVD's are dirt cheap now and are doing everything they can to try avoid their Blu-ray releases from being dragged down with them. Unfortunately, for them, Liongate and others are providing a better perspective on the true costs. Based on what CBS has already transferred, i can't see a reason why they couldn't re-release previous seasons on Blu-ray, while also remastering new seasons, or at the least release Blu-ray's of newly remastered seasons along with their DVD counterparts. If they were smart they would see the writing on the wall and get what they can while physical media is still so dominant, and just release Blu-ray seasons at a $10 premium over the associated DVD release.

 

[benbess]

BobO'Link: You make some good points, and I agree with almost everything you said. And I'm maybe the main one when it comes to mentioning the HD masters of a show. As you say, I think they want to make these shows viable for the future, which in many cases just means streaming, cable, and regular broadcast TV—without a blu-ray release. An example of that seems to be the original Hawaii 5-0, which has been available for streaming in HD for years—and it looks great—but it doesn't seem as if a BR release is likely.

And yet, a few years ago I don't think a blu-ray release of I Lucy Lucy or TAGS seemed likely either, but here they are. Again, however, you make a good point that many find their DVDs or streaming adequate, and don't see the need to double-dip, esp. at the prices CBS seems to want.

But it remains to be seen whether CBS is going to find success with this msrp of $129, which even at the sale street price of $60 seems very steep for one season. Based on Amazon's ranking of its blu-ray sales, Star Trek has been a strong seller at this price, usually hitting the top 5 iirc. Right now the first season blu-ray of I Love Lucy, in contrast, is at the moment at about #3000. It probably will go up at some point, but there seems to be a big difference.

The recent story at blu-ray.com did seem to suggest that CBS is considering the releases of some other classic shows on blu-ray. I assume the results from Lucy and TAGS with help them make up their minds about that. And I hope it will give them some guidelines on a more realistic price.

Already the DVDs of many of these shows offer better pq than people saw on their TVs back in the 1960s. But what was good enough back in the day is less pleasing now, given how much larger and how much higher rez our TVs are. Seen from across the room, my DVDs usually look good. But if I sit in the close chair in the living room it's quite mediocre.

And these shows were filmed in 35mm to "future proof" them back in the day. As I mentioned a while ago, for my favorite Western The Virginian they did some tests with 16mm film when they were gearing up to make the first episode, to see if that would work. But when they watched the results in the studio theater they decided it just wasn't good enough, and paid the extra for 35mm to get the higher resolution that it offered.

Imho even shows that had good DVD releases, like the Dick Van Dyke show, are better in blu. As everyone knows, this is a show with modest "production values," but the true special effects are the faces and pratfalls of Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, and the rest of them. And to me you really do see their performances better on the blu-ray, in a way that makes it more fun. The blu-ray makes your TV into almost a black-and-white window onto the set, and give you the feeling of almost being there for the live performance. That upgrade seems worth it to me—at least at the price I paid for it. I admit I skipped the DVD, and even skipped the blu-ray for years. It was only when it plummeted in price down to $54 for the whole Dyke blu-ray set, which was just $11 a season, that I finally got it. At that fire sale and remaindered price it was probably about as cheap as the DVD.

My family has also been enjoying Little House on blu-ray. That's show where you might not think blu-ray makes it better, but I think it really does. My daughter and son are starting to get into this show probably mainly because of the blu-ray release.

Last point, and then I'll try to shut up. On another forum, I asked an expert who actually does remasters of old TV shows as part of his living roughly how much it might cost to create a new HD master for an old hour-long 35mm show that was in good shape. He said it varied a lot, but as a rough back of the envelope figuring maybe c. $9k an episode if a company had a contract to do a good number of them. An hour-long prime time Western, cop show, or sci fi show, from the 1960, if you tried to make it today (which would of course be impossible, for many reasons) would probably cost c. $1 million to c. $2.5 million dollars. To "save" a show and make it viable for the future for $9k seems like a good investment....

 

[BobO'Link]

smithbrad and benbess - While my post is somewhat pessimistic I must agree with both of you as well. I was specifically referring to CBS about the prices but wanted to be "fair" and not call them out. With CBS/Paramount they seem to think, as you mentioned smithbrad, that *everything* should be priced like a Star Trek series. Even though I *love* Trek I don't purchase those at the generally prevailing prices but wait for *really* good sales. A couple of those series I've purchased twice and the VHS I sprung for was higher than 2 DVD series. They have enough of my $$ on those to last them a bit so I can wait it out...

I wish *all* studios would do like Lionsgate has done with LHOTP. That's the way it *should* be done - Fix problems and rerelease with a fair price point. I also have to give the nod to those very good BR prices that've cropped up occasionally on TDVDS and Twilight Zone. If I owned a BR player I'd be all over those when the crop up - again because it's *reasonable" at that price to do the double-dip/upgrade.

 

[John Maher_289910]

In terms of which shows from this decade would be good for blu-ray, how about....
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 1962-1965
I may be one of the few, but I think the last three years of this show were maybe even better than the half hour version. Saw some in HD streaming a few years ago, and they looked great. Not sure who owns this show.

My two favorite AH shows are from the AFH episodes, AN UNLOCK WINDOW and THE JAR.

 

[Roy Wall]

Nothing to see here.

 

[FanCollector]

Counting dramas that had at least 50% of their runs in the 1960s, my list of favorites would be (in no particular order):Star TrekThe PrisonerThe FugitiveThe Twilight ZoneI SpyHonorable Mention: The Outer LimitsMission:ImpossibleThe VirginianGunsmokeNaked CityDanger ManThe AvengersThe SaintIt Takes a ThiefThe DefendersThe Wild, Wild WestThe Name of the GameRoute 66CheckmateBurke's LawThe RoguesThe UntouchablesThe OutsiderThe Man From UNCLEThe LieutenantDramas that made the 1950s list instead of this one:Alfred Hitchcock Presents/HourHave Gun, Will TravelMaverickPerry MasonDramas that ran longer in the 70s:MannixIronside

 

[Darby67]

The Prisoner

The Avengers

Star Trek

The Outer Limits

The Wild Wild West

Honorable Mention: Danger Man (Secret Agent), Mission Impossible, and Combat!

Darby

 

[Steve Armbrust]

I agree. And I'll add that What's My Line (particularly in the 1950's) was among the most sophisticated and erudite shows ever to appear on TV. Instead of Adam Levine, Sharon Osbourne and J-Lo, we had Bennett Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis and others. The interplay and conversation between them all was something to behold.

As a kid, my folks made an exception and let me stay up on Sunday nights just to watch What's My Line. I still remember the show in 1964 in which the second game of a Mets/Giants doubleheader went 23 innings (Gaylord Perry pitched 10 innings of relief and got the victory, which was his big break to become a starter). Some of the panelists had been at the game and had to leave early. They were talking about it at the start of the show. This was real live TV.

 

[FanCollector]

I forgot to add The Trials of O'Brien to my honorable mention list. Short-lived, but really great.

 

[Regulus]

. I will not start over with Season 1 on blue-ray.

I second you! I will not fork over money for something on Blue Ray if I already have it on DVD or VHS. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 

[JMas]

I second you! I will not fork over money for something on Blue Ray if I already have it on DVD or VHS. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

In the case of Gunsmoke, I bought all the Columbia House VHS tapes (assorted episodes on about 45 tapes), the Columbia House DVDs (the first 3 and a half seasons before they abruptly stopped after about 20 DVDs), and now all the complete seasons that have been released on DVD. Along with the 50th Anniversary Collection and the Directors Collection, I have up to 4 copies of some episodes. I'm tired of paying for stuff that has already been released in a satisfactory form.

My message to companies wanting me to purchase more is stop trying to sell me the same material in a different format and offer more that has not been released previously.