Mccowan, George

Hart to Hart - The Complete First Season

Created by Sidney Sheldon (I Dream of Jeannie), Hart to Hart was a Thin Man for the 1980s. Self-made millionaire Jonathan (Robert Wagner, It Takes a Thief) and part-time journalist Jennifer Hart (Stefanie Powers, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.) even had their own Asta-like pooch, Freeway. Unlike Nick and Nora Charles, however, children weren't part of their globe trotting, crime solving plan. Fortunately, they had trusty butler/Bentley driver Max (Golden Globe winner Lionel Stander) to keep them company.

Mr. And Mrs. H., as Max referred to them, were introduced by 1979's two-part pilot ("Hart to Hart"), which features Roddy McDowall and Stella Stevens as devious doctors and Wagner's future wife, Jill St. John (Diamonds are Forever), as a wealthy patient. Natalie Wood, his wife at the time, also has a cameo (under the name Natasha Gurdin). Other highlights of the first year include "Jonathan Hart, Jr.," in which a stranger (Dee Wallace-Stone, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) claims Jonathan is her son's father, and "You Made Me Kill You," in which an obsessed Jonathan fan (Kathleen Lloyd, Magnum P.I.) plans to eliminate the competition--Jennifer Hart. Other notable guests include Markie Post (Night Court), Daniel J. Travanti (Hill Street Blues), René Auberjonois (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Juliet Mills (Nanny and the Professor), and Eve Arden (Our Miss Brooks).

Hart to Hart ran on ABC for five seasons and went on to inspire such popular detective dramas as Remington Steele and Moonlighting. After a move to NBC, it was followed by eight made-for-TV movies. Sadly, Stander passed away shortly after filming 1994's Secrets of the Hart. Three years later, Wagner gained a new generation of fans by spoofing the urbane manner that helped make Hart to Hart such a hit in the Austin Powers trilogy. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Created by bestselling novelist Sidney Sheldon, HART TO HART: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON stars Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as Jonathan and Jennifer Hart, a fabulously rich couple who always seems to become entangled in an exotic blend of mystery, intrigue and adventure. Accompanied by their loyal servant Max (Lionel Sander), the smart and sexy twosome jet set around the world, where they solve cases ranging from espionage to murder, in 22 breezy episodes that mix excitement and danger with just a dash of romance.

Hart to Hart - The Complete Second Season

The worlds most glamorous amateur sleuths are back for more mystery fun and danger in the second sensational season of HART TO HART starring Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers. In 20 captivating cases ranging from kidnapping and robbery to industrial espionage and murder romantic jetsetters Jonathan and Jennifer Hart risk life limb and lifestyle to solve the most unsolvable of crimes. Featuring Lionel Stander as their faithful sidekick Max and a first class line-up of suspects and victims HART TO HART: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON is a rich and sexy blend of adventure intrigue and excitement.System Requirements:Running Time 987 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396145733 Manufacturer No: 14573

Charlie's Angels - The Complete First Season

This five-disc compilation features the entire First Season with the original Angels Farrah Fawcett Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith and all their adventures from one of the most classic shows in television history.Once upon a time Jill Sabrina and Kelly were police officers whose skills were being wasted in menial duties such as answering phones and filing. A mysterious millionaire named Charles Townsend took them away from all that by opening his own private investigation agency and hiring these gorgeous ladies as his operatives with John Bosley acting as their assistant and liaison.System Requirements:Starring: Kate Jackson Farrah Fawcett Jaclyn Smith and David Doyle. These episodes are featured in "Standard" format. Copyright 2003 Columbia TriStar.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396010307 Manufacturer No: 01030

America's guiltiest pleasure of 1976--the inaugural season of Charlie's Angels--has returned in all its jiggly, jolly glory in this tidy boxed set. It's hard to describe just how captivated the nation's media and viewing public were with cheesemeister Aaron Spelling's ABC-TV hit, but for awhile Charlie's Angels was wildly popular appointment television at its most self-consciously banal. The first season's three (and best-remembered) belles--lioness Farrah Fawcett (then Farrah Fawcett-Majors), pin-up babe Jaclyn Smith, and Thinking Man's beauty Kate Jackson--were something like primetime Spice Girls, gracing countless magazine covers and bestselling posters. The idea (even if a fan of the show didn't happen to be a straight male) was that one was compelled to choose a favorite angel as a kind of ink-blot window onto one's subconscious life.

While the 2000 Angels feature film (starring Cameron Diaz, etc.) kept faith with the original show's self-mockingly sloppy storytelling, there's nothing like seeing the old episodes for a lesson in narrative hubris. Basically, the three leading characters were bored policewomen wooed away to a private firm owned and operated by the unseen sybarite, Charlie (voiced--over speakerphone--by an uncredited John Forsythe). After a long set-up each week, the girls' investigations typically saw them going undercover: as fashion models--no great stretch--in "Night of the Strangler"; nurses in "Terror on Ward One"; roller-derby stars in "Angels on Wheels"; and vulnerable convicts (of course) in "Angels In Chains." The exploitation factor is not as bad as it might have been. The cast was so glamorous, their chemistry so perfect, Charlie's Angels never became a mere meat market. Despite such nods to modernity as Fawcett's no-bra look, the episodes were old-fashioned in their heroine-in-peril appeal, yet there was a difference: The Angels looked out for themselves and each other. --Tom Keogh

S.W.A.T. - The Complete First Season

Tough but not swaggering, serious but not solemn, S.W.A.T. won over its 1970s television audience with several unexpectedly interesting elements: A degree of storytelling sophistication; visually exciting, guerrilla-like street violence; and a subtle but determined fascination with the psyches of the show's five principal characters. To a non-viewer, S.W.A.T. looked like a fatuously reassuring, law-and-order shill in the aftermath of the Vietnam war and Watergate. In reality, creator-producer Robert Hammer (a Peabody Award winner for the 1979 POW TV drama, When Hell Was in Session) managed to make an ideal, mid-'70s Aaron Spelling cop show with an extra emphasis on the human factor in peacekeeping.

Spun off from an earlier Spelling series, The Rookies, S.W.A.T. was the story of Special Weapons and Tactics, an elite branch of the Los Angeles Police Department assigned the most critical cases of urban violence in an American era of cult terrorism, snipers, assassinations, traumatized war veterans, and organized crime. Considering what the S.W.A.T. team is up against in every episode--shooters with sophisticated weaponry, psychotic revolutionaries, vulnerable takeover targets (nuclear reactors, etc.)--one might have expected the show to be swallowed up in gadgetry and fancy police protocol for extreme emergencies. But from the pilot (technically, a two-hour Rookies episode not included in this set) on, S.W.A.T. was clearly much more interested in the way team leader Lieutenant Dan "Hondo" Harrelson (Steve Forrest), Sergeant David "Deacon" Kay (Rod Perry), and officers Street (Robert Urich), Luca (Mark Shera), and McCabe (James Coleman) tried to understand the modern world even while keeping its meanest tendencies in check.

Inventive stories with occasional twists and appealing guest stars (James Keach, Cameron Mitchell, Annette O'Toole) keep one glued to the 13 episodes contained here. Among the best: "A Coven of Killers," starring Sal Mineo as a Charles Manson-like monster; "Jungle War," featuring Mitchell as a career cop and war vet facing an emotional breakdown; and "The Bravo Enigma," an apocalyptic tale of a curiously likable hit man (Christopher George) unknowingly spreading a plague through L.A. --Tom Keogh

From producer Aaron Spelling (TV's "Charlie's Angels" and "Starsky and Hutch") comes one of the toughest action-packed crime-fighting shows of them all: S.W.A.T. Spun off from "The Rookies" and fueled by its signature hit theme song S.W.A.T. chronicled the covert missions of the LAPD's Special Weapons and Tactics unit an elite five-man force tackling situations too dangerous for even the police to handle. The show introduced a new breed of hard-as-nails cops to audiences: Lt. Dan "Hondo" Harrelson (Steve Forrest Spies Like Us Mommie Dearest) Officer Jim Street (Robert Urich TV's "Vega$" "Spencer for Hire") Sgt. "Deacon"Kay (Rod Perry) Officer Dominic Luca (Mark Shera TV's "Barnaby Jones") and Officer T.J. McCabe (James Coleman).Now remastered and on DVD for the first time relive all those tense showdowns and standoffs during S.W.A.T.'s 13-episode debut season as that infamous black van rolls around the mean streets of L.A. delivering justice the hard way.System Requirements:Starring: Steve Forrest Rod Perry Robert Urich and Mark Shera. Running Time: 564 Min. (Total) Color. Copyright 2003 VPD Inc.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS UPC: 043396003460 Manufacturer No: 00346

Charlie's Angels - The Complete Second Season

Charlie's Angels: The Complete Second Season has no shortage of the good-natured cheese and eye candy that made the primetime television show's debut season wildly popular in 1976. The Angels had a new look in their second year: Farrah Fawcett, arguably the most popular of the show's three actresses, departed before the sophomore season and was replaced by another blonde dazzler, Cheryl Ladd. (Ladd's character, Kris Munroe, was the younger sister of Fawcett's Jill Munroe, whose exit is explained in the premiere episode as a liberated woman's career move: Jill has decided to race cars in Spain.)

No sooner does Kris settle in than a crisis sweeps through off-screen Charlie's private investigation agency. While cavorting on Oahu in the two-part "Angels in Paradise," Charlie is kidnapped by a smuggler (France Nuyen), who demands the Angels break her husband out of jail in exchange for their boss's life. Bubbly Kris, brainy Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson), beauteous Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), and sidekick Bosley (David Doyle) are compelled to soak up rays and sip fruity mixed drinks in Waikiki while fighting crime in various guises, re-establishing, for another season, Charlie's Angels' dramatic and aesthetic game plan for every episode: start slow with lots of idle chatter, put the girls in a ridiculous undercover situation, and get them out of their clothes as much as possible.

The pattern continues in the silly "Angels on Ice," starring old hands Phil Silvers and Jim Backus, in which our heroines join an ice show to find out who kidnapped a pair of skaters. "Pretty Angels All in a Row" finds Kelly and Kris reluctant entrants in a "Miss Chrysanthemum Pageant" (no, you won't find Kate Jackson in a swimsuit this year, either) rigged by organized crime. "Circus of Terror," co-starring James Darren, enlists the Angels in the carney life. If there is anything to complain about regarding season 2, it is that the novelty of Charlie's Angels has worn a little thin, and every episode feels the same. Still, there are surprises: "The Sammy Davis Jr. Kidnap Caper" stars the late rat-packer in peril and much bemused by the presence of three comely bodyguards. --Tom Keogh

The crime fighting beauties Sabrina and Kelly have a new addition to their team rookie Kris Munroe little sister to former Angel Jill (Farah Fawcett). The adventures continue as the gorgeous detectives go undercover to take down the bad guys. The mysterious tycoon Charlie Townsend returns as the Angels' boss assigning their whodunit missions with their trusty sidekick Bosley.System Requirements:Starring: Kate Jackson Jaclyn Smith Cheryl Ladd Running Time: 1127 Min. Copyright Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 2005Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396034082 Manufacturer No: 03408

Fantasy Island - The Complete First Season

Smiles everyone smiles! It's the fabulous first season of FANTASY ISLAND the mysterious Pacific paradise where anything can - and will - happen. Join Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban) and his assistant Tattoo (Herve Villechaize) as they welcome their very special guests - including Bill Bixby Don Knotts Juliet Mills Leslie Nielsen Ray Bolger and Sandra Dee - for a weekend stay and make their fondest dreams and wishes come true. This DVD includes the long-running series' initial 14 episodes plus the 1977 pilot and the original feature-length television movie that started it all!System Requirements: Running Time 776 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396114906 Manufacturer No: 11490

One of the definitive TV shows of the 1970s originally aspired to the dark moral complexity of anthology shows like The Twilight Zone. Even diehard fans will have to admit Fantasy Island fell short of its goal--but that didn't stop it from becoming hugely popular, lasting for seven powerhouse seasons. All the most iconic elements were present from the beginning: Diminutive Tattoo (Herve Villechaize, The Man with the Golden Gun) shouting "De plane! De plane!"; infinitely gracious Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) commanding "Smiles, everyone, smiles," before delivering pages of exposition with his implacable Latin gravitas; the white suits; the tropical island that somehow has all the vegetation and weather patterns in the world; the pageant of celebrities from Jim Backus to Karen Valentine, Barbi Benton to Don Knotts--it all added up to sneakily addictive television. After all, wish-fulfillment--be it a schlub who wants to be irresistible to chicks or kids who want their separated parents to reconcile or a former cheerleading team who want to relive their high school glory days--had a built-in narrative hook, even though the resolution (various versions of "be careful what you wish for") was never in doubt. Almost every episode bubbled over with sex, revenge, ambition, and regret, delivered with a shameless lack of subtlety. Over the course of the first season, the interplay between Montalban and Villechaize--each armed with an intriguing exotic accent--became more and more prominent, with Mr. Roarke becoming increasingly supernatural while Tattoo oozed the mortal sins of greed and lechery. Turn on any episode; you'll find it hard to stop watching, no matter how cheesy or ludicrous the storyline. This four-dvd set includes the original TV movie pilot, its sequel, and the 16 episode first season, as well as a couple of largely bland featurettes enlivened by the occasional barbed comment from executive producer Leonard Goldberg. --Bret Fetzer

Banacek - The Second Season

A self-made millionaire and living in Boston's posh Beacon Hill area Thomas Banacek (played by George Peppard) has a taste for only the finest things. Being of Polish decent he also loves to recite enigmatic Polish proverbs. Banacek is aided in his efforts by his limo chauffer and gofer Jay (played by Ralph Manza). Jay usually has his own ideas on how the items were taken and also has dreams of recovering the items himself first and get the reward. Banacek also relies heavily on his close friend and bibliophile/bookstore owner Felix Mulholland (played by Murray Matheson) to help in background research. Insurance companies are loath to call on his services for the recovery of lost or stolen insured items because of these fees. Nevertheless they call on him when they get stuck as no one else can solve these impossible cases.System Requirements:Running Time: 576 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 829567045725 Manufacturer No: 670457

Starsky & Hutch - The Complete First Season

Produced by Aaron Spelling (TV's "Charlie's Angels" TV's "S.W.A.T.") and Leonard Goldberg "STARSKY AND HUTCH" roared onto small screens in 1975 to become one of the most popular iconic series of the decade. This was TV's coolest buddy cop show fueled by full-throttle car chases offbeat humor colorful characters and a hip vibe. The hit series (1975-1979) followed streetwise undercover detectives Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and Ken "Hutch" Hutchinson (David Soul) as they cruised around town in Starsky's red and white-striped Gran Torino battling thugs and hoodlums with the help of their gruff boss Captain Harold Dobey (Bernie Hamilton Blacula Scream!) and jive-talking informant Huggy Bear (Antonia Fargas Shaft Car Wash).System Requirements:Starring: Paul Michael Glaser David Soul Bernie Hamilton Antonio Fargas Running Time: 1173 Min. Copyright Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 2005Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396006652 Manufacturer No: 00665

In the rough-and-tumble, wildly entertaining world of Starsky & Hutch, impatient cops--anxious to join a foot race in pursuit of a villain--throw themselves out of moving vehicles and roll to a bruising stop. Undercover detectives Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and Ken "Hutch" Hutchinson (David Soul), hardly imbued with the powers of Spider-Man, routinely scale walls, hop from rooftop to rooftop, and fling themselves down steep hillsides to stop bad guys from doing what bad guys do.

Two years before Hill Street Blues redefined the cop genre as a mesh of overlapping storylines and workaday frustrations, Aaron Spelling's Starsky & Hutch capped a five-year run (1975-1979) portraying LA's finest as madly heroic creatures of reckless determination and physicality. The Complete First Season reminds us how startlingly brutal this primetime series could be while maintaining a delightful, often incongruous, self-deprecating humor.

From the series pilot on, partners and best pals Starsky and Hutch work a fine line between predator and prey, relentlessly pursuing suspects while also snared by crime chieftains or short-sighted superiors. In "The Fix," Hutch's secret romance with the former girlfriend of a mafia boss (Robert Loggia) results in the lawman's kidnapping and forced addiction to heroin. Similarly, in "A Coffin for Starsky," a mad chemist injects the wisecracking cop with a slow-acting but lethal poison. "Jo-Jo," written by Michael Mann, finds our guys at loggerheads with federal officers over a dumb deal the G-Men make with a serial rapist.

The 23 episodes in this set are all fun, if sometimes shocking, viewing. Expect each character to take as much abuse as he dishes out. Still, the comic sight of Starsky and Hutch (in "Death Notice") trying to conduct business amidst busy strippers is well worth the surrounding violence. --Tom Keogh

War of the Worlds - The Complete First Season

Tom Cruise and Gene Barry aren't the only ones to save Earth from a Martian invasion--from 1988 to 1990, an intrepid band of scientists and soldiers battled the Red Planet menace on the small screen in the action-packed syndicated television series War of the Worlds. The show operated on an intriguing premise that paid homage to George Pal's classic 1953 film version--the Martians, presumed dead at the end of the movie, are actually in a state of hibernation, and 30 years later, they have not only revived, but begun to inhabit human bodies in a second attempt to conquer our planet. Now, a team of scientists (led by dependable character actor Jared Martin) and soldiers (under the command of actor-playwright Richard Chaves) must convince humanity to fight against an alien onslaught. It's unfortunate that War of the Worlds caught on with only a small but loyal audience (the series lasted just two seasons), since its episodes delivered an entertaining mix of science fiction, action, and suspense; highlights from the first season include "Thy Kingdom Come," which introduces a supporting turn by Ann Robinson, who recreates her role from the 1953 film; "Eye for an Eye," which wryly revisits the famous 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds by Orson Welles that spread real panic over much of the Eastern seaboard; and the disturbing "Unto Us a Child Is Born," in which the human team and the aliens search for a half-Earthling, half-Martian baby. All 22 episodes of the debut season are included on this six-disc set; unfortunately for diehard fans, no supplemental features are included. --Paul Gaita

Starsky & Hutch - The Complete Second Season

Produced by Aaron Spelling (TV's "Charlie's Angels" TV's "S.W.A.T.") "STARSKY AND HUTCH" roared onto small screens in 1975 to become one of the most popular iconic series of the decade. This was TV's coolest buddy cop show fueled by full-throttle car chases offbeat humor colorful characters and a hip vibe. The hit series (1975-1979) followed streetwise undercover detectives Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and Ken "Hutch" Hutchinson (David Soul) as they cruised around town in Starsky's red and white-striped Gran Torino battling thugs and hoodlums with the help of their gruff boss Captain Harold Dobey (Bernie Hamilton Blacula Scream!) and jive-talking informant Huggy Bear (Antonia Fargas Shaft Car Wash).System Requirements:Starring: Paul Michael Glaser David Soul Bernie Hamilton Antonio Fargas Running Time: 1240 Min. Copyright Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 2005Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396062184 Manufacturer No: 06218

Starsky & Hutch: The Complete Second Season proves the 1970s ABC series, in its sophomore year, both codified its earliest strengths while continuing to evolve into a sharper, wittier, and often darker show. Contributing to those improvements were the stars themselves: David Soul (who plays maverick police detective, intellectual, and health nut Ken Hutchinson) and Paul Michael Glaser (as Hutch's more impulsive, junk-food-junkie partner Dave Starsky), each of whom directed exemplary episodes in season 2. Series creators also struck a more entertaining balance between the comic and dramatic possibilities inherent in Starsky and Hutch's bluntly honest, fraternal relationship. A number of stories placed the guys in intentionally funny undercover situations: as garish gamblers in the two-part opener "The Las Vegas Strangler;" entertainment directors (named Hack and Zack) on a luxury cruise ship in "Murder at Sea;" gigolo-like dance aficionados in the playfully-titled "Tap Dancing Her Way Right Back into Your Hearts;" and, most amusingly, stunt men in "Murder on Stage 17."

Those are all good shows, and the duo often bicker within them, to great comic effect, like an old married couple. (Soul and Glaser's commitment to their schtick as well as their more emotionally raw collaborations is truly admirable.) But it's the relentlessly tougher episodes that prove each character's mettle and demonstrates the depth of Starsky and Hutch's mutual trust. Among these is the powerful "Gillian," in which Starsky discovers Hutch's classy new girlfriend is a prostitute and breaks the news to his shattered friend. Somewhat lighter but just as revealing is "Little Girl Lost," starring a young Kristy McNichol as an orphaned street urchin whom Hutch, lately in a misanthropic, anti-Christmas mood, takes into his home. Glaser's directorial debut, the harrowing "Bloodbath," gives Soul a lot of room for an intensely physical and psychological performance as Hutch scurries to find his kidnapped partner. Soul returns the favor with "Survival," in which Starsky desperately seeks his missing pal, trapped and slowly dying beneath a car wreck. All in all, a very good season, with (of course) Antonio Fargas still sharp as sidekick Huggy Bear. --Tom Keogh