Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The first thing that must be said after watching these shows (in full for the first time)is that I was impressed with the writing. Keeping in mind that it was a sitcom, the writing is pretty sharp, much sharper than The Brady Bunch.
Look fast, not only for the "Before they were famous" pop ups of people like Farrah Fawcett, Louis Gossitt Junior(with hair!), Richard Pryor and others but for the houses. The Partridge family lives on the "street" with the houses from "Bewitched", "I Dream Of Jeannie", "Hazel" and others.
You even see Keith Partridge drop off a date of his in front of the "Bewitched" house. Reusing these house facades was done over and over again in Screen Gems shows. It's fun to pick them out.The shows are nicely cleaned up and sharp but fall short when it comes to the color.
On most shows, the color is not as rich as I'd expect from other releases of late 60's, early 70's color shows (which were made to showcase color TV which was newer and more expensive). Most properly done DVD releases of color shows of this era have a rich technicolor sheen (like The Brady Bunch, Star Trek and Here's Lucy).
Here, it looks like the color was dialed back a bit. While this doesn't make it an inferior transfer, it makes it less reflective of the time it was shown. The biggest effect of this is the lack of color in the skin tones. Where most shows of this period show skin tones looking pretty rich and colorful, on this DVD they are subdued.
The mono sound is fine and represents the soundtrack well.
The set loses a bit on the restoring of ephemeral bits that probabaly weren't seen since the original airings. Both Hogan's Heroes and Brady Bunch releases restored the opening "In Color" bumpers to beginnings of all the shows. I wish it was also done for PF.
Also, someone else mentioned that the original "Screen Gems" logo was delteted at the end as well (although I never found it scary). My memory of the yellow/orange background Screen Gems logo is inseperably tied to shows like Partridge Family, Bewitched, Gidget, I Dream Of Jeannie and others. Replacing it with the new Sony logo is jarring (just as it was jarring to have the SG logo replaced with Columbia Tristar before in syndication and tapes). It's a little thing but to buy a vintage show on DVD is to hope they get the little details like that right.
And yes, one show is edited. I know that even though I'm no PF expert. Shows of this time were expected to run at least 25 minutes sans commercials. The final episode of the season runs a bit over 23 minutes and is missing the tag. The least you should expect from purchasing shows on DVD is for the shows to be unedited. This appears to be an oversight so maybe it will be corrected.
The extras include featurettes and commentary and do thier part of giving little known details on the show. The best is a feature on the musicians that "augmented" the Partridge Family.
I have to admit the most fun extra was the couple bonus episodes of the Animated spin off "Partridge Family 2200 AD". As a fan of the good, bad and the ugly of 1970's Saturday Morning TV I loved seeing this. I never saw this when it was originally on (must of been busy watching Bugs Bunny) but it is a hoot. It looks like an excuse for Hanna Barbara to use the Partridge Family name and to reuse a lot of thier "The Jetsons" backgrounds. The writing is awful, of course, but so familiar to creatures of 1970's Saturday Morning that it works despite itself.
Note to DVD makers, do this whenever possible. Include a couple of the animated spin off series on the DVD release.
I'm hoping they put a couple of "Jeannie"s on "I Dream Of Jeannie", "Emergency+4"'s on Emergency and so on. C'Mon people, it's something in your vaults you can drag out and call it an extra with no extra work. It's part of the history of the live action show and of interest to it's fans.
Anyway, this set is not perfect but still reccomended to fans of the 1970's, classic TV and fun shows.
The transfers are good (even if the color is slightly lacking) and the extras are nice with the long overdue start of putting sample episodes of the animated spin off as part of the extras.
Click Here to see more reviews about: The Partridge Family - The Complete First Season (1970)
It's TV's favorite familyof rock ' 'rollers, who hit the road in their groovy bus and turn the world on to the catchy pop songs such as "I Think I Love You," "I Woke Up In Love This Morning," and"Somebody Wants to Love You." The Partridge Family's six members feature mom Shirley (Shirley Jones) and her five kids: Keith (David Cassidy, who is also Jones' real-life stepson), Laurie (Susan Dey), Danny (Danny Bonaduce), Tracy (Suzanne Crough), and Chris (Jeremy Gelbwaks). And who can forget the Partridge's frequently exasperated manager, Reuben Kincaid (Dave Madden), who would become an important member of their family whether he liked it or not? The show debuted in September of 1970 and made a teen idol of David Cassidy, selling millions of records along the way. They may have parked that bus a long time ago but The Partridge Family is still making fans happy.
Click here for more information about The Partridge Family - The Complete First Season (1970)
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