DVD Review: The Dick van Dyke Show (Season 1) *****

I can still remember the televison set. Must have been about an eight inch screen, only black and white, and it had a regular place at the dining room table until dinner time.

Of course, back in the late sixties, it didn't much matter that the screen was in black and white, because that's all we knew. And every weekday morning, just before lunch, Mom and I would get together in front of that screen and spend a half hour with Rob, Laura and Ritchie Petrie, the coolest co-workers ever devised, Buddy Sorrell and Sally Rogers, and wacky neighbors Jerry and Millie Helper.

Now my own child is six years old, and is as enraptured, if not more so, as I was lo those many years ago. But now, color TV is the norm, and this same child, a scant six months ago, dismissed The Andy Griffith Show because of all those "gray people".

Now it's a struggle for me to wrest "The Dick van Dyke Show" (Season 1) DVD set away from her. Small wonder. The first thirty-two episodes are here (seasons being much longer in 1961 than they are today), lovingly restored and commercial-free, except for a few stray commercials featuring Dick van Dyke gleefully pouring some Cheer into his washing machine, and time change promos featuring Dick and the rest of the cast.

No, the infamous "Walnuts" episode is not here (but can be found on Season 2), but the remarkable thing about "The Dick van Dyke Show" is how soon it hit its groove and paved the way to its Best Comedy Series Emmy (an extra on Disc 5 has Carl Reiner accepting the award from Lucille Ball).

"My Blonde-Haired Brunette" was shot ninth, but aired second, after producers Reiner and Sheldon Leonard realized, to their surprise, that Mary Tyler Moore was funny!

Flashback episodes in season 1 include "Where Did I Come From," the hilarious episode in which Rob and Laura remember the final days before the birth of their son, and "Oh, How We Met on the Night We Danced," which details Rob and Laura's first meeting, which resulted in her broken foot.

My personal favorite, "The Curious Thing About Women," shows the consequences of centering a comic sketch on a national television program around the foibles of one's own wife.

Extras include a one-question trivia game (fun, but how about a few more questions in future seasons?), cast reminiscences including van Dyke, Reiner, Moore, Rose Marie, and even the late Morey Amsterdam and Sheldon Leonard.
Sadly, only "Where Did I Come From" and "The Sleeping Brother" (featuring Dick's real-life brother Jerry van Dyke) contain commentary tracks by van Dyke and Reiner. Extensive photo galleries from most episodes are there as well.

Were I to grade the extras separately, I'd probably rate them three or four stars, rather than the perfect five. But the stars of this package are the episodes themselves. They remain vibrantly funny examples of television's true golden age. Even my wife, who until now has NOT been much of a fan of this particular program, concedes that it would be fun, upon completing the collection, to screen all the flashback episodes chronologically.

That these episodes look and sound so good is no accident. The mastermind behind these discs is none other than Douglas Denoff, whose dad, Sam, along with Bill Persky, joined the program in midstream, and contributed some of the best scripts. His labor of love is well documented at the website, www.dvdondvd.com, and has taken four long years to come to fruition.

Seasons 1 and 2 are on sale now, Season 3 comes out this month, and the remaining two seasons will follow in 2004.

Doug, from the little boy peering at a black and white screen in 1971, and his little girl in 2004, dancing deliriously through self-imposed mini-marathons in front of our DVD player, thank you so much for preserving this rich, television legacy.