There are a dozen or so episodes of The Andy Griffith Show from across the series' early run that have turned up on DVD since the end of the '90s -- all of them were unauthorized, made possible by those particular shows having fallen out of copyright; all were cheap public-domain editions made from poor quality 16 mm print (most of them deliberately missing the main title and closing theme music, which is still under copyright). This four-disc, fully authorized set of the Andy Griffith Show from Paramount Home Video is completely different in content and quality. Mastered from original 35 mm negative materials, the shows here look so good that it's a delight to the eye to watch them -- there are movies from the early '60s that aren't as well preserved or as well transferred as these episodes in glittering black-and-white (mastered in full-screen, 1.33:1). The audio isn't quite as impressive but only because the volume is mastered a bit low, requiring a doubling of the normal monitor setting -- but once that little problem is overcome, the sound that is here is excellent, as becomes clear on the one major music-related episode in this package, "Mayberry on Record." The series' first season defined the parameters and appeal that allowed it to dominate the ratings for seven years, and make Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, Francis Bavier, and Ron Howard into television stars (and launch Knotts into a movie career in the mid-'60s, and Howard to major TV stardom in his own right, and later to a director/producer career in movies). Some of the characterizations would get better defined, but the show seldom moved far from what we see here, presenting simple, honest, rural humor (and not all of it squeaky innocent -- on letting some prisoners out on a Christmas furlough, Sheriff Taylor (Andy Griffith) cheerfully calls after them, "And don't drink too much"). Some of the scripts have fun at the expense of Griffith's character ("Mayberry on Record") as well as Knotts' excitable Deputy Barney Fife, and others show an almost Capra-esque degree of gentleness, if not sentimentality ("Christmas Story," which features veteran movie heavy Will Wright as a Scrooge-like town resident). It's interesting to look at the overall casting which, in addition to a cadre of gifted television and veteran big-screen and stage performers (including character actor Dick Elliott as the mayor), also includes guest spots by at least two big-screen leading men of the period, Tod Andrews and George Nader, who were not noted for comedy and who were entering decided downturns in their respective careers -- and one (James Best) who was on his way up. "Mayberry on Record," features a musical treat for fans of bluegrass music or the rock group the Byrds in the presence of a guest-starring performing group, the Country Boys, featuring future Byrds guitarist Clarence White and his brother Roland White in their line-up. The bluegrass group the Dillards later became well known as semi-regulars on the show, as the "Darling" family, but White brothers' appearances on the series are less well remembered today. As to the overall series, the shows hold up much better being seen in their uncut versions as opposed to the decades of syndicated and cable-cast presentations for which they have had between one and two minutes of material removed. The balance in the writing of the original episodes is restored along with the careful pacing and placement of plot elements; usually Griffith and Knotts engage in some humor built around their characters in the opening sequence for a minute or two, followed by the introduction of the specific plot for the show. Each episode gets five chapter markers, matching the breaks for commercials, and even the one-minute end segments and end credits get separate chapter numbers. The four discs each have eight episodes with no onscreen extras, though each narrow jewel case contains good synopses with essential plot elements for each episode. The discs each open automatically to a simple easy-to-use menu that allows quick access to all eight episodes.

There's a lot of pop-culture history, as well as bad references to World War II history, in Hogan's Heroes, as as one can see when watching the five-disc Paramount set Hogan's Heroes: The Complete First Season. The 32-episode package (six on three of the platters, seven on two of them) includes the opening episode, the pilot show "The Informer," but no extras of any kind. For openers, although the pilot is in black-and-white (and has a somewhat grimmer mood than the subsequent series, and one character, a Russian played by Leonid Kinskey, who was immediately written out, plus another, played by Larry Hovis, who was reconstituted and rewritten as a regular for the series), the subsequent series was in color. As a result, each episode starts with the original CBS network opening announcement (using three tones that almost parody the NBC signature tones) declaring that it is in color, which evokes another era, when a series going out in color was something special and different. The series itself came at the tail-end of a cycle of World War II television programs that started with shows like The Gallant Men and ended with sitcoms like this and McHale's Navy -- and you can always tell when a cycle has run its course when the comedic treatments start to displace the serious shows in the public consciousness. The programs themselves, with the exception of episode eight, "Movies Are Your Best Escape," generally look sensational, full-frame (1.33:1) and sharp, with bright color and clear sound; star Bob Crane's aviator jacket is in almost 3-D relief in one close-up. Beyond that, however, watching this series in 2005 in this package proved highly problematic, if not downright disturbing. This reviewer finally understood, watching this set, why my father -- who was a prisoner-of-war in Germany in 1945 -- so despised Hogan's Heroes, which tried to make comedy out of such a setting. The whole tone of the series now makes this reviewer's skin crawl, despite the presence of highly gifted comedic performers such as John Banner, Werner Klemperer, Robert Clary, Hovis, and Richard Dawson (who was also a highly skilled dramatic actor at the time), plus future director Ivan Dixon in the cast, and top comedy directors, including Gene Reynolds and Howard Morris. Even at those moments where a piece of truth gets through -- like when a character remarks that the prisoners at some stalags eat better than the guards -- it's told as a joke. The discs are well produced, with six chapters (corresponding to the commercial breaks) for each episode and simple menus that open automatically on start-up. The only question is whether any of this seems funny now to many people and, if it does, what that says about the way we understand history.