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TV Guide Presents: more classic TV on DVD
TV Guide Presents DVDs for Season 2 of Banacek and the 1st season of B.L. Stryker
Burt Reynolds as B.L. Stryker.
George Peppard as Banacek.
Two tough guys playing classic TV sleuths, and both have new DVD releases coming out in early 2008.
They're part of the TV Guide Presents lineup of classic TV-on-DVD releases!
Arts Alliance America (previously Hart Sharp Video) has released several titles in their series of "TV Guide Presents" DVD packages: the second season of Scott Baio's Charles In Charge (Universal released the first season), the complete run of The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, our own Trapped In TV Guide series from the TV Guide Channel, and the first season of Banacek (starring George Peppard of The A-Team).
Early in 2008 they'll conclude Banacek with the second and final season, and begin the two-season run of B.L. Stryker with a DVD release soon after! Here's the skinny:
· Banacek - The 2nd Season arrives on January 22nd. The final 8 episodes run 576 minutes. Each episode ran in a 90-minute time slot when first broadcast, and these particular installments included guest stars like Gary Lockwood, Anne Baxter, Jim Davis, Cesar Romero, John Saxon, Harry Carey Jr., Anne Francis, Tim O'Connor, Pamela Hensley, Linda Evans, Dick Van Patten, Jayne Kennedy, Sterling Hayden, Victoria Principal, Pat Harrington Jr. and Gretchen Corbett! Cost is $29.95 list price, but you can pre-order it from Amazon at a terrific discount.
· B.L. Stryker - The Complete 1st Season is coming in February. The studio shows an official street date of Feb. 26th, even though Amazon's pre-order listing currently shows 2/5 instead (no worries; that will surely be updated soon). Running time is 414 minutes for 5 episodes, which originally were broadcast in a two-hour time slot. The suggested list price is $29.95 (but as before, you can pay less if you pre-purchase it from Amazon using the provided link). Stars Burt Reynolds, Ossie Davis and Rita Moreno are joined by guests which include Abe Vigoda, Kristy Swanson, Helen Shaver, famous model/photographer Bunny Yeager, Deborah Raffin, Ted McGinley, Maureen Stapleton, Jack Gilford, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Neil Patrick Harris and Michael Chiklis.
People often think of Burt Reynolds as mostly a film star, except perhaps for his '90s series Evening Shade. But he's been a regular in a number of shows prior to that, beginning with the 1959 Darren McGavin program Riverboat, then continuing with his long-running role of "Quint" on Gunsmoke, and after that playing the leading roles as police Detectives in Hawk (during the mid-'60s) and Dan August (in the early '70s). And all of that was prior to making it really big in the movies with Fuzz, Deliverance, The Longest Yard, Smokey and the Bandit, Semi-Tough, Hooper and others.
B.L. Stryker was Reynolds' 1989 return to the role of a television detective, with each episode running two hours (including commercials). It was part of ABC's attempt to duplicate the success of the '70s-long run of the "NBC Mystery Movie" lineup (with different "feature length" crime drama shows rotating in the same scheduled slot). B.L. Stryker ran a dozen episodes in all: five during the first season, and seven more in the second.
We'll be glad to see both shows once again, thanks to these DVDs, and we know you will be, too!
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Dec 12, 2007 12:06 PM
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BL Stryker was a good show but I never would call it a classic. Banacek however fits the description of a classic to me.
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Jun 25, 2008 2:12 AM
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