Customer Reviews

The Joey Bishop Show - The Complete Second Season

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The opening credits are on the set, but they play just once when you load the disc before the episode menu comes up. A bad idea, I agree, and something which should be fixed on any feature releases, but the credits aren't really completely missing.

The series was filmed in B/W for the first season, switched to color film for seasons two and three, and then went back to B/W for the final year when it moved to CBS. I guess they weren't as interested in promoting early color TV as NBC was at the time. The color is a bit faded, but not that bad, and I would bet the color schemes were chosen for how they would appear on B/W sets because very few people had color TVs in 1962!

For 39 shows, I'm happy. This show isn't great but I've enjoyed the first few shows so far. It is all new to me since I wasn't born at the time....

How disappointing to find that, like Questar's release of "Make Room For Daddy", this set truncates the opening credits from each episode. Sorry, Questar....the shows should be in their entirety.

It's rather obvious that, contrary to another reviewer's claim, the deletions of the credits was not due to damaged source material, or both this and the "Make Room For Daddy" wouldn't have the same problem.

Fortunately, I read of this atrocity before purchasing this set. Until I find out that Questar has changed its ways, they will be added to my list of companies from which to NEVER buy.

To me, Joey Bishop is a true sitcom pioneer. This show reveals how a great troupe of actors can create the foundation of what comedy is today and in many ways how it should be today. Joey and his fellow cast members have the comedic timing and camaraderie that really delivers the laughs. This DVD set not only brings back fond memories but also a youthful perspective I have missed for so many years. This is television without the political correctness that distroys the shows of today. It's even fun watching the cigarette smoking. Bravo Joey and thanks.

A lot of reviewers have paned this collection for it's lack of bells and whistles, but I'd rather concentrate on the content of the program itself.

Joey Bishop was my favorite of the Rat Pack, and that is the main reason I bought this collection. I'm glad I did because it has turned out to be a very enjoyablle program. I agree that it is not in the class of the Dick Van Dyke Show, or the Andy Griffith Show, but I'd rank it as a good solid second-tier sitcom.

The show had a troubled history, with a major format change between the first and second season, and continuing minor format changes each season after that. Joey Bishop was a every intelligent and complex man, and, though a comedian by trade, he was very serious about his work. I have read a number of his printed interviews, and he was actually quite a student of the art of comedy, and a perfectionist. I think it was this perfectionism which caused him to constantly tinker with the mechanics of the show and this in turn eventually detracted from its quality.

Bishop was an imaginative and witty comedy writer and a popular stand up comic - in fact he was considered to be one of the best emcee's of his day, but he was not a top notch actor, and he was obviously more comfortable in front of a live crowd than he was in front of a taping camera. He did have good comic timing, but his rapid paced, working class clipped Philadelphia accent worked against him on television - sometimes he speaks so fast i can't catch everything he is saying. His stage and screen persona was a deadpan sacrastic wit, not physical humor or facial expressions. This persona meant that much of the comedy in his program was provided by his supporting cast, with him tossing in one-liner replies to the antics of the people surrounding him. In a way, this was similar to the character that Bob Newhart portrayed in his two most popular tv programs in the 70's and 80's - a witty quipster who's main function is to respond verbally to another character's foibles.

Like the Andy Griffith Show a year before, the Joey Bishop show was launched in an episode of the Danny Thomas Show, and is considered a "spin-off" of that program. The first season, in 1961-62, Joey was a PR man and talent agent who lived with and supported his humorously dysfunctional parents and younger sister at home, while interacting in a slightly bumbling way with celebreties that his firm was representing and dating the occasional starlet.

All this changed in Season Two, the only season thus far released on DVD. Perhaps trying to copy the successful format of the Dick Van Dyke Show, Joey's character completely changed to a late night talk show host living with his wife (and later, children) in a New York City apartment building. This meant that, like the Van Dyke program, the action shifted back and forth between his working life - "behind the scenes" of the tv business, and his relationship with his wife and friends.

During the first 19 episodes of the second season, his boyhood friend and business manager, Freddy, provided the bulk of the humor. Freddy was portrayed by Guy Marks, one of the most talented impressionists in show biz history and a very funny visual comedian. For reasons which still remain something of a mystery, Marks left the program after the 19th episode of the second season, and the character was never even mentioned again. I have heard that Bihsop fired him because Marks was outshining Bishop on screen, and I have also heard that Marks left of his own accord because he preferred the nightclub circuit and did not want to over-expose his routines on television, and the wirters were having problems coming up with new wacky material for him. I do not know which, if any, of these explanations is true. Marks went on to co-star in the John Forsythe show in 1965-66, and then in the critically acclaimed, but very short lived comedy Western "Rango", a 1967 Tim Conway vehicle which lasted a mere half season.

Marks departure for whatever reason from the Joey Bishop show is one the main reasons this little sitcom never became a televsion classic. His replacement, comic Corbett Monica, had very little screen presence and his character had no unique features to his personality, and from this point on, the program simply drifted for another 2 and a half years. The third and fourth seasons were still sometimes fun to watch, but the show was never again consistently as funny as it was for the that brief 19 week period at the beginning of Season 2.

Other supporting cast members were Joe Besser, a one-time member of the Three Stooges, who provides a lot of old fashioned schtick comedy, and is always fun to watch, as long as he is given in small doses.

Joey's screen wife is played by Abby Dalton, a very attractive actress who displayed quite a bit of comedic talent of here own, in fact, when the writing for her character was good, she compared quite well to Mary Tyler Moore on the Van Dyke Show.

I have given this DVD collection 4 stars based on those first 19 episodes in which Guy Marks was a cast member. The rest of the season, and indeed the rest of the series, I would rate at 3 to 3 and a half stars.

I would still like to see this rest of the series released on DVD. In spite of the decline in quality as the show progressed, I still think the series is a good solid early 'sixties sitcom, wittier and more genuinely funny than some of the mid- and late-60's "gimmick" sitcoms like My Favorite Martian, or I Dream if Jeannie, and in it's own time, better than most of the other sitcoms that were contemporaneous to it (for example, I much prefer Joey Bishop's one liners to the hokum you see on The Beverly Hillbillies, or to watching Tim Conway constantly fall in the water on McHale's Navy).

This DVD collection is the best season of a pretty good show that should have been much better.

I agree heartily that the series should have the opening show credits, like other reviewers have stated. I don't agree, however, about dissing the set because of the color problems.
First, on most episodes, it is barely an issue at all. Second, this is not a theatrical feature done in Technicolor. It is a TV series done in TV's early years of color. Years passed alone are reason enough for the instability of the color, especially when it was reported the property wasn't preserved professionally. It had been kept out of syndication release for ages, so I am not surprised of the neglect.
If it were a movie, I would expect the color corrections, but to do this on a less-than-top-hit sitcom from 1962 would have been cost prohibitive. Enjoy its authenticity and nostalgia, but keep in mind TV color from back then wouldn't have had the care of, say, Universal Pictures and their "Spartacus" property. Most importantly, the flesh tones are only momentarily off, but the Barnes' furniture and walls are many times boldly colored in shades which may alarm interior decorators.

I enjoyed the Joey Bishop Show. I wasn't expecting it to be as good as I Love Lucy, Make Room for Daddy or The Dick Van Dyke Show so I was not as disappointed as most people. Joey Bishop did not have the comedic timing that Dck Van Dyke had and he did not have the onscreen chemistry with Abby Dalton that that Van Dyke had with Mary Tyler Moore. Guy Marks was amazing and I was shocked when after 8 or 10 episodes his character disappeared and was never mentioned again. When it comes to The Joey Bisho Show I just wanted to watch a sitcom from the sixties that had a definite 1960s feel. I have to admit I enjoyed every minute of this dvd set and I can not wait for the complete series to be released.

In the second season, this mildly funny comedy transforms from a slightly sassy sitcom into something more passive.

Wise cracking, low-key comedian Joey Bishop, is Joey Barnes, host of a nighttime TV show, something along the lines of the Tonight Show. Joey marries Ellie (Abby Dalton), an ex-model from Texas, in the season's first episode. In the beginning, the show focuses on the couple's domestic life in their NYC apartment, and Joey's efforts to produce a successful TV show. In the last third of the season, things take a major turn, when Ellie reveals that she is pregnant, and Joey's showbiz career takes a backseat to his preparations for fatherhood.

Bishop's supporting cast also gets a midseason makeover. Initially, Joey's main sidekick is his manager Freddie played by Guy Marks. Later Freddie vanishes, his place is taken by Larry (Corbett Monica) a writer on Joey's show. Marks is truly outrageous and often goes too far, while Monica is more of a straight man. `Curly' Joe Besser from the Three Stooges, is Mr. Jillson the apartment building's goofy handyman. His excitable and noisy persona, is another acquired taste. Abby Dalton handles well her character's transition from newlywed wife, to supportive spouse, to expectant mother.

The show has a `live' feel, as Bishop's adlibs, assorted goofs, and messed up lines seem to have been left in. Episodes like `Joey Leaves Ellie', `Wife Vs. Secretary', and "Freddie Goes Highbrow' are fun, and demonstrate what is possible when the focus is on Barnes and his TV career.

A few big-name stars like Buddy Hackett and Danny Thomas guest on the show. Future Laugh-In cast member Henry Gibson also appears a few times, sprouting the same dull, irritating poetry shtick he would perform later. Thankfully his appearances are limited.

Apparently this season was selected first for release on DVD, because it was produced in color (very unusual for 1962). The colors unfortunately are rather dull, and often too reddish. Is this a lost, not to be missed TV classic? Sorry no, but for those who want to see what prime time was like in the early 60's, it might be worth a look.

There are a lot of technical problems with this set, like missing credits and weird looking color, but somehow the goofy color scheme adds to its charm if you get it cheap. Plus, Texas is cute (inside joke).

I like comedians like Joey Bishop and Bob Newhart the show is very good and i like goin back in time even though i wasnt born when the show started

Like others who wrote reviews I think the credits should be included with every episode. However, I did not let this cut into my joy of watching the show. The humor and characters were terrific. How about releasing the other 3 seasons !!