Customer Reviews

Streets of San Francisco - Season 1 (Vol. 1-2)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although I always swore that I wouldn't buy the second of any seasons that the powers that be split in two, I'm making an exception here. Volume I was fantastic and left me hungry for more. The locations are fantastic, the relationship between the leads and the chemistry between the actors is great, and though some of the episodes plod a bit--most of them are pretty tense and thrilling. The look of the series is just gorgeous, most of the directing is top notch, and it's fun to watch.

Here's an episode list:
Death Watch (Fishermen as witnesses to a crime--San Francisco!)
Act of Duty (Policewoman as bait in rape case)
The Set-Up (common 70's plot--hitmen)
A Collection of Eagles (a coin collecting episode!)
A Room with a View (witnesses and hitmen)
Deadline (involves a newspaper--duh!)
Trail of the Serpent (Stone is held hostage)
The House on Hyde Street (a boy disappears after school)
Beyond Vengeance (an ex-con is after Stone)
The Albatross (grieving father as vigilante)
Shattered Image (politics, of course--love these titles!)
The Unicorn (a common 70's plot: priest shielding a criminal)
Legion of the Lost (killer of homeless men--another great title)

Some guest stars: Brenda Vaccaro, James B. Sikking, Stuart Whitman, Jack Albertson, John Saxon, Belinda Montgomery, Jamie Farr, Richard Anderson, Shirley Knight, Brad Davis, Lew Ayres, Joyce Van Patten, Joe Don Baker, Dick Sargent, Leslie Nielsen, and Dean Stockwell.

I'm looking forward to the coin episode--there's a great coin episode in the Kojak set, too--"Deliver Us Some Evil." That was one of the best eps of season one of Kojak.

That is on releasing the series in a decent manner. WE are finally get the second volume of the first season and Paramount should have just released the First Season in one season set... instead this is costing fans a lot of money to collect. In a way I don't mind as long as all the seasons get released. I don't want them to delay and cancel future releases because they say there are poor sales because that would be the studios fault for a higher price tag for a half a season. It is a really good series and I'm speaking from a younger generation. Only 29 here.

Can't wait until tuesday for the second half of Season one of Streets of San francisco, growing up during the 80's here in the San Francisco Bay Area i recall that the old KOFY TV 20 would show reruns during the day along with other great shows but streets was something always something to look forward to. Their was another tv show that was a predate to Streets of San Francisco it ran from 1954-1960 it was San Francisco Beat/The Line-up. With alot of old tv shows coming to dvd hopefully San Francisco Beat will be next up for dvd with Highway Patrol with Broadrick Crawford.

This series is one of the greatest tv crime shows of all time.
It just looks fantastic and was filmed on location in san fransisco, this is something that other tv shows should do more often. Los angelos just doesn't look like san fran at all. The stories and guest stars throughout the series run were always first class and the series looks great on this dvd set There are no lines or blemishes on the prints. The splitting of the series into two boxsets is bogus but at least we finally get this one on dvd. Karl Malden and Michael Douglas really shine in this show and even season 5 which featured another actor as the Maldens partner was great. This is where the series began and it is a great show from the start , the series improved each season and made Michael Douglas a major star. The music also adds to the shows greatness unlike todays terrible machine made hip hop music this is original stuff made by real artists. Anyone who loves a good cop show should check out this series it's high quality and done very well.

As much as I enjoyed viewing THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO in the past, and I do have Season one,Volume one, I am taking a pass on Season one, Volume two as a one-man protest against the perceived greed of those with the power to release these programs. If more people would pass by such packaging, eventually we would all have more value for the dollar. Even with Amazon's discounted price, we are still expected to pay almost $60 for one complete season - far too much for a 35 year-old series. I'm giving five stars for program content as originally broadcast, but if I could there would be a "zero" star for corporate greed.

This couple of cops are mythic, Detective Lieutenant Mike Stone and his partner Inspector Steve Keller are not walking but rolling the streets of San Francisco chasing not petticoats or petty criminals but real hard core criminals who are ready to kill anyone, including their husbands or friends, though essentially weaker people, for a handful of dollars, for sums that today sound small but in those days sounded great like a few hundred thousand dollars or half a million dollars. It seems with these criminals the risk they take is more important than the profit they make. Yet they make that profit, or at least try to, they run their risks and they get caught by the "villainous" cops who are only there to get their heads, or at least their mugs, on their walls over their fireplaces, if they have a fireplace, because what's more these cops are poor and badly paid. Why on earth do they track boys and girls who make more money in one month than they do in a couple of decades? Because these cops are perverts and that is obvious from the very start. You have to be a pervert to arrest a criminal and find pleasure, pride and even fame in doing that. But these cops are bringing to the profession another dimension, a human and even humane dimension. They are moved into action by the suffering of the people, by the social dimension of their cases, by the emotional and even sentimental sides of their situations. There is always a lot of love lost somewhere that is found again, or a lot of love that could have been lost and is retained. There is also a lesson about Pearl Harbor and about all kinds of jingoism or sectarianism or segregation or racism, or whatever that makes life and humanity dirty looking and mean sounding. Those two cops seem to be trying to create harmony, to be scoring some music and tuning all the voices of the big social choir to the one single pitch that could please human ears and from time to time divine ears, but not too much nor too many. The 50 odd minute episodes are not too long but are short enough to be packed and dense and that is an advantage, a good asset. The structure in four acts and one epilog is also rather nice though of course the format is becoming a limitation little by little. Some more complex cases cannot be solved in four little acts and one short epilog and fifty minutes is rather short on TV. But that was the format on TV in these late 60s and early 70s when color TV became popular. My first color TV in 1969 with Bonanza, Mission Impossible, Love American Style and so many other programs. That sure was another time and television was not an isolating tool yet but rather a machine around which people gathered and enjoyed some time together every night. A tremendous leap forward toward a culture for all and a social reflection for everybody and with everybody. So these programs had to be popular and police drama had to be close to people, close with a city like San Francisco that has always had a reputation to be friendly and easy going, with simple people who are severely hurt and maimed by crime and with some other people who suffer tremendously because of the consequences of the actions of criminals. That reveals though another type of courage, the courage to suffer in order to bring about justice and simple people who are the victims of such crimes are often willing to help justice rather than to get a vengeance. And Bonanza was the same and Mission Impossible was the same and Clint Eastwood and his spaghetti westerns were the same. It is not so much the cops themselves that bring peace to the community but the victims of crime that do and when one becomes a stray cat of justice and wants to be a vigilante or a pistolero or a gunslinger, then the whole universe reacts and brings that lost sheep back into the corral. OK Corral of course and more than Dead or Alive we want the criminals alive for the court and the judge and the jury. This series is still quite viewable and decent, and even emotional and at times slightly poignant. Quite different from the police dramas of today that are even shorter and definitely a lot gorier.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID

The Streets of San Francisco is a class on its own. Superb acting, believable stories, most beautiful location, and of course that seventies feeling, makes it impossible to beat. I am just beginning to enjoy the Volume 2 of the first season and I can tell you the picture quality is absolutely terrific. It is quite unbelievable for a series filmed over 35 years ago. For sure they used top of the line quality equipment back then.
This is an all over fantastic purchase. Go ahead and get it!

For me, this is one of the best cop shows of the 70s. What a thrill that it was finally released. Brilliantly cast with good storylines and pacing that works, Streets Of San Francisco had all the elements needed for a show to work. Karl Malden is fantastic and Michael Douglas is perfect in his role - never over-playing, always natural and believable.
A little annoyed by the splitting of Season 1 into two parts - greed must be the only reason why this was done (a pattern which is becoming all too prevalent - to the execs: Come on guys! Do the right thing). But I paid because seeing this finally released was too good to be true. If you want to watch a perfect example of 70s police drama (or police drama overall), then Streets Of San Francisco is for you. Let's hope we see the rest of them released very soon.

Streets of San Francisco was superior to most Quinn Martin detective shows, in part because of the great chemistry between its lead characters but also because a detective and sidekick always works better dramatically: the team of Holmes and Watson always worked better than solo detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, for example. But far more mysterious than any of the Quinn Martin plot lines is why these outstanding TV shows have taken so long to be released on video. In 1998 a handful of episodes were released only on VHS, even when that format had clearly been displaced by DVD. And presumably the manufacturing cost of DVD is a fraction of VHS duplication, so this further adds to the mystery. Even so, those VHS tapes were a vast improvement over the fuzzy, grainy, cut-for-more-commercial-time versions on TV rerun channels. But this DVD set is better still. The colors are bright and the titles are razor sharp. It probably didn't look this good on first-run network TV. The cover art says "some episodes may be edited from their original network versions," but I can see scenes that have been missing from reruns for many decades. There are no DVD extras but there are English/Spanish Subtitles and a Spanish audio track. With only 4 discs, (on the Volume 1-2 set) and a list price of $80, the collection is grossly overpriced when more contemporary shows cost a half or a third that price, and almost always include some value-added content. But if you're a SSF fan, it may well be worth the premium price.

What a flashback, to be able to watch these classics of 70s TV again. The picture quality and color is superb, as is the audio. I only pray they decide to release the rest of the seasons on DVD. I will be first in line if they do. So many Quinn Martin shows aren't out on DVD yet. Perhaps this will open the door to Cannon, Barnaby Jones, and even the Invaders beng released? Even if you don't care for the plots, the DVDs are an incredible joy to watch for the vivid colors of San Francisco in the 70s. I can't remember seeing such a clean set of DVDs in a boxed set.