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185 of 189 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Try this for a deep, dark secret...., April 6, 2005
As one of my top three all time favorite shows, Remington Steele has it all: mystery, romance and humor. While the mysteries were strongest in Season 1--"In the Steele of the Night" won an Edgar Award--the series stayed pretty strong until near the end of the last full season. We won't even mention the follow-up "movies" that comprised the final season. It's fun to watch this first season and see familiar faces from film and TV before they became stars, such as Annie Potts, Delta Burke, Sharon Stone, and Pierce Brosnan himself. Don't miss nepotism at its best with guest appearances by Stephanie Zimbalist's father, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, and Brosnan's first wife, Cassandra Harris. Also, don't look for Doris Roberts (Everybody Loves Raymond) yet; she didn't join the cast until the second season after James Read and Janet Demay left.
A list of season one episodes follows.
1. Licence to Steele
2. Tempered Steele
3. Steele Waters Run Deep
4. Signed, Steeled and Delivered
5. Thou Shalt Not Steele
6. Steele Belted
7. Etched in Steele
8. Your Steele the One for Me
9. In the Steele of the Night (Edgar Winner)
10. Steele Trap
11. Steeling the Show
12. Steele Flying High
13. A Good Night's Steele
14. Hearts of Steele
15. To Stop a Steele
16. Steele Crazy After All These Years
17. Steele Among the Living
18. Steele in the News
19. Vintage Steele (top fan favorite)
20. Steele's Gold
21. Sting of Steele
22. Steele in Circulation
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127 of 132 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Mystery and Film Lover's Delight!, April 15, 2005
This was a truly stylish television show that tapped into the kind of Stanley Donen light mystery romance that is missing from the movies today. Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist were perfectly cast and the show only got better with each episode. The Henry Mancini theme music captured the feel of this light and sophisticated show tinged with humor perfectly. It was as evocative and as much a part of the show as his "Peter Gunn" theme had been decades before.
Laura Holt (Zimbalist) couldn't get her private detective agency off the ground in spite of her skills until she invented the phantom agency head, Remington Steele. Business was booming and everything was going swell until Pierce Brosnan shows up and assumes the roll of the nonexistent Steele, both around town and with clients. An uneasy alliance was formed that to the delight of fans moved more and more towards the romantic as time went by.
Brosnan's Steele was debonair and stylish, his past a shady mystery ala' "To Catch a Thief." Each season Laura discovered new things about his past in Ireland and his exploits in other countries. Steele was also a film buff and would make constant references to films of the 1930's and 1940's he would recall pertaining to the case. It made all us film buffs who knew just what he was talking about feel like we were insiders, and was one of the many charms of this wonderful show.
Brosnan and Zimbalist were a terrific screen couple in the tradition of all those ones we remember fondly. One could say they were our generations Nick and Nora Charles. There was a fun anticipation for viewers as week after week we watched the two become involved in a mystery while they danced around their growing affection for each other. And it was always fun as little tidbits of Steele's past were discovered by Laura.
This series was fun and sophisticated and always left you feeling good. This kind of entertaining film is missing from today's teen driven box office. It is also missing from the "reality" driven television we see so much of today. Remington Steele filled a void left for those seeking the kind of fun escapism which all but disappeared when the Hollywood studio system began to collapse.
Remington Steele was something really special in television. Every one of the episodes was enjoyable and finally, after years of waiting, the first season of this truly fantastic show is being released. Every lover of classic films was in love with this show. It was a refreshing reminder of what television could, and should be. I have this on my wish list to pick up and you'll want it on yours as well.
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42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I've seen the DVD set and its pretty sweet, June 29, 2005
Emblazoned across the cover for the Fox season one release of the popular 1980s show "Remington Steele" is a tagline that reads "Before he was James Bond he was ... Remington Steele" with a shot of reigning big-screen James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan in the title role. In fact, the actress who originally had top billing on the show, Stephanie Zimbalist, is nowhere in sight on any of the promotional materialS or final cover art.
Such is the power of Hollywood marketing, for it was Brosnan, not Zimbalist, who became the break-out star for the show, with Brosnan receiving more fan mail than the studio had ever received before for a single actor.
The plot for the fall 1982 show centered around Zimbalist's character Laura Holt who, as a female detective, found it impossible to be taken seriously (this was, after all, the early 1980s). In order to resolve this troubling set of circumstances, Holt invents a (as she puts it) "decidedly masculine superior."
All seems to be going well until (in a quite obvious tip of the hat to 1959s "North by Northwest") the character appears in the shape of Pierce Brosnan, who answers a page for the fictitious Steele so that he can escape from two thugs.
Assuming the role of Remington Steele on a permanent basis, Laura and he embark on a series of adventures that for this set are in the shape of 22 full-frame episodes that echo the plots of well-known classic mysteries-from "Murder on the Orient Express" to "The Maltese Falcon" to "And Then There Were None," a personal favorite of mine.
It was these intriguing mysteries and the one-upmanship banter between the two leads that makes the show such a joy to watch.
Commentaries
As is most often the case with DVDs, the main special features are usually the commentaries; but truth be told, the first two commentaries in this set (on the first two episodes) are rather light on facts and heavy on silence.
Contrary to what pre-release publicity might have you believe, Brosnan does not contribute to either of the commentaries. Here we have series creators Michael Gleason and Robert Butler. Unfortunately, the two appear to get caught up in the show and forget to leave comments for the audience.
So what do we learn from the commentaries? Well, we learn that the image of Zimbalist wearing a fedora was a major selling point for the series. We also learn that the original pilot for the show was not the one that aired Oct. 1, 1982, named "License to Steele."
Originally, "Steele" was to have started with what became the second episode, as execs just wanted to jump straight into the show. But then NBC changed its mind and decided it wanted to see the first meeting of Laura and Steele, so Gleason and Butler went back and wrote what was to become the pilot.
In their commentary for the original pilot, called "Tempered Steele," Butler is initially confused as he says they are watching the original pilot (before reshoots). Then he recognizes that they are watching the reshot version.
More compelling is the third commentary between Gleason and writer Susan Baskin, which is hidden on the A-side of the fourth disc. Accompanying the episode "Vintage Steele," Gleason and Baskin discuss character and story development, specifically the effort to flesh out the Holt character to counterbalance the mystery that was Remington Steele and Baskins attempts to inject more subtle comedic touches into the show.
Featurettes
Included as background information to the series are three short featurettes that vary in length. Two of the featurettes are rather light in nature, with one tracking the development of main characters Remington, Laura, Bernice and Murphy. It is here that Brosnan refutes the long-held belief that he and Zimbalist had a mutual animosity toward one another, saying, "People said we didn't get along, but we did get along quite well."
The shortest documentary on the set-clocking in at just under eight minutes-features writers Baskin and Andrew Lazkos discussing the use of comic timing in the series and their efforts to emulate the 1940s movies of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn when writing the series.
The main featurette (at 12-minutes) on the flip side of the first of the four discs includes a discussion with Gleason and Butler as well as an on-camera interview with Brosnan on the genesis of the show. Indeed the documentary may prove to surprise today's audience. Not yet a star-it would be 13 years until Brosnan would don the tuxedo as James Bond on the big screen-NBC loved Zimbalist but disliked the way Brosnan played the title character.
As Brosnan recounts in his interview, that evening he went over the lines with his late wife Cassie and she asked, "That's the way you are going to play it?"
So Brosnan followed her subsequent advice and just played himself. NBC still was not happy, but producers Gleason and Butler stuck to their guns and NBC finally relented and gave the series the green light with an unknown British actor in the title role.
Another surprise comes in the revelation that the original solo pitch for the series did not even feature the character of Remington Steele. It was a show about a female detective who invented Steele so she could get cases. It was Gleason who came up with the notion "What if he turns up and drives her crazy?"
It was only then that it became a duet.
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