It Takes a Thief: The Complete Series

Like Alexander Mundy, I'm in like flint; Mercedes limousine with the hardcore tint
And so goes a Public Enemy rap song from the late 80's, as the ultra chic thief of the late 60's got immortalized on vinyl two decades later, and should continue to be an icon for decades more. The coolest burglar in TV or movie history is none other than Robert Wagner, as Alexander Mundy.

Airing for 3 seasons from '68-'70, we got 66 episodes of espionage, heists, and of course, romance in exotic locales. We got a cool theme song from Dave Grusin, spun over psychadelic opening montages, featuring 3 different opening tags through the three seasons. In '68 you had Noah Bain, expertly played by Malachi Throne, uttering "Look, Al, I'm not asking you to spy, I'm just asking you to steal." In '69 and into '70 it was Wagner responding with "Let me get this straight, you WANT me to steal." And also in '70, there was none other than Alistair Mundy (Al's thief of a Dad) with "I've heard of stealing from the government BUT FOR the goverment!"

When Malachi Throne...

New Box Set Definitely a Mixed Bag Quality-wise
I've only watched the first episode "The Magnificent Thief" and scanned thru episodes 2-4. The first episode appears to be time compressed or has been taken off of a sped up PAL master. Also that episode runs at just over an hour. Has something been cut? I couldn't tell as I haven't seen the show for many years, but it's odd that it would run just one hour and a minute long. Also, no music over the end credits. Very strange. Image-wise, this episode doesn't look too bad, though it is a little soft looking. Episodes 2-4 don't appear to be time compressed though episode 4 is taken off of a substandard video master that has a lot of ghosting in the image. It's really tiring seeing some really great old television getting no respect on DVD. CBS/Paramount will often provide great transfers for most of their shows, but some of these other labels are really slip-shod. I wish Universal would quit farming out their shows to these low-grade producers and for once go back to the...

What a Way To Be Remembered...
Seriously - have you ever seen cheaper packaging on a "boxed set". How disrespectful to this A-list series to have it end up looking like this. The packaging is cheap, negligent, and IT DOESN'T EVEN FIT THE ITEMS. Did someone design the cheap cardboard outer box while not realizing there would be no inner covers for the disc sets? So there is 50% AIR. It doesn't look like any other first-rate boxed set.

But I do go on about this tacky protection and appearance. I do confirm the other reviewers' main observations about the poor quality of the videos. Much older, fuzzier series have been digitally remastered with skill and care to look much better than this. There are many, many techniques and tools to produce DVD's from old film and tape. Too bad this producer/distributor did not care to put out a fitting quality tribute to the series. Some of the discs appear to have no remastering at all.

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