M Squad: The Complete Series

Old black & white TV series are not for everyone, especially if HD picture quality is a high priority. But if your viewing preferences are all about the atmosphere, the characters, the plot, and the music; M-Squad is a must have!M-Squad was the basis for Police Squad, the short-lived detective series spoof starring Leslie Nielsen in the 1980's.Yes, the picture quality varies considerably, and it is rarely excellent, but it is always perfectly watchable. There are very few episodes that one even fixates on the video quality. What does grab the viewer immediately is the raw, brutal but very human qualities of Detective Frank Ballinger (Lee Marvin), and the extreme gritiness of the often snow-covered 1950's Chicago urban landscape.This is a formula series-the intro never changes, but the story begins immediately with no fluff, and the Detective begins his investigation within a minute or two into the episode. Lee Marvin does his own fight scenes, and like all police heroes, is incredibly lucky to not get hit by bullets during the almost obligatory gunfire scene toward the end of the show. He is also an excellent marksman, being able to engage in a shootout with the crook,but never killing him-something that rarely happens in the real world. The plots are tight, with an unusually high number of women involved in the crime stories, even as the perpetrators.At the incredibly low price this Timeless Media Group set is selling for, it is nearly worth it just for the bonus Music From M-Squad CD, let alone 15 DVDs in a really quality packaged set.Get it while it lasts, and then pass it on to a friend or colleaque. They will never make anything like this again.

This box set has a few good and a few bad.First the good. Yes, it does include all 117 episodes in chronological order from the first to the last. All three seasons. The bonus CD is great and I wouldn't ask for better.Brief summary: M-SQUAD was a product of its time. Why people compare it to DRAGNET I have no idea. There is no comparison. The show features jazz music which PETER GUNN and SHOTGUN SLADE and MAN FROM UNCLE did. Jazzy music scores were a fad at the time. Lee Marvin makes the show shine. Without him, it would have been another cop program. The show is extremely violent. Heck, the opener has Marvin coming out of his car, being shot at and he fires back. Before the opening credits roll it's already featuring four gun shots. Critics complained in the early 1960s because of the violence. Heck, watch the one episode that opens with a family being killed off (women and children) when someone throws a live pineapple (grenade) into thier back yard!Like a lot of 50s TV shows, the guests are occassionally impressive and a surprise. Angie Dickinson, Charles Bronson, Leonard Nimoy, Ed Nelson, DeForest Kelley, H. M. Wynant and even a young Burt Reynolds. Don't look up the cast list in advance - just watch them and be surprised when they appear on screen. Plenty of other supporting role characters would have been just as notable had they later hit the success the above did but you'll certainly see other familiar faces.There is one episode in the second season that depicted Chicago cops in a bad light and that episode alone prompted the then-current mayor of Chicago to ban filming in the streets of Chicago. That ban would not be lifted until the early 1980s when they filmed THE BLUES BROTHERS. Yep, this show REALLY worth watching.Now the bad news: these episodes were not from the original studio negatives. As pointed out in other reviews, they are certainly transfers from 16mm prints. Not that this is a bad thing, but instead of getting 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 in picture quality you get 8.5 to 9.5 depending on the print. Some episodes are great, others are a bit washed out or too bright and a few are missing 1 or 2 minutes from the prints.Still, it comes down to this or nothing. And the price cannot be beat for 117 episodes. I only give it four stars instead of five because of the occassional lack of good prints. Buy it today!

I am down to the last two disks and I think the last disk is a audio dvd for the sound track. So I have watched most of the series and have found it very entertaining. This show didn't get a lot of big name guests, lots of character actors of old. But really Marvin carried this show on his own personality. Most of the video is very good, a few episodes show a little wear and tear. Good solid scripts and acting particularly Marvins performance.Lee Marvin is a believable tough guy probably because he was a real tough guy, not a Hollywood creation.Well worth the money........ I've seen this series as low as 43 dollars here on Amazon.If your tired of all the fake contrived reality shows on cable these days invest your money in something entertaining and dump the overpriced cable junk.

If you can accept in advance that the transfers are not all that good, that you aren't going to get a great picture, you'll have no complaints about shelling out $50 for this set. You still get a lot for your money. I think the episodes got better and better as the show went on. I am currently into my second season of this TV crime show from the '50s, and have really enjoyed it.In fact, after about 5-7 episodes the stories really kick in and you almost get addicted to watching. Part of that is the unpredictability of star Lee Marvin's character, "Det. Frank Ballinger." You never know if Ballinger is going to mess up along the way, even though the crimes are always solved. He's a good cop, and a legitimate tough guy, but he doesn't always do the smart thing, so it's fun to see what jam he gets into every "week." The point is, Marvin and "M Squad" come across as very realistic.

Disc 2 with 8 episodes is missing. There was no provision in the cases for it, so I assume the disc was left out on purpose. Sad. Scam alert.