Search - Terry and the Pirates - Volumes 1-4 on DVD

Nostalgia par excellenece

Heiliger Hlud Wig | Nowheresville TX | 08/22/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Great show from Boomer childhood. Black and white; occasionally (not often) the video is a little defective but they warn you of that at the beginning of an episode so affected.

Intended for kids in the early 1950s I guess but it has references to the Bretton Woods conference and other rather sophisticated topics that couldn't have meant much to the 5 to 10 year olds in the audience. The stories aren't half bad. The series takes place in postwar China (Tansan, Macao, et c.) though of course it was filmed in the US.

The language can be sophisticated at times. Hotshot Charlie is heard to say "From typhus people die you know." The Dragon Lady (DL) has the most consistently highbrow English ("That you could leave me here I could understand. But that you would believe I would be a party to this, I shall never forgive.") sometimes touhed with sarcasm ("The righteous one [the hero, Terry Lee] speaks in riddles.")

The music is appropriate and good.

And all the buzz topics of today are there: globalization (mention of the Bretton Woods conference, American employed abroad), diversity (two white American guys work for a Chinese boss); gender equality (a Chinese woman (the Dragon Lady) is a very formidable opponent, a little shady but with a heart).

If you grew up in the 1950s and if in your life you:
have found diversity interesting instead of threatening;
have found strong, smart "others" attractive not repulsive;
have been able to utter a complex, multi-clause sentence without ever once using the word "like";
enunciate your American English by putting in the effort to move your tongue and round your lips rather than gluing the tip of your tongue to the back of your lower teeth, freezing your stretched lips in a faux smile, and flapping your jaws like a quacking duck (with much the same result); and
if you end your declarative sentences in a descending intonation instead of a strong upward intonation of the sort that adults and very young children use in talking to each other ("Can/Does Jimmy Sue have/want another popsicle???")
THEN maybe you have this intelligent, well-done series to thank in part at least. AND you might enjoy seeing it again. I'm enjoying them one at a time on Saturday mornings just as when I was a kid. For the price it's hard to beat this bit of nostalgia from a time in my life when imagination was everything."