Search - The Joey Bishop Show - The Complete Second Season on DVD

I see colors...

filmcritic57 | The Best Location in the Nation, USA | 04/06/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I agree heartily that the series should have the opening show credits, like other reviewers have stated. I don't agree, however, about dissing the set because of the color problems.
First, on most episodes, it is barely an issue at all. Second, this is not a theatrical feature done in Technicolor. It is a TV series done in TV's early years of color. Years passed alone are reason enough for the instability of the color, especially when it was reported the property wasn't preserved professionally. It had been kept out of syndication release for ages, so I am not surprised of the neglect.
If it were a movie, I would expect the color corrections, but to do this on a less-than-top-hit sitcom from 1962 would have been cost prohibitive. Enjoy its authenticity and nostalgia, but keep in mind TV color from back then wouldn't have had the care of, say, Universal Pictures and their "Spartacus" property. Most importantly, the flesh tones are only momentarily off, but the Barnes' furniture and walls are many times boldly colored in shades which may alarm interior decorators."

Classic example of why you shouldn't fix it if it ain't brok

Bookandfilmnut | WV | 07/04/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A lot of reviewers have paned this collection for it's lack of bells and whistles, but I'd rather concentrate on the content of the program itself.

Joey Bishop was my favorite of the Rat Pack, and that is the main reason I bought this collection. I'm glad I did because it has turned out to be a very enjoyablle program. I agree that it is not in the class of the Dick Van Dyke Show, or the Andy Griffith Show, but I'd rank it as a good solid second-tier sitcom.

The show had a troubled history, with a major format change between the first and second season, and continuing minor format changes each season after that. Joey Bishop was a every intelligent and complex man, and, though a comedian by trade, he was very serious about his work. I have read a number of his printed interviews, and he was actually quite a student of the art of comedy, and a perfectionist. I think it was this perfectionism which caused him to constantly tinker with the mechanics of the show and this in turn eventually detracted from its quality.

Bishop was an imaginative and witty comedy writer and a popular stand up comic - in fact he was considered to be one of the best emcee's of his day, but he was not a top notch actor, and he was obviously more comfortable in front of a live crowd than he was in front of a taping camera. He did have good comic timing, but his rapid paced, working class clipped Philadelphia accent worked against him on television - sometimes he speaks so fast i can't catch everything he is saying. His stage and screen persona was a deadpan sacrastic wit, not physical humor or facial expressions. This persona meant that much of the comedy in his program was provided by his supporting cast, with him tossing in one-liner replies to the antics of the people surrounding him. In a way, this was similar to the character that Bob Newhart portrayed in his two most popular tv programs in the 70's and 80's - a witty quipster who's main function is to respond verbally to another character's foibles.

Like the Andy Griffith Show a year before, the Joey Bishop show was launched in an episode of the Danny Thomas Show, and is considered a "spin-off" of that program. The first season, in 1961-62, Joey was a PR man and talent agent who lived with and supported his humorously dysfunctional parents and younger sister at home, while interacting in a slightly bumbling way with celebreties that his firm was representing and dating the occasional starlet.

All this changed in Season Two, the only season thus far released on DVD. Perhaps trying to copy the successful format of the Dick Van Dyke Show, Joey's character completely changed to a late night talk show host living with his wife (and later, children) in a New York City apartment building. This meant that, like the Van Dyke program, the action shifted back and forth between his working life - "behind the scenes" of the tv business, and his relationship with his wife and friends.

During the first 19 episodes of the second season, his boyhood friend and business manager, Freddy, provided the bulk of the humor. Freddy was portrayed by Guy Marks, one of the most talented impressionists in show biz history and a very funny visual comedian. For reasons which still remain something of a mystery, Marks left the program after the 19th episode of the second season, and the character was never even mentioned again. I have heard that Bihsop fired him because Marks was outshining Bishop on screen, and I have also heard that Marks left of his own accord because he preferred the nightclub circuit and did not want to over-expose his routines on television, and the wirters were having problems coming up with new wacky material for him. I do not know which, if any, of these explanations is true. Marks went on to co-star in the John Forsythe show in 1965-66, and then in the critically acclaimed, but very short lived comedy Western "Rango", a 1967 Tim Conway vehicle which lasted a mere half season.

Marks departure for whatever reason from the Joey Bishop show is one the main reasons this little sitcom never became a televsion classic. His replacement, comic Corbett Monica, had very little screen presence and his character had no unique features to his personality, and from this point on, the program simply drifted for another 2 and a half years. The third and fourth seasons were still sometimes fun to watch, but the show was never again consistently as funny as it was for the that brief 19 week period at the beginning of Season 2.

Other supporting cast members were Joe Besser, a one-time member of the Three Stooges, who provides a lot of old fashioned schtick comedy, and is always fun to watch, as long as he is given in small doses.

Joey's screen wife is played by Abby Dalton, a very attractive actress who displayed quite a bit of comedic talent of here own, in fact, when the writing for her character was good, she compared quite well to Mary Tyler Moore on the Van Dyke Show.

I have given this DVD collection 4 stars based on those first 19 episodes in which Guy Marks was a cast member. The rest of the season, and indeed the rest of the series, I would rate at 3 to 3 and a half stars.

I would still like to see this rest of the series released on DVD. In spite of the decline in quality as the show progressed, I still think the series is a good solid early 'sixties sitcom, wittier and more genuinely funny than some of the mid- and late-60's "gimmick" sitcoms like My Favorite Martian, or I Dream if Jeannie, and in it's own time, better than most of the other sitcoms that were contemporaneous to it (for example, I much prefer Joey Bishop's one liners to the hokum you see on The Beverly Hillbillies, or to watching Tim Conway constantly fall in the water on McHale's Navy).

This DVD collection is the best season of a pretty good show that should have been much better."