The Only TV Series Revival Worth Seeing
The 1980's marked the beginning of the period when the concept of the weekly adventure/drama television series that started in the 1950's began to be exhausted so television producers came up with the idea of redoing popular old series in a more modern venue. Among those that appeared were old favorites of mine like Star Trek, Columbo and later the Rockford Files in a more restricted "TV movie" format. In my opinion those three revivals were sadly far below the original series in quality, even though the last two had the original stars. Rockford and Columbo, although they had highly charismatic stars as actors, failed in the revival because the actors had visibly aged and had less energy to put into their roles in addition to the fact that they knew the series could not be made without them.
Fortunately, the revival of Mission: Impossible in 1988 is a whole different story. Peter Graves is back in the role of Jim Phelps as head of the IMF (Impossible Missions Force). Graves...
the picture quality is FINE.
so, at long last the 1988-1990 revival of mission impossible comes to DVD...
i've been waiting for this for a very, very long time. i used to tape the show when it originally aired on ABC and i practically wore out those VHS copies by the mid nineties. then in around 2003 or 04, someone began offering VHS rips burned to DVD-R, so i picked up the whole series and was able to watch it straight through, tracking fuzz lines and half-edited out commercials and all.
now, just like airwolf and the late 80s columbo murder mysteries, i've got another fix of my favorite nostalgia television series on DVD.
people are going on and on about the picture quality. yes, like most shows of the mid eighties to mid nineties, the mission impossible revival was shot on film but EDITED on video (just like star trek TNG). thus often the only masters that have survived to the present are video tape.
i've seen horrible video masters and this ain't it (airwolf season...
Strike Season Production
Faced with a potentially lengthy writers strike in 1988, several producer groups decided to revive old shows where they already owned the rights. Mission Impossible fared better than most of these attempts, due to the use of original series plots and Peter Graves. Graves reprised his role as Jim Phelps with an all-new team only faintly resembling the previous group. His on-screen presence, and better writing, carried the show. It ran up against the Cosby Show and ratings eventually plunged.
Note that this is only the 19 episodes from 1988. The 1989 episodes (16) have yet to be released.
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