Adventures of Robin Hood:Vol 2

Rating:
Summary: Another great release of the Robin Hood series from Alpha
Review: "The Adventures of Robin Hood," starring British actor Richard Greene was broadcast on CBS from 1955 through 1958 and later had a successful run in syndication for a number of years. The series featured good acting by a variety of British character actors, innovative set design (for its time), and interesting scripts, a number of which were written by blacklisted Hollywood writers like Ring Lardner, Jr. using aliases. It was also one of the very first series produced in England that aired in the United States and paved the way for the "British Invasion" of the Sixties for shows like "Secret Agent" (a/k/a "Danger Man"), "The Saint," and "The Avengers," among many others.

Volume 2 features four episodes from the second season: "The Little People," "The Goldmaker's Return," "Flight From France," and "The York Treasure." All four episodes are making their U.S. debut on DVD. There appears to be a few seconds of footage missing from "The Little People," and the star of the series, Richard Greene, does not appear in "The Goldmaker's Return," one of the few times that Robin Hood does not appear in his own series! Paul Eddington, a well known character actor who worked in British television into the 1990s, appears in several different roles in these episodes and later became a series regular as Will Scarlett; these episodes are among his earliest television appearances.

This second release of Robin Hood episodes from Alpha Video was released simultaneously with Volume 1 and the audio/visuals on this second disk match the quality on the first release; a few of the episodes are of "near broadcast" quality and are likely the best that we'll ever see of this series which, in the U.S., has fallen into the public domain. Like Volume 1, one of the episodes has incorrect end credits, i.e., the credits have been spliced in from a different episode, perhaps as way to include Dick James' famous Robin Hood theme song.

Although the number of DVD releases of "The Adventures of Robin Hood" television series has increased significantly over the past year, one has to give Alpha Video credit for releasing, arguably, the best looking prints of this series on the market today, and for seeking out episodes that other DVD releasing companies specializing in public domain material have not released.

Like Volume 1, my rating is closer to **** ½ for this release.