Adventures of Robin Hood:Vol 1

Rating:
Summary: One of the best Robin Hood DVD releases on the market
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.

While "The Adventures of Robin Hood" has had an official release of its first three seasons (of four) in Great Britain, many of the episodes have fallen into "public domain" status in the U.S. and, consequently, different episodes from the series have been sporadically released by a variety of companies specializing in public domain material. Having seen most of these public domain releases of the Robin Hood series that have been released on DVD to date, I can say that Alpha Video's Robin Hood episodes are among the best available on the market at present. Unlike most of the other Robin Hood DVD releases, the prints used by Alpha are relatively defect-free in terms of scratches, dirt, etc. and audio is fine for a series that is nearly 50 years old. The prints are clean with mostly solid contrast.

Volume 1 features the series' premiere episode, "The Coming of Robin Hood." This episode was previously released on a DVD from another company, but was missing about a minute and a half of footage. Not so with Alpha's print . . . it's complete and uncut. The other three episodes included on this DVD are all from Season 2 and are making their U.S. debut on DVD. They are "The Borrowed Baby," "The Final Tax," and "The Ambush."

Perhaps the only negative on this disc is the fact that on one of the episodes, the end credits are incorrect, i.e., they have been spliced in from a different episode, perhaps as a way of including the famous Robin Hood theme song at the end.

My rating is closer to **** ½ for this release.