Earlier this week CBS/Paramount
announced Mannix - The 1st Season for a
June 3rd release, confirming information we first brought you last Christmas. Very little info was available at the time, but the studio description we provided mentioned Gail Fisher, who joined the show in the second season as "Peggy Fair," assistant to Joe Mannix.
The first season of
Mannix is actually a rather different show, with the detective working for an agency that tries to solve crimes using computers! The computers were the old mainframe style, of course, and used punch cards and reel-to-reel tapes. Joe Mannix, of course, was even more old-school than that, and want to get out of the office and solve the case using good old-fashioned clue-finding. The title credits spell out the name
Mannix on a punch card. By the second season, he went more to the traditional "private detective" route, with the fair Ms. Fair to assist him, and became the hard-bitten sportscar drivin', gun-shootin' P.I. we came to love for the rest of the show's 8-season run. First season episodes are almost never seen in syndication.
Good news, then! The folks at CBS/Paramount have confirmed that the DVD release really will be of the actual first season, which will be a real treat for folks who don't get to see these episodes. And it will also possibly be of historical interest, in a way, to folks who don't ever get a chance to look at old-style computer use from the 1967-68 era. I know I'll get a kick out of that!
All 24 first season episodes will be on a 6-disc set with guest stars that include Kim Hunter, singer Neil Diamond, Tom Skerritt, singers Neil
Young and Stephen Stills, Richard Mulligan, Norman Fell, Army Archerd, Rona
Barrett, and Karen Black! In addition, the release contain special features that include Episode Intros by Golden Globe-winning star Mike Connors, and a Brand-New Interview with him, too!
We've been given different information about the list price of this package, some of it showing a lower studio-marked price than the $49.99 SRP that
DVDEmpire's pre-order listing currently shows, but they are selling it to you in advance for $37.00 anyway...a nice price for a 6-DVD set! Amazon hasn't listed it yet, but ought to soon. Here is a look at the packaging:
