Booker- Complete Series

If you read previous reviews, they will state missing Music..which is true

Previous reviews state the BB King episode Someone Stole Lucille is missing...Which is true

What the other reviewers didnt mention is the Deals and Wheels episode which was a 21 Jump street cross over is missing from this collection as well the Jump Street second part. You can get this episode and the jump street episode on the 21 Jump Street - The Complete Fourth Season

Now if you are a fan of the acting, other than noting that most the music is gone, then you will enjoy this collection for what it is worth. Grieco shines as the off beat Booker. He is no Sam Spade, but it gets the job done. His character holds the show together. He alone is why you want to watch this show.

However It was a show the changed styles from an off beat cop show to a quirky detective show with punkish chic overtones. The show got weaker by the end of its run. Also Losing Kstie Rich (after rpisode 14) and putting in Lori Petty was a waste of acting talent and character. It also under used the acting talents of actress Marcia Strassman, who proved she is much more than Mrs Kotter (Welcome Back, Kotter - The Complete First Season) was another nail in this show's coffin.

There is no special features or commentary tracks.Just the shows to fill this incomplete collection.

I have one thing to say to those studios who make films and those who release DVDs. Wy not spend the money and release the shows as they were. I know music costs. BUT this is why Shout Entertainment canceled the show release of the complete series of Chuck Conner's last series Werewolf. The music rights could not be agreed to and it overlapped important dialog..so you would lose the show if you cut the music--which is slightly the problem with this release

So if you liked this one season series, when are they going to release the other Greico one season wonder series Marker?

Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD

Ever wonder why after many years a show like Babylon 5 holds at $25 plus per season, while shows like Booker and 21 Jump Street pale at $8-13 brand new, directly off the starting line? That's right folks, face the music. In the real-estate industry the mantra is "Location! Location! Location!" In the business of old 80's releases it's "Soundtrack! Soundtrack! Soundtrack!" Although somewhat obscure and perhaps not as successful as Grieco and 21 Jumpstreet fans might have hoped, Stephen J. Cannell's Booker was sort of the tail book end of the 80's. It was a series that reflected the culture and sort of celebrated the end of the New Wave Era. It was a show, unlike most television shows of today, that proved quirkiness can be an effective tool in entertainment, but only if coupled with an equal amount of style. It was a style fortified by a number of prominent musicians whose music helped create the manner of storytelling Booker became so famous for. Those were musicians like Thomas Dolby, BB King, Billy Idol, and Tone Lôc.

Without them the show is half-assed at good moments, sacrilegious in its worst moments. The brilliance of the opening scene in Hacker once accompanied by Thomas Dolby is now overlaid with some horrible dumbed down hip hop song that has absolutely no consistency with the spirit of the scene. As some other users said, the BB King episode, which was an excellent episode, was cut entirely. The main theme song was replaced by some retarded, repetitive jingle that sounds like it's written by a ten year old boy in search of a rain dance to bring on puberty. Not to mention, the omission of the two 21 Jump Street Crossover episodes is aggravating. You have to buy Season 4 of 21 Jump Street, a show I refuse to buy because of the altered sound track.

BTW, the only way to get this episode is in the $25 and $50 bootleg DVD sets that have been floating around the net for several years, but that set was recorded back when the show aired and likely ported over from VHS, so the quality isn't perfect.

What the distributors need to realize is that Booker is a show that built a cult following that has stood the test of time. A cult following that has waited twenty years for this DVD release. Fans would pay twenty five or even fifty dollars for this box set if it was really intact. Releasing this without the original soundtrack was bad enough, calling it a collector's edition is pure dishonest. What makes this a collector's edition? It has no special features. It's not even complete. Perhaps, the studios aren't completely evil in all of this, but the music industry is. And the TV producers are just pushovers to the music industry. Really the only saving grace of this release is the price tag. It can be had for under $10 bucks for those really hard up for a blast of 80's nostalgia.

To put it in perspective it's a bit hard to knock down a DVD release with a few shortcomings when just to get it out to the public was a major achievement. When I saw this Mill Creek DVD release of Booker at the store I was both ecstatic and surprised because it was one of my favorites shows, but also because Booker was one of those old TV shows you were pretty sure was never going to be brought out anymore in public other than perhaps a short Saturday night syndication run on some local TV station and even that would be a stretch. Factors against Booker ever being released on DVD include relatively small episode count, a lack of a large, vocal cult following since the years after the show's cancellation, the ratings for the show during its initial TV run were far from stellar (putting aside the supposed botched Nielsen ratings theory that states the company flubbed it due to their system and boxes). Perhaps the biggest hurdle for a Booker release on DVD was the same problem that has held up other DVD releases from time to time of Stephen J. Cannell produced shows like 21 Jump Street and Greatest American Hero, heavy use of popular songs of the time within the show that require large royalty fees to license them. With all the various factors playing against Booker on DVD it somehow beat the odds and got it's own release with some glitches here and there. Now taking into consideration this is probably going to be the only Booker release on any media format for awhile (well aside from a Region 4 release I'll talk about later), if your simply dying to see the show again after almost 20 years or are curious about this 21 Jump Street spin-off you can probably disregard the rest of this review by knowing the picture and sound quality is better than when it was on TV and the writing still seems fresh. Also if you can accept the missing original theme song and a few missing short musical overlays (by popular artists of the time) plus a missing gimmicky episode you'll be pleased with this release.

After watching this Mill Creek DVD release I'll say the substitution of the opening theme does get you down for awhile, maybe even hard if you were not aware of the this switch and especially if you were looking forward to recapturing that old feeling you got when you started to hear "Hot In the City" towards the beginning of each episode when the show had it`s original broadcast run. When I first noticed the theme substitution I immediately searched if this Mill Creek release was just a cheaper version of some other better US release with all the bells and whistles of the original music, but it turned out this was the only release in the US and the only other release with the Hot in The City re-mix theme song and a little more of the original short song overlays is a Region 4 release. In my case after getting over the theme song switch and watching a few episodes you realize the series can stand on its own with its cleaver writing even if the music snippets that long ago seemed so integral to the show have been replaced. I will say that even though it seems this release is missing many of the original music overlays from its broadcast TV run there is actually quite a lot of unaltered compositions still left on the release they were able to get. The works of various composers like Peter Bernstein (who did extensive work through out the series) are still left untouched and unaltered on this release. Of the missing audio overlays not found on this release aside from the theme song I can only think of 3 istances, "A Well Respected Man" in "Wedding Bells Blues", Heavy D music overlays in the episode he is a guest star on and B.B. King music from the missing "Someone Stole Lucille" episode. Bottom line the good writing holds it together for the most part in each episode, but also the picture quality looks much better than when it first came out on TV, ditto for the sound which was always in stereo but sounds more crisp now with better in-home technology of today.

On the missing episodes situation first, the Deals and Wheels episodes is missed here but perhaps the thinking was that since the two-part episode concluded on 21 Jump Street it was just best to include both parts as 21 Jump Street 4th season epsiodes instead. Secondly, when I first saw the other missing episode "Someone Stole Lucille" during Booker's Fox TV run I thought perhaps I was too young to get the essence of the episode which left me confused as to the purpose of it, but after watching it again online after almost 20 years I can safely say the missing B.B. King themed episode is mostly gimmick than real substance. In a time when B.B. King was having a massive career second wind propelled by a newly found Generation X fanbase on the heels of his U2 collaboration someone on the Booker writer staff decided it would be a great idea to cash-in on the momentum and make an episode not about B.B. King, but solely on a cringeworthy wild goose chase to find his stolen guitar. To give you an idea as to how gimmicky it is with no sustance B.B. King couldn't even be bothered to appear in just one frame of the episode. After reviewing the same episode again recently, aside from the fact Gedde Watanabe, Tawny Kitaen and Lowell from Wings are in it and they do a good job with their parts I can confidently say for the episode is still as gimmicky as ever so it's not a loss that it`s not included in this DVD set unless one is a completist, but really one isn`t missing much. I appear to differ in opinion with most of the other reviewers who mention this missing episode but if one needs to watch it anyways and make their own final opinion then get the Region 4 release if your willing to spend the funds or watch it online it's posted for you on Youtube.

Final verdict of this release is that while the set is missing 2 episodes (really just 1 authentic but gimmicky Booker episode on closer look) and some of the music overlays in the episodes for broadcast is gone, if one was a fan of the show or wants to be introduced to this show this is a good release to get as it still has lots of everthing from the original broadcast run and there are no other releases of the show in the U.S. at the moment and it doesn't seem likely the show will get another release on any format anytime soon (aside from the Region 4 release) unless Richard Grieco has B.B. King-like career renaissance of sorts. Though if you must have the original theme song, a bit more of the original music overlays and the B.B. King episode then just buy the Region 4 6-DVD set but it's not going to come cheap by any means even if looking outside of Amazon.