The Good

The Bad

The adventures of secret agent Angus MacGyver, who doesn't use guns, but his BRAIN, to get him through the most trickiest of situations.

Straight out of 1985, this boxset was a pleasure to review. I liken MacGyver to Airwolf. Both were out on the TV screens at about the same time, and I was too busy getting into trouble after school to really pay attention to them. Thanks to TV stations like TV LAND and KDOC, I have been able to revisit these shows and really discover for myself what I have been missing.

TV on DVD is great. I honestly believe that ANY show on DVD might be worth owning. Maybe I am biased, maybe I am yearning for my youth, but when I see MacGyver tooling around town trying to save peoples lives, or out in the wilderness dealing with the hand that mother nature dealt him, I just can't get enough of this. All the shows are so richly written. The plots do become predictable after awhile, but one has to remember that they are watching the ENTIRE season of a show. Sometimes within the span of a day or a few days. When these shows were made, they were meant for weekly consumption. The state of dvds has created a system (such as TIVO) that make it so you can watch TV like it has never been watched before.

I think what makes these shows so great is the writing. The 80s seemed to be a very experimental time in television. You had the A-Team, which was a testorone fueled shoot-em up. And then along comes a show like MacGyver that really does exercise brains over brawn. It was intelligently written and done in such a way that even though you pretty much always knew that Angus MacGyver was going to survive, you kept watching just to see how he was going to survive. In a day and age when reality TV programming has taken over television, watching MacGyver - The Complete First Season reminded me of why I used to look forward to watching television to begin with.

Features

Absolutely none. However, this IS MacGyver so I am willing to give this DVD a "pass" on a few things.

Video

It's full framed but as MacGyver was a TV show the viewer isn't missing anything. I am big fan of the 80s, 2 dimensional screen compositions and in this regard this DVD completely delivers. I find too many shows try to use quick cutting and fast camera moves that just end up making me want to take a nap.

Audio

The sound is monoural but as I am deaf in one ear it doesn't really matter to me. It sounds fine and anyone who is a fan of the show isn't really going to care. After all, its MacGyver!! You do notice things with the quality of the compression. After years of just hearing this stuff on TV you can tell that extra special care maintained in order to produce the best sound quality sound mix.

Package

There are shots of explosions, MacGyver running with someone and even a shot that looks like him tying his shoe!! He isn't really tying his shoe, he is probably using a rock to make something electrocute someone but that isn't what we are discussing. This box cover art is very much "from the show". It keeps with the idea and tone, but it also doesn't look like an 80s TV Show. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Final Word

I found everything about the MacGyver Season 1 Box Set to be enjoyable. Richard Dean Anderson was perfectly cast in this role. He brings a sense of strength and humanity to every episode. His supporting co-stars were also terrificly cast. It is very interesting seeing some of them on TV shows or in movies now, and then seeing them on this DVD. They are all such strong actors.

I am proud to own this box set and I look forward to the rest of the show becoming available.

MacGyver was released .