The Good

This is a great show and I consider owning it a privilege.

The Bad

No extras. The first couple of seasons had them but this one doesn't...

The Rockford Files: Season Five comes to us with 5 discs and 22 episodes of pure, good, crimebusting fun. James Garner stars in this show as Jim Rockford, a put upon private detective who always seems to get cases in spite of himself. Charging $200 a day plus expenses, there is nobody better to have on your side. Rockford will check out any lead, big or small, and he makes it his business to associate with the sort of people that can help him in his line of work. With solid performances from the entire cast, The Rockford Files is that rare show that never gets old and never seems dated in its ideas and concepts.

Featured on this release are such episodes as "Heartaches of a Fool" which finds Jim Rockford getting to the bottom of a weird case involving a country music star, the Chinese mob and his own father! Another great episode is "Three Day Affair with a Thirty Day Escrow" which finds Rockford having to save an Arabian princess from her family after a land deal goes bad. Lastly, "The Battle-Ax and the Exploding Cigar" sees Rockford get in over his head when he agrees to take a stolen car from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

Features

No extras came with this DVD set.

Video

Full Frame. 1.33:1. Sadly, I wish that Universal would have cleaned up this release more. This isn't to say that these episodes look like dreck, but I noticed way too much dirt specs littered all over this release. Color-wise everything is pretty solid. Nothing bleeds into anything and we don't get that shadowing that I have sometimes called "70s sludge" on other releases. This show looks really good here, I just wish that it would have looked great.

Audio

Language: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono. Subtitles: English SDH. The audio on this release was perfect. James Garner's grizzled sounding voice mixed in with Angel's (Stuart Margolin's) almost pitying tones, were both captured and mixed perfectly for this set. One thing we can always count on from our friends at Universal is that they will give us solid audio quality. Everything is on the mark here and that is yet another notch in this releases belt.

Package

The sun sets behind Jim Rockford in the background of this release while Garner is presented in the foreground of this slipcase. The back cover continues this motif with another shot of Rockford and what I assume is the Santa Monica pier. There is a description of what this show is about and some technical specs. All 5 discs unspool out in one piece of Universal artwork that contains more images from the show, as well as episode listings and descriptions.

Final Word

I was really excited to get this show considering that Universal somehow forget to send it to MovieWeb for the past couple of Seasons. I actually bought a season so I think I am only missing out on the Fourth one. There is something genuinely endearing about this private detective who is good with the ladies, smart on the job and conducts business out of his trailer by the beach. James Garner had such an interesting handle on this character that that and that alone is what has made it so indelible and enjoyable. This character is rich with nuance, delivery and just about all the other things that make The Rockford Files one of the best crime shows in history. Stephen J. Cannell often talks about how his modus operandi with Jim Rockford was to make him steer clear of cliches. By that, Cannell basically made Rockford do the opposite of what people might expect a character like his to do.

Make some space on your shelves because The Rockford Files: Season Five is a keeper.

The Rockford Files was released .