About the Show

Remington Steele is a television series from the early 1980s. The show revolves around Remington Steele Investigations and its employees as they chase after bad guys in a mass of gunfights, explosions, car chases, and borderline cheesy fisticuffs. In the series first season, private investigator Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) could not get a job for the life of her. Nobody wanted to hire a female private investigator. Trying to meet the demands of the masculine world, Laura made up a pretend boss and called him Remington Steele, as well as dubbed her detective agency with the same name. In the series pilot episode, Laura becomes shocked when her boss comes to life. Pierce Brosnan plays a con-man with a secretive past and joins Laura in her adventures as Remington Steele. Joining Holt and Steele for the ride is Mildred Krebs (Doris Roberts). For more details check out DVD Talk's reviews of season one, season two, and season three.

Prior to my viewing of Remington Steele: Seasons Four & Five, I had never seen the series before. Please keep this in mind while you read this review. I know nothing about the earlier seasons and cannot compare seasons four and five to them. As for my experience with this season set, I was not impressed at first. My introduction to the show left me with little and I felt Remington Steele was going to be a generic detective show with little appeal. However, as the season four premiere episode went on I started to become interested in the show. I found once I got to know the characters a bit more that I really liked them and also enjoyed the corny, yet dramatic dialogue with random bits of comedy, although the fight scenes left my eyes rolling. All in all, I would say Remington Steele is a decent crime drama with fun stories and interesting characters.

The Fourth Season

What works for season four are the main cast. Brosnan, Zimbalist, and Roberts do a pretty good job with their characters. Roberts plays a supporting character and offers some decent moments. But I was not nearly as impressed with her in this series as I am with her role in Everybody Loves Raymond. Brosnan and Zimbalist are both great as the leads, Brosnan especially. Brosnan gives his character a debonair charm that is clearly what landed him the role of James Bond. He is charming, witty, and even provides some well executed comical theatrics. Zimbalist also makes for a good character and she has some solid chemistry with Brosnan. While he is witty and not very serious, Zimbalist makes the perfect compliment.

As for the stories, they tend to be somewhat generic and sometimes on the corny side. However, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, it is the characters that make the season fun. In the end, you cannot help but enjoy them. Some of the stories touched upon in this season include Steele chasing after his past and trying to find out who he is, the truth about the man behind Remington Steele Investigations, Laura posing in a nudie magazine, Steele losing the agency, an undercover operation in the friendly skies, Mildred is framed for the murder of Steele and Laura, and much more. Here's an overview of a few of the notable episodes.

The fourth season begins with a two-part episode entitled "Steele Searching". As far as I can tell, in the end of season three Steele disappeared without telling Laura or Mildred about where he was headed. In this two-part season premiere, Laura and Mildred are hot on his trail. After some sleuthing, they track him in London. Unfortunately, there is a killer about whose murders resemble a modern day Jack the Ripper, and Steele is mistaken by Scotland Yard as the killer while searching for clues about his unknown past. In part two, the story gets even crazier for Steele as he finds himself thrust into live or death situation where he has to pretend to be an assassin. A group of disgruntled miners want the Earl of Calridge dead, and Steele is being mistaken for Europe's deadliest assassin when he runs into a pair of old friends who are trying to steal the Earl's riches. Laura also pours out the truth about Remington Steele not being real to Mildred. I found the first half of the episode rather lackluster. The second part started to get more exciting with some interesting details about Steele's past.

In the following episode "Steele Blushing", everybody is after a man named Douglas Veenhoff who takes scandalous pictures of women in little or no clothing. In the opening of the episode, the FBI comes to Steele demanding to know why Laura posed as the babe of the month for the latest issues of adult magazine Bedside Babe. It turns out Veenhoff is connected to a scandal with candidate for senate Ford Stevens. It is a dicey case that Steele and company must solve before they are caught with their pants down! In the episode "Forged Steele", Steele finds out a lot can happen in a couple days. He goes to meet a female client B.J. Sinclair and awakens thirty-six hours later in a hotel room. Apparently, Steele got involved in a high stakes poker game that cost him the detective agency. When he goes back to work, he finds someone else in charge. It is an odd mysterious Steele, Laura, and Mildred need to uncover to get the agency back.

In "Coffee, Tea or Steele", an assassin is found dead in a luggage carousel. Laura and Steele go undercover with Laura playing a flight attendant and Steele a passenger. They aim to find out why the dead body was found on the airline's carousel. Of course during their mile-high investigation, they find out flying the friendly skies is not always so friendly. In "Steele, Inc.", Steele and Laura learn all about the success of their agency. A fellow conman approaches the duo about franchising the agency. Before they know it, there is a dead Remington Steele impersonator. Afterwards, the duo's gumshoeing takes them to San Diego, where they find a franchised Remington Steel Investigations branch.

In "Steele at Your Service", Steele's ego takes a backdrop. A butler is murdered and Steele is hired by the butler's peers to go undercover as the new butler in the Wellington household. The butler's friends want to find out why he was killed. The investigation leads Steele and Laura to set of memoirs the family does not want published. The fun in this episode is seeing Steele in the role of a butler. It is a big chance of pace for him. Of course, there is still plenty of corny action and drama to go along with it. "Beg, Borrow or Steele" is an odd episode about deception and misconception. Returning from New York, Steele and Laura learn they were killed and Mildred is the prime suspect.

The Fifth Season

At the end of season four, NBC cancelled Remington Steele. The cast members had contracts for a fifth season, but due to the cancellation they were in the clear to pursue other options. However, the series was brought back to life after some enormous efforts and demand by the fans (the issue is discussed in one of the special features). Due to the previous contracts, the main cast had to come back to work on additional material for the series. Apparently, it was due to this contract requirement Brosnan missed out on playing James Bond several years before he starred in GoldenEye. Regardless, season five brings Steele and Laura back together in three two-part episodes.

In the first of the three two-part episodes "The Steele That Wouldn't Die", Steele is on the verge of being deported from the United States. Laura pretends to be married to Steele to keep in the states. And on their honeymoon, which takes the duo to Mexico, Steele runs into an old nemesis Norman Keyes. Keyes works for the U.S. Immigration, and when Keyes is murdered, Steele is the prime suspect! What was supposed to be a simple vacation turned out to be quite a ride for the detectives and yet another murderous plot for them to uncover.

In the second season five episode "Steele Hanging in There", the fake newlyweds return to the states with undercover immigration agent Tony Roselli (Jack Scalia) hot on their trail. In addition, Steele runs into an old face from his past, a cunning and devious woman named Shannon Wayne. With both Roselli and Shannon, life gets very complicated for the lovebirds and their journeys take them to London, where Roselli teams up with British intelligence to make Steele's life difficult.

The last episode of season five is "Steeled With A Kiss". In it, Steele learns he inherited a castle in Ireland, where he, Laura, and Roselli head off to. Despite their indifferences with Roselli, they help him out because finds himself in a pickle when he is accused of being a double agent. The K.G.B. wants him and Steele's old friend Daniel Chalmers is willing to hand him over. Laura and Steele need to clear his name before that can happen. This final episode ties everything together and even leaves with the two characters getting together and dealing with the constant romantic tension that has existed between them since the first day they met.

Comparing the season four episodes to the season five episodes is not entirely fair. Season four fares much better in quality and entertainment value. The good thing about the season five episodes is that they provide some decent closure to the series, although I suppose if I had seen the first three seasons I might have enjoyed it more. Regardless, I felt Remington Steele: Seasons Four & Five to be an enjoyable watch. I really liked getting the chance to see Brosnan in the role that prepared him to be James Bond.

Season Four Episode Guide
1. Steele Searching - Part 1
2. Steele Searching - Part 2
3. Steele Blushing
4. Grappling Steele
5. Forged Steele
6. Corn Fed Steele
7. Premium Steele
8. Coffee, Tea Or Steele
9. Dancer, Prancer, Donner And Steele
10. Steele On The Air
11. Steele, Inc.
12. Steele Spawning
13. Suburban Steele
14. Santa Claus Is Coming To Steele
15. Steele Blue Yonder
16. Sensitive Steele
17. Steele In The Spotlight
18. Steele At Your Service
19. Steele In The Running
20. Beg, Borrow Or Steele
21. Steele Alive And Kicking
22. Bonds Of Steele

Season Five Episode Guide
1. The Steele That Wouldn't Die - Parts 1 & 2
2. Steele Hanging In There - Part 1
3. Steele Hanging In There - Part 2
4. Steeled With A Kiss - Part 1
5. Steeled With A Kiss - Part 2

The DVD

Video:
The video is given in its original television aspect ratio of 1.33:1 full frame color. The picture quality is good considering its age. The image is a bit soft at times. For the most part, it looks good with a slight grain and no noticeable issues attributed with video compression.

Audio:
The audio in this release is in English 2.0 Dolby digital mono. The quality is quite good. The audio is fairly flat, which is due the show being dialogue driven and the mono track offers very little in terms of dynamics. This release also supports closed captioning and has subtitles in English and Spanish.

Extras:
The special features include audio commentaries for selected episodes and several featurettes. The commentaries cover "Steele On The Air" with John J. Sakmar and Kerry Lenhart, and "Bonds of Steele" with Michael Gleason, John Wirth, Brad Kern, and Jeff Melvoin. The featurettes include "Steele Fanatics", which is about the show's season five revival due to the demand by the fans, "Steele Stars", a featurette about key guest stars in the seasons, "Steele On The Road", about how the city of Los Angeles was used as a set for the show, and "Steele Farewell", a featurette with the cast and crew reflecting about the experiences with the series and saying a final farewell.

Final Thoughts:
When I first sat down with Remington Steele: Seasons Four & Five, I had never seen the series before and when I started watching, I was less than thrilled. However into the second half of the season premiere, I started to see what was appealing about the show. While the stories were somewhat corny and the dialogue, while usually well-written, occasionally got cheesy, the leading characters were what made this show a gem. I really enjoyed the charming debonair demeanor Brosnan brought his character, as well as the chemistry he had with co-star Zimbalist. In the end, I enjoyed watching season four and parts of season five, and I believe this season set should make for a worthy purchase if you enjoy a good detective series with bits of drama, comedy, mystery, and action.