Though audiences and critics generally find I Love Lucy superior to The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the popular but not well-remembered Here's Lucy when Shout! Factory released the "Best Loved Episodes from the Hit TV Series" a few years back. Like that release, and in fact like all of the various Lucy shows, The Lucy Show - The Official First Season* is an extremely well-produced DVD set with excellent transfers and a mountain of extra features. It's also, like that Here's Lucy set from 2004, a lot more entertaining than I was expecting it to be.

A hazy memory is partly to blame. I was fed a steady diet of Lucy Show reruns while in elementary school; at lunchtime I'd go home (my house was just around the corner) and during that lunch hour I'd have just enough time to catch an entire episode of The Lucy Show and about two-thirds of Popeye & Friends. However, the UHF station preferred running The Lucy Show's later color seasons, episodes co-starring Gale Gordon, not Vivian Vance, episodes set in Southern California, not Danfield, New York, and which by this time featured a parade of famous guest stars: Jack Benny, George Burns, Dean Martin, etc.

The "Official" first season of The Lucy Show is quite different from those star-studded later episodes, and is generally better. Lucy is less the flighty nitwit, and Vance's presence, as well some key behind-the-scenes talent make this show almost like an extension of I Love Lucy. However, the set-up is more than a little strange.

Ball had married comedian Gary Morton in 1961, but apparently there was never any serious consideration about casting him or anyone else as Lucy's husband in the new series. (Morton was a colorful, likeable character, but as a comic he was awesomely unfunny.) Instead, Ball's new character, Lucy Carmichael, would be a widow while Vance's quasi-Ethel, Vivian Bagley, would be a divorcée. Vivian rents rooms for herself and her son, Sherman (Ralph Hart), in the same house widow Carmichael shares with her two children, pretty teenager Chris (Candy Moore) and wise-cracking Jerry (Jimmy Garrett). Though not entirely improbable, it's still a clumsy, too-accommodating set-up.

What's most odd about this arrangement is that while Vivian often jokes about her ex-husband, disparaging his cheapness and whatnot, it's as if Lucy's dead spouse never existed. Neither she nor her two kids ever discuss him. I'm not suggesting scenes of Lucy sobbing uncontrollably over his death but mentioning him now and then might have added an interesting dimension to the character. As it is, he's an almost creepy non-entity: there aren't even any pictures of him up on walls or on Lucy's nightstand. Instead of downplaying Desi Arnaz's absence after so many years it becomes almost like an unsolved murder.** Add to that there's the curious irony in not wanting the stigma of divorce attached to Lucy's character while enthusiastically hanging it around Vance's neck, mining her divorce for laughs. (The series was loosely based on the novel Life without George by Irene Kampen. In the book, both women were divorced. Vance has the distinction of playing the first divorcée on American series television.)

Making Lucy and Vivian man-hungry single women with children was a fresh avenue to explore, but the addition of next-door neighbor Harry Connors (Dick Martin), an airline pilot intended as Lucy's not-quite-boyfriend, was a misstep. For one thing, Martin was 11 years younger than Lucille Ball but, visually, the contrast was even greater. The actor was also too overtly genial and easy-going to express much exasperation at Lucy's antics the way Arnaz's Ricky Ricardo had, and the role pretty much pigeonholed the comedian into playing straight man to Lucy.

But getting Lucy and Vivian involved with "kids stuff," with Lucy refereeing her son's football game in one show, playing den mother in another (and escorting a sugar cube replica of the White House to Washington in "Lucy Visits the White House," where she meets JFK, albeit offscreen) offer fresh material. The pilot, "Lucy Waits Up for Chris," is a typical example. Not wanting to embarrass her daughter, Lucy ends up locked out of her own house, and has to sneak back in through Vivian's second-floor room with the help of a backyard trampoline. It's obvious slapstick, but Ball was a master at milking wild sight gags like this. "Lucy and Viv Put in a Shower" is all clumsy set-up until the undeniably memorable climax (it was one of the few first seasons shows I had remembered for all those years ago) with the women trapped in a glass-enclosed shower as rising tap water threatens to drown them. (And, according to Lucy historians, it nearly did.) Ball's talent for such things is apparent in another bit of business in "Lucy Visits the White House," sitting atop a phony rocking horse supposedly racing alongside a speeding passenger train. Ball's frantic motions to Vance, and Vance's incredulous reactions - always an underrated commodity - are priceless.

The domesticated Lucy is a welcome change from watching the Ricardos and Mertzes hobnob with Hollywood royalty week after week, as I Love Lucy had become in its later years. However, it's still the same broad slapstick, pretty much, and no more grounded in reality than any of Ball's series; the concurrent Dick Van Dyke Show had a showbiz background too, but its scenes at home were much more rooted in a reality that The Lucy Show never aims for. Most of the episodes were written by the foursome of Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Davis, and Bobs Schiller and Weiskopf, all of whom had written for I Love Lucy. Surprisingly, and despite their divorce, even Desi Arnaz co-executive produced the first-half of this first season, and according to the DVD's interview subjects, had an active hand in getting it successfully launched. Apparently, despite a stormy and toward the end quite acrimonious marriage, their professional respect for one another remained unshaken.

Though it lacked the show business heavyweights of later seasons, The Lucy Show's first year had its share of guest stars: William Windom, Vito Scotti, Charles Lane (as Mr. Barnsdahl, as a proto Mr. Mooney-type banker), Reta Shaw, Nancy Kulp, Alix Talton, Majel Barrett, John McGiver, Mary Jane Croft (before she replaced Vance as a series regular), Del Moore, Chuck Roberson, Janet Waldo, Bobs Watson, Stafford Repp, Hans Conried, Henry Kulky, Frank Nelson, Alan Reed, Elliott Reid, Lou Krugman, Don Grady, and Philip Carey. Lucy's real-life children, Lucie and Desi Arnaz, Jr. (billed as Desi Arnaz IV) make occasional appearances as classmates of the Carmichael kids.

Video & Audio

The Lucy Show is presented in its original full-frame format in terrific-looking black and white transfers, with 30 episodes spread over four single-sided, dual layered DVDs. Episode titles with brief descriptions and airdates are offered as part of the packaging. In a neat touch, viewers have the option to watch episodes in their familiar syndicated versions or in "vintage" edits - with their original, extended opening and closing titles, which featured a cartoon Lucy and Ethel pitching Jell-O pudding or some other sponsor's product. The cast (usually Vance and the kids, but rarely Lucy) also often appear in character in commercials extolling their sponsor's wares. Not all shows have this option but many do. The English-only mono, which is not subtitled per se but it closed captioned, sounds great on the syndicated versions, but less so in their "vintage" counterparts, which were partly sourced from 16mm prints. A note in .0001 type states "Music has been changed for this home entertainment version" but I didn't notice anything in particular.

Extra Features.

As with other Ball series, The Lucy Show - The Official First Season is chockfull of supplements. Besides the "vintage" opening and closing credits and cast commercials, the best extras are the new on-camera interviews with Lucie Arnaz and Jimmy Garrett, who played Jerry on the series and still has a trace of that distinctive voice. Both have strong memories of the show, its origins, the atmosphere of rehearsals and performances, of Ball and Vance and the other actors. Garrett also appears in a segment on the show's merchandising, which included a Gold Key comic book series (I think I had an issue or two, though why I can't imagine) and a board game that's impressively explained for the viewers at home.

Also included are original network promos for the series, most featuring Ball out-of-character. There are clips of Ball in Opening Night, a fall preview special - Boy, how exciting these fall preview shows were! Audiences really salivated over clips from all the new shows back then - cavorting with fellow CBS stars Andy Griffith, Garry Moore, Jack Benny, and others, and rather surprisingly Lucy recreates the "giant headdress" sequence from a Hollywood-based episode of I Love Lucy, "Lucy Gets into Pictures." It's almost a mirror image of that earlier showstopper, with Ball nearly ten years older.

Text material offers good behind-the-scenes production information, though bios of the guest cast, often including bit players, are too brief and sketchy. A "flubs" section points out little goofs and continuity errors, and illustrative clips accompany these.

Parting Thoughts

The Lucy Show isn't really one of television's great comedies, but this first season is consistently entertaining with a couple of good laughs in each episode, plus the transfers are good and the extras are outstanding, the kind of thing all classic TV releases should aspire to. Highly Recommended.

* "Official" because it's not one of myriad public domain DVDs featuring Lucy Show episodes, most of which were confined to later seasons.
** As Sergei Hasenecz points out, "[But] think of how many sitcoms had widows or widowers as parents, and the deceased was never referred to. Most likely this was because at that time you wouldn't talk about such things in a comedy. My Three Sons comes to mind. But you have to wonder about writers who constantly killed off marriage partners before the start of a show."

Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's latest book, Japanese Cinema, is on sale now.