Where are the Rockford Files DVD sets?

Ok, you like Rockford better. Thanks for your time.

Hmm.

But just one more question for you, if you don't mind?

Won't take a second.

Would you say you prefer Rockford over ... MAVERICK?

pplains I rly like the dad joke you kicked off this thread w/, were you a dad then?

not that i was aware of!

(^^ dad "joke")

Lieutenant, I can assure you I'd never heard of Maverick until my secretary told me about it yesterday.

Yesterday... That's interesting.

Again, thanks for your answer. enjoy the DVDs.

After years of hemming and hawing about it and never having seen an episode, I finally started watching this recently on Netflix. Goddamn, is this a good show. It doesn't feel aged in the half-sketched way that similar shows of the era do today. Super engrossing and well-written. And fun! Garner is a great lead. The guest stars on almost every episode I've seen moved on to their own shows or sizeable movie roles within a couple of years.

I think I might splurge on the complete series DVD set (partially for the latter-day TV movies, which don't appear to be on Netflix).

Also: so many car chases! I had no idea. One of the episodes had like a fifteen minute car chase scene with no dialogue whatsoever.

Also also: I hope the episode structures remain varied and unconventional. Lots of in medias res employment, etc. The show doesn't hold your hand.

Did anyone ever see the weird Philip Marlowe movie with Garner from 1969? It's loosely based on a Chandler story but goes in some fairly wacky directions, including Bruce Lee turning up as a heavy at one point. Garner's Marlowe is basically Jim Rockford in all but name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIgTl-rXmOk

I can see that. Rockford reminds me of no one as much as Gould's Marlowe in The Long Goodbye.

I guess the show happened not long after that movie was released. Wonder if it was an inspiration.

seems unlikely - long goodbye kinda flopped and didn't really become widely accepted as classic altman for a while. apparently it was meant to be vaguely remaking maverick only making him a pi and setting it in the present. i've thought that maybe this show garner did before rockford called nichols was similar cuz he's kind of a scoundrel/loser in that too and there was a lot of carryover in personnel but i've never actually seen an episode so no idea.

Yeah, I mean, Altman somehow doesn't seem like he'd be Cannell's thing, but I don't know how much "slobby everyday joe P.I." was a thing at that point in time and the timeline certainly works out.

The two-parter with Ned Beatty as the crooked CEO of a corporation that kept having people killed off was pretty gripping. Rockford has already almost been murdered more times than I can count and I'm only halfway through the first season.

hmmmm i think Gould is a rather more shaggy-dog PI ... i mean, there's no real interest by Altman in making that character "plausible" in his profession. Rockford has at least one foot in believable plotting.

Too true. Rockford feels fully-realized from the start. Perhaps helped by the fact that he's meant to basically be Maverick transplanted to a different era.

Why is this show never repeated (in the UK)? The other great US series of the 70s, Columbo is on all the time, I've even seen some Kojaks... and what about that theme tune: lead moog, folksy harmonica, country rock lead guitar - it couldn't be any more 70s...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg1Cx26-928

the movie this show reminds me of just a bit is NIGHT MOVES, just with the whole era and the scuffling PI and the whole milieu. Rockford is just the lighthearted version.

I don't know if it was actually in the title sequence, but in childhood I had a recurring image (maybe dream) of the Rockford Files title sequence, in which there's a close up of the aftermath of a car accident. Some muscle car like a Trans Am crushed at the side of the Pacific Coast highway, with a brief glimpse of the crushed body in the driver side footwell.

I don't know, and doubt, that was ever part of the title sequence. All I know is that I can't hear the Rockford Files theme without thinking of some crushed limbs and sprawling viscera. It prevented me from ever watching the show in reruns.

https://crimereads.com/falling-in-love-with-the-rockford-files-all-over-again/

Writing a piece for NYT Sunday Styles on how people these days present on social media as Columbo (enigmatic, one step ahead, always nails the rich bastard) but live as Rockford (mobile home, broke, beaten up every week)

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) May 8, 2021

I’ve been watching Rockford Files for the first time, courtesy of Mr Veg who is a fan. We just started S2.

This show, man, I love it.

I am in love with everything about it. Stories are sometimes boring or over-complicated but Jim Garner makes up for any and all of the slight missteps. He’s so cool & funny & charming …It’s really a joy to sit down and watch.

I love the car chases the most, also all the locations & street scenes, I love Jim’s clothes, i love that Garner does all his own stunts, and I love that he never checks behind the door before entering a room.

I also found quite a good podcast about the show called “Two Hundred A Day” - they recap random episodes & talk about the writing etc, its very enjoyable. I think the hosts are game writers/designers.

i saw someone post on twitter that a while back they decided to start a blog of all the payphone scenes in Rockford Files but gave up not far into into season one. Dude was like, “it got super boring because there’s SO many!”

i was like, lmao yeah dude, its about as much fun as posting cell phone photos from modern tv shows.

Take a shot every time he gets jumped by ruffians, two shots for every time he gets jumped inside his own trailer.

Love this show so hard. Kinda wanna start watching the tv movies but I feel like they have to severely pale in comparison (even if only because there's no Rocky, RIP best tv dad ever).

I watched it off and on in syndication over the years, but started proper-like from ep zero last summer, taking the odd break from time to time before finally wrapping up a few months ago.

It's pretty choice. One thing you'll notice in S3, once David Chase comes aboard, is he was already totally the 'Sopranos guy' already.

Need a Best TV Dad poll. Rocky was great but I'd probably vote for Gomez Addams.

XPS Three shots every time the Firebird gets wrecked/blown-up.

Golf-course car chase early in season 1 was a definite high point. Ned Beatty (with HAIR!) guest starring in that weird financial company kidnapping two-parter was cool too.

Low point is S1E6 “This Case Is Closed” - originally 90min movie re-edited & stitched into to a 2 hour episode (& later aired as two 1 hour eps for syndication)… it’s so bad it doesnt even play like a Rockford episode. There’s a point in a car chase where there’s reverse shots of the same cars going down the same street in the opposite direction.

Waiting for Netflix to call me back about my pitch for a Rockford Files reboot starring Hank Azaria.

My dad still talks about the time he met Angel at some airport bar in the late 80s.

"This Case Is Closed" is the Joseph Cotton/Sharon Gless one!

Definitely padded tho. The whole stock footage of rescue vehicles marathon at the beginning of Pt. 2 is particularly ridic.

The other Sharon Gless ep is quite good (the S3 premiere IIRC).

One of the things I love about the series is spotting all the actors and actresses that did guest bits before they got big/bigger.

yeah looking up the careers of the actors i recognize or even actors who seem really great that i don’t know is definitely one of the side-perks of a show like this, just seeing all the varied things they do in their lives, or don’t do as the case may be (i get the same kick with Star Trek TOS)

i also get a real joy out of how comfortable Rockford is with women, the way the show writers seem to give women a bit more more personality than they would normally get in a show like this, and if there is chemistry it comes through a bit more naturally than him just hitting on anything that moves & being creepy

i have yet to be skeeved out by Jim, which says a lot for a mid 70’s detective show

Four shots whenever Mills Watson shows up

https://img4.bdbphotos.com/images/230x300/1/r/1rk51zy0q0e30zqy.jpg

I think he played at least four different Rockford characters over the years.

You are inducing a Proustian rush and making me want to watch this whole thing again.

I want to live in the world where we got an actual spin-off with Louis Gossett, Jr. and Isaac Hayes instead of just the backdoor pilot.

The thing that bums me out is that I didnt have ~this~ level of appreciation for Garner while he was alive. i always liked him but jesus, what a singular talent.

the way the show writers seem to give women a bit more more personality than they would normally get in a show like this

From the terrific crimereads essay linked upthread:

For a 1970s detective, Jim Rockford has impressively few cringey moments with the show’s female guests, a series of vivid and believable women often created by writer-producer Juanita Bartlett. With women, Rockford is a courtly good listener who happens to live in a trailer. We are told that he used to date his lawyer, Beth (Gretchen Corbett) and the writers occasionally break Jim’s heart with a disappearing fiancée or a blind psychologist girlfriend who dumps him. (Rita Moreno won an Emmy portraying a prostitute and police informant whom Jim helps.) Old flames (Susan Strasberg or Valerie Pointer) return mainly when they want him to fix something in their lives or to set him up as the fall guy delivering a briefcase. He loyally complies, and often regrets it.

The thing that bums me out is that I didnt have ~this~ level of appreciation for Garner while he was alive. i always liked him but jesus, what a singular talent.

I want to live in the world where we got an actual spin-off with Louis Gossett, Jr. and Isaac Hayes instead of just the backdoor pilot.

Damn straight! Every few months I search YouTube in vain for the scene where they smash up the Nazi bar.

Is it Isaac Hayes who shows up at the trailer while Rockford's away, sits down on the curb, and starts smoking cigarettes until sunset?

Hate to say it, but my first impression of that was, "Wow, I guess smoking would be a good time-killer."

Yeah, that was him in his first appearance. He did three total, with the last one pairing him with Dionne Warwick (who sings a Stevie Wonder song)!

Stories are sometimes boring or over-complicated

imo they didn't really dial in the magic and tighten things up properly until partway through season 2 or thereabouts.

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but my favorite season is 4. The Mayor of Deer Lick Falls is one of the most entertaining hours of series televison ever. The Battle of Canoga Park is at once funny and eerily prescient, w story concerning a right-wing militia group and "patriots" obsessed with conservative talk radio. Irving the Explainer is David Chase going nuts spoofing absurdly convoluted Chandler-esque plotlines.

The season kicks off with Jim having to sheepishly explain to Rocky how he fucked up and gambled away a ton of money on what was supposed to be a modest vacation... The one dud I remember is one which almost becomes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But mostly the writing is so crisp, Jim's character is so crystallized by that point and effortlessly inhabited in a way that makes the average person's real-life persona seem hopelessly fraudulent, and Angel shines so brightly such that the imperfections are almost reassuring to us mortals.

Barnaby Jones is even better, but most of y'all aren't ready for that.

I've never heard a peep one way or the other about Barnaby Jones before but I've been slowly picking my way through Streets of San Francisco and enjoying it a helluva lot more than I expected to so I would be open to giving another A QUINN MARTIN PRODUCTION a shot.

Another banger of a theme tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mijBMpnS3a4

Barnaby Jones is even better, but most of y'all aren't ready for that

This is big, if true. I haven’t seen Barnaby Jones since the ‘70s but would be interested in hearing about its qualities.

Watching Rockford S4 on dell’s recommendation (p sure I’ve seen S1-S3 already). First ep has a swell performance from James Whitmore, Jr. as a slippery type everyone will recognize. As always it’s the realness of the characterizations and the acknowledgment that all humans are flawed that is the strength of the show. This ep also has the actor who played James Garner’s brother on Maverick.

And right after that is "A Material Difference", which was one of the best Angel eps.

Homestretch now - just finished s6e1 “Paradise Cove” costarring the Polaroid commercial lady :D

Any suggestions for generally good shows from the era that I should explore next? Doesnt have to be detectivey.

It's a little later (mid 80s), but I remember Spenser For Hire being slightly elevated against the riff-raff that was network tv at the time.

Looks like it's streamable, but not free. :(

Huh, looks like the only thing streaming is S1. That sucks. The dvd sets are out there, though.

Decades network is doing a Harry O marathon this weekend which I'm looking forward to...will report back re:it's viability.

Original Hawaii Five-O is amazing, especially the first six seasons.

Harry O starring David Janssen is v good - it had just two seasons. Farrah Fawcett-Majors had a supporting role in it for a while.

Not many people today talk about McMillan and Wife starring Rock Hudson & Susan Saint James, one of the mystery shows that rotated with Columbo in the '70s. It's like The Thin Man transposed to the swinging '70s. Often highly diverting, with cheekiness and charm taking precedence over believable plots.

A friend of mine swears by Vega$ starring Robert Urich. Tony Curtis is in it too.

Also - last year I finished watching all the episodes of Kojak. It's a cool show all the way through its run, though I would recommend starting with s1. Kojak was the best-dressed cop on American TV ever and I like how comfortably he mingles with the entire ethnic patchwork of NYC as it was then. Ethnicity is in fact the main theme of the show, I'd say.

ok this is pretty awesome
Rockford Files credits recreated w Lego

THE ROCKFORD FILES (1974-80)

in LEGO

(for my Twitter bro @RexChapman) pic.twitter.com/UmSCGA1NsJ

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) November 11, 2022

very cute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhHqFN4K3O0

Rest In Power, King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAivpss-irc

we should all place horse bets in his honor, RIP Angel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhHqFN4K3O0

🐐🐐 BOTH . #stuartmargolin RIP 🌈🌈🌈🌈 pic.twitter.com/kTVZT7KrZv

— Victor Sforza (@sforza_victor) December 13, 2022