The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - The Complete Series

I've been waiting literally decades for a release of the complete series of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." on video. For many years, the adventures of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were difficult to find on syndication, until the Christian Broadcasting Network (of all stations!) brought the series back in the mid-1980's. (I still have old VHS tapes of episodes that I recorded off CBN back then.) Later on, Turner Network Television picked up the show and ran it off and on for years - in fact, they ran all eight of the U.N.C.L.E. movies in an all-day marathon in November 2007 - and about forty of the episodes were released on VHS in the 1990's. Finally, Time-Life released the entire series in 2007 (the package identical to what you see here) and it was THE event of the decade among U.N.C.L.E. fans.

Basically, what we have here is, in my somewhat prejudiced opinion, one of the best DVD collections I've ever seen. Let me get my one quibble out of the way first; the briefcase the set comes in is not as sturdy as it could be, in fact, as a lot of people reported last year, it's actually pretty flimsy. Also, the "booklets" the DVD's come in aren't as sturdy as they should be. Some people recommend that for best protection and long-term storage, you should get a good-quality CD/DVD wallet and put the discs in them.

OK, that's the negative stuff out of the way. Now the positive:

1) EVERY episode of the show is present, digitally remastered from the best available copies. This was, in fact, a major reason why DVD release was delayed - the producers were trying to track down good-quality copies of many episodes, particularly from the first season. One especial jewel in this collection is the famous "lost" episode, "The Pieces of Fate Affair" (written by Harlan Ellison), which was withheld from syndication for many years because of fears of potential legal complications due to all the real-life people lampooned in the script. The quality of the discs is uniformly good and every episode has been closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired.

2) The extras. All four seasonal collections have extras (the first three seasons have a disc devoted entirely to bonus items), including such goodies as the original "Solo" pilot, the feature film "One Of Our Spies Is Missing" (collated from the two-parter "Alexander the Greater Affair", one of the series' finest episodes), etc. In addition, there are two bonus discs separate from the main packages crammed full of minifeatures on every aspect of the show.

3) The series itself. "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." justly deserves its reputation as one of the great classic shows of American television. As with every episodic TV show, the quality of the episodes varies from installment to installment; the first season is almost universally held to be the best one by hardcore fans, but the much-maligned third season actually has, among all the "Batman"-style silliness, a number of excellent episodes (the aforementioned "Pieces of Fate Affair", for example, and also "The Concrete Overshoes Affair", another two-part episode converted into a feature movie). The overarching themes of the show still hold up surprisingly well today, and the interaction among the show's stars - Robert Vaughn, David McCallum and Leo G. Carroll - is a pure joy to watch. (See Vaughn's new autobiography, also available through Amazon, for his own reminiscences of the U.N.C.L.E. days!)

Unqualified recommmendation. It may look pricey, but it's worth every single penny. Buy it today!!

Couldn't wait until Amazon released the set in October, but why did you raise the price 20 % , by 30 dollars, only after ONE week ? All other retail online sellers are still offering it at 30 bucks less.I am now a very dissatisfied long time customer.

Kudos to Warner Brothers for raising the bar on how to honor television shows through ambitious box set collections! It would behoove Fox Home Video to examine this beautifully produced collection! This is how Fox should've released Lost in Space, instead of just throwing it away in rote episode collections with rehashed SciFi Channel interviews and scraps for extras (if they can be called that). I doubt The Man From Uncle has ever looked so brilliant. The colors pop, the focus is razor sharp, and I've found no evidence of artifacting or pixilating anywhere in the set. The extras are simply mind-blowing and completely comprehensive. For fans of TMFU or classic 60s television, you can't go wrong with this set!!

Great packaging, extensive content (such as two versions of the pilot, one without Leo G. Carroll), interviews with both Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, many featurettes, tons of promos and trailers, various TV appearances by Vaughn and McCallum, and even the funny Tom & Jerry cartoon "The Mouse from H.U.N.G.E.R." The quality of the digital transfer and the audio are excellent.

I've heard people complain that this set only offering one of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. movies--Actually it offers all of the movies (in a sense).
The theatrical MFU movie included is "One Spy Too Many" which was re-editied from the MFU episodes "The Alexander The Great Affair" Parts 1&2..
The theatrical released movies were all slightly editied versions of the two-part episodes that aired on tv or two episodes re-edited together(they also occassionally included more sexully suggestive shots that were too hot for tv).
Therefore all of the theatrical movies are technically included in ths set--
The reason I said that this was ALMOST a complete set was they could have included the tv reunion movie The return Of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. "The 15 Year Later Affair" .
For the record the movies breakdown is :
To Trap A Spy = Re-edited Pilot- The Vulcan Affair
The Spy With My Face = The Double affair + The Four Steps Affair
Spy In The Greeen Hat = Concrete Overcoat Affair Parts 1&2
One Of Our Spiess Is Missing = Bridges of Lions Affair
The Karate Killers = The Five Daughters Affair
The Helicopter Spies = Prince Of Darkness Affair
How To Steal The World = Seven Wonders of The World(which was the series finale)
I hope this helps !