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Former Navy Intelligence Officer Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) becomes a P.I. for mysterious mystery writer Robin Masters. Masters’ estate run by Jonathan Higgins (John Hillerman) offers Magnum a luxury place to live and, sometimes against Higgins wishes, plenty of cool cars to drive. With help from his friends Vietnam vets “T.C.” (Roger E. Mosley) and Rick (Larry Manetti), Magnum attempts to help those who have been wrongly accused of crimes or have just gotten themselves into a lot of trouble. Since the location is Hawaii, there’s lots of beautiful scenery to go along with the beautiful women that flit in and out of Magnum’s life. ***

One of CBS’ most popular shows of the 80’s, “Magnum P.I.” made Hollywood vet Tom Selleck a huge TV star and garnered incredible ratings both during its original run and in syndication. Finally available on DVD, this witty, fun show will be welcomed by long time fans of the series. With a cavalcade of well known character actors parading through the series eight year run, “Magnum P.I.” may have been a tad predictable at times but Selleck’s charm and the witty interplay between Selleck, Hillerman, Mosely and Manetti made the show a joy to watch even during the most routine episodes. ---

A mixed bag here as “Magnum P.I.” looks good but has some issues. The show is well served by the transfer for the most part but there are sequences where it’s clear that these new prints came from worn negatives. I doubt that anything other than a digital restoration was done on some of these episodes from the first season. Overall, the series looks solid with bright tropical colors and minimal analog artifacts or digital blemishes. There’s some mild edge enhancement that crops up on occasion but, other than that, the series looks pretty good. I suppose I was hoping for slighter better, crisper images. Still “Magnum” looks pretty darn good even with these very minor issues. The stereo sound clearly hasn’t been remixed for 2.0 or 5.1 Surround. It still sounds very good with minimal distortion or hiss evident. ***

My main complaint is the fact that this set was issued on dual sided discs. While that made the set more economical, it also makes the DVDs prone to damage and a bit of a hassle for fans to flip over going from one episode to the next. I’m a little unclear as to why the budget didn’t permit dual layered single sided discs as this would have been the way to go. True, they are a bit more expensive to manufacture and are more prone to problems than single layer but I’m sure fans would have paid the additional cost. Perhaps marketing believed that the series wouldn’t sell as if it were more expensive. ---

Pretty bare bones with only bonus episodes included as extras, “Magnum P.I.” would benefit from a retrospective featurette on the success of the series and its appeal to audiences. I mean, come on, even “Quantum Leap” had more extras than this. Universal has made loads of money off the series in syndication so I’m a little surprised that the marketing budget for this boxed set didn’t allow for a featurette, vintage interviews being dug up and/or outtakes. ***

We do get the two rarely seen crossover episodes with the series “Simon & Simon” which is a big plus here. Also, we get two episodes from 1984 which are here strictly because they feature Sharon Stone. There’s no other reason for them to be included and, since they’ll end up on a later edition of the boxed set, it’s not really an extra but a teaser of things to come. ---