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(More customer reviews)"The Third Man" was a late 1950s/early 1960s U.S./British co-production that was very loosely based on Carol Reed's classic 1949 film of the same name and starred Orson Welles as Harry Lime. In this television adaptation, Lime is an international businessman portrayed by Michael Rennie and, in many of the episodes, he is joined by his assistant Bradford Webster, portrayed by Jonathan Harris (yes, the same Jonathan Harris of "Lost in Space" fame). The tone and texture of this weekly series is much lighter than the film, but it can be enjoyed on its own merits.
This 10-episode, 2-DVD set from the Timeless Media Group, while much anticipated by this viewer, could have been better. The good news is that the episodes included in this set are, visually, a major improvement over a 4-episode single disc of "The Third Man" from Critics Choice Video that was released a few years ago. The prints are fairly crisp and clean looking, certainly better than what I would have expected for a release in this price range. Some background audio "flutter" can be heard in some episodes, but it's really not too intrusive. And, fortunately, none of the episodes in this collection are duplicates of the Critics Choice release, a real plus for collectors of this series. There are plenty of recognizable guest stars from both sides of the Atlantic, character actors like Nehemiah Persoff, Werner Klemperer, Robert Shayne, Hugh Marlowe, Mai Zetterling, Steven Berkoff, Marius Goring, Patrick Troughton and even Oliver Reed, among others, as well as the always fun-to-watch Jonathan Harris, who appears as a semi-regular.
Now for the bad news . . . the opening title sequence of Harry Lime walking alone on a dark, deserted street along with Anton Karas' famous theme music (the only real major carryover from the film) is played only once at the beginning of each disc, but has been completely eliminated from the beginning of each of the episodes. Each episode begins with the episode title card. While the closing end credits are left intact on most of the episodes, a few don't even have these. Also, the Timeless Media Group logo (TMG) appears in the bottom right hand corner for long stretches in each episode . . . another viewing annoyance.
"The Third Man" is a very rare television series to see . . . to my knowledge, it hasn't been broadcast in decades and there hasn't been much in the way of video and DVD releases in the ensuing years. So this release is a very welcome addition, and one has to give credit to the Timeless Media Group for taking a chance on this largely forgotten series. The pros certainly outweigh the cons, but one also wishes that Timeless Media would have done a better job with the presentation and, for this, I'm subtracting a star.
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