Retro TV buffs, brace yourselves for a thrill as the classic Robert Wagner action / mystery series comes back out our way with the It Takes A Thief Complete Series box set, a copy of which the folks at E One sent out for review. And the good news: it’s going to be some exciting stuff if you’re willing to accept some basic issues.

It Takes A Thief Complete Series is the compilation of three seasons worth of the old series which ran from 1968 through 1970, and joined us up with Alexander Mundy, a master thief who finds himself dragooned into service with the SIA, given a parole from prison to engage in thievery on behalf of the United States government. They figured out that most of espionage is essentially larceny and homicide, and realized in turn that the best people most skilled at larceny and homicide are thieves and murderers, and thus, they pick up said thief. And he’s got a whole lot of stuff to steal for the United States government, including the hearts of most any woman who gets in his way.

While there are plenty of great jokes in this series, you’ll also be abundantly surprised to know that Leslie Nielsen is in this one…but here’s the kicker. It’s a SERIOUS role. Yes, Frank Drebin himself, the most hilarious cop known to mankind, is actually playing a serious role. And he will be doing so in the midst of an action thriller with its share of laughs! And not only that, there will also be plenty of good old fashioned suspense tossed in for variety. Laughs, suspense, action…it’s hard not to enjoy this series.

And lest you think that all old television is a badly dated and utterly irrelevant affair, don’t–this actually manages to do a pretty fair job of staying pretty exciting. Sure, you can tell that it’s pulled whole and breathing out of the sixties, but the plots are actually rather impressive for a show filmed that far back. One follows a jewel heist perpetrated to collapse a country’s economy–seems the currency is backed by the country’s crown jewels–and Mundy will have to try and join the thieves boosting the jewels in order to keep them safe.

It Takes A Thief Complete Series is a whole lot more and a whole lot better than you’d likely expect, and despite its clearly dated look, it’s still going to pack plenty of quality action into its proceedings.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives the massive and impressive It Takes A Thief Complete Series an eight out of ten for being intensely fun but a little dated.

The folks out at TLC sent us out a copy of Sister Wives 2 for review, and though this is easily one of the more controversial titles on TLC right now, it’s also surprisingly dull for the kind of sheer alien nature of what you’ll be watching here.

Sister Wives 2 follows the Brown family, a highly unconventional family in their own right. See, the Browns are a family of polygamists, meaning that there’s one husband Brown, and in this particular set of episodes, four wives. They just tacked on a fourth wife recently, and as such, it’s made a whole lot of problems in the home. A bigamy investigation, police matters, and plenty of internal struggles make the Browns’ life a difficult one. But will the sheer power of love–even a wildly unconventional love–be enough to overcome the variety of issues they’ll face?

Leave aside your feelings about polygamy–or bigamy, if you favor that angle–and just focus on the presentation itself. Sister Wives 2 is almost disturbingly boring. I know, it’s hard to imaging a show about polygamy being boring, but the problem is the way it’s set up. Large portions of the show are either the adult Browns sitting around and talking to the camera, or the Brown family doing something, but with a voice over from some of the various adult Browns. Basically, you’re going to listen to these five people talk. And for the most part, agree with each other. Talk and agree, talk and agree…over and over again for about forty minutes an episode. By the end of the first episode, I was getting so sick of that room and that couch where the five Browns are sitting and yammering about their family.

The politics of the situation are of course a bit bizarre–naturally the show is almost vociferously in favor of polygamy, and listening to the Browns talk about how high their morals are while they’re actively breaking laws that have been in existence off and on in one form or another since the mid-1800s or so is a trip in its own right (though the defense they seem to be using is in itself bizarre as only one marriage is a legal marriage while the rest are mere “commitments”)–and naturally, most people have an opinion about all this which is going to color their perceptions about this one. I’m just having a hard time getting past how dull and preachy the presentation is. They might as well stamp on the shows opening frame “WE BELIEVE IN POLYGAMY, AND IF YOU DON’T, YOU ARE AN INTOLERANT BIGOT” for all the preachiness of the show.

Sister Wives 2 is a deeply politicized presentation, and will in turn find you likely polarized in your response. But while polarization does well for inciting discussion, it isn’t exactly entertaining. And that’s the biggest problem with Sister Wives 2: it’s simply not entertaining.

And as such, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives Sister Wives 2 a three out of ten for offering up some heavily biased information and a whole lot of political leanings packaged in a shell of nearly endless conversation.

Folks, I’ve been working my way through this one for the last several days since it actually showed up on my doorstep, because this one is a doozy. The folks out at Lions Gate sent over Little House on the Prairie. All of it. Yes, that’s right, the full nine seasons of it, a monster fifty five disc box set of frontier living and good family television to last most anyone several hours. And how did it turn out? Better than you might expect.

Little House on the Prairie The Complete Nine Season Set takes us out to the frontier, as the Ingalls family makes its westward progression, setting out to settle the wild and vast frontier before them. Setting up camp on a parcel of land near Plum Creek, not too far from the tiny town of Walnut Grove, Minnesota, the Ingalls family builds a house, a farm, and a life on the harsh, unforgiving territory. They’ll have a lot of adventures, deal with a whole lot of different things, see their family grow and change, and eventually it will all come to an end.

Personally, I enjoy Little House on the Prairie. It’s a deceptively relaxing show; the combination of the realistic portrayal of the frontier lifestyle coupled with the excellent performances of the cast is one that seldom fails to mellow me out. And considering how extensive this collection was, chances are you’re going to find at least a couple episodes you’ll really enjoy. Of course, by like token, you’ll also find a few you absolutely can’t stand.

Special note here: if you were really fond of the books, and expect the series to behave like a big adaptation, don’t. Just stop right now. The best you’re going to do is get something based loosely on the books, and very loosely at that. Still though, Little House on the Prairie is a surprisingly relaxing show, almost disturbingly so, really, but it does do a wonderful job there. Plus, it’s excellent family viewing. You’ll find next to nothing objectionable in here; this was regarded as family fare back in the seventies when it first emerged, and it’s a safe bet that people haven’t gotten more sensitive now in terms of objectionable content, so you have a reasonably safe bet that this will be good for family viewing now.

Simple plotlines, a nigh-total lack of objectionable content and solid performances make the Little House series one you’ll absolutely want to watch. And the Screenhead Ten Scale responds accordingly by giving Little House on the Prairie The Complete Nine Season Set an eight out of ten. It’s not going to be for everyone–many will be bored here–but for those who like it a little on the calmer side, this is going to be a great trip into the wild.

The folks out at Acorn Media sent over a magnificent slice of Canadian television for us in the form of The Red Green Show: The Geezer Years, some of the later episodes of the series, and as is par for the course (as represented by the last time we reviewed one) this will prove to be some delightfully hilarious stuff.

Once again we go back to Possum Lodge, where the thoroughly daffy Possum Lodge brethren regularly assemble to engage in a variety of strange misadventures. And when I say “variety”, that’s exactly what I mean. You’ll get all sorts of events, from the Possum Lodge Fast Food Drive Through restaurant to the Possum Lodge attempt at hosting an air show, plus a regularly recurring series of events in which Harold meets a girl on the internet, dates, and gets engaged to her. Will the wedding come off without a hitch? No. This is Possum Lodge we’re talking about, why would you even ask such a question? But no matter how badly things go wrong, they will always be funny.

That’s the great thing about the Red Green Show. There’s always something to laugh at, as long as you’re into slapstick and otherwise stupid comedy in general. There will be lots of people getting kicked or blown up or punched or occasionally set on fire, and all in the name of good classic Three Stooges style comedy. And they will once again be interspersed with lots of small short-form stuff of even more various misadventures at the lodge. So not only will you get a larger story that runs through the entire episode, but you’ll also get a whole collection of B-stories in which Red builds something preposterous partially involving duct tape, or where Bill goes off on some crazy stunt of his own usually involving something outdoorsy, or any of a dozen other possibilities, including the usually seen Possum Lodge Word Game in which players attempt to get someone to guess a word for any of a variety of allegedly valuable prizes like a free pony from the Screaming Pony Breeding Centre (where every pony is a little hoarse).

It’s delightfully funny stuff, and for those of you who enjoy the more guy-style humor, then this is going to be the show for you. And the Screenhead Ten Scale is going to respond accordingly by handing The Red Green Show: The Geezer Years a full ten out of ten–the constant hilarity and endless variety will prove to be entertaining for the whole twenty hours you’ll be watching this.

The folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Boy Meets World The Complete Sixth Season, and this one is going to be much the same as previous seasons, though that’s not the insult you might think it was. If you liked the previous seasons, you should get a real charge out of this one.

Boy Meets World The Complete Sixth Season kicks off where the fifth season previously left off, with Cory’s parents looking to have a baby, Feeny looking at retirement, Cory and Topanga looking at college…and more besides, and so on from there. Now it’ll be a whole new set of adjustments as the gang heads off to college and gets into a whole new set of dramatic issues.

Okay, admittedly, believability is shot all to hell and gone in this season. High school kids getting married, idiots taking college classes, a high school teacher getting promoted to principal then retiring to take a job at the college where his most recent graduating class happens to be…none of this makes sense. Eric, meanwhile, has gone even further off the rails than even I had thought possible. He is now so far from the rails that he no longer qualifies as a train, but rather, some kind of hovercraft.

And worse, it’s heavier on the drama than the earlier seasons. Frankly, if the drama keeps up at this pace, we’re going to be bursting at the seams with the stuff. It’s really got me wondering just what the seventh season will look like, and frankly, I don’t remember the seventh season from when it was on television. The comedy has gotten thicker too, almost disturbingly so. I’ve seen horror movies featuring insane asylums that have this kind of strange comedy to them. It’s almost hysteria.

Thick drama, thick comedy, man…this season is downright thick. And there’s almost even proportions here, so whether you’re here for the drama or you’re here for the comedy, you’re going to come away reasonably satisfied with the end result here. Of course, those here for the drama will likely be put off by the comedy, and vice versa, of course, but if you can be sufficiently satisfied with the reason you came, then this drama / comedy chimera will be welcome for you no matter what.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, gives Boy Meets World The Complete Sixth Season a seven out of ten. It’s weirder than normal, and the drama and comedy have been polarized to an almost disturbing degree, but whatever you came here for is likely going to be well received.

Chances are you’re already familiar with Dog The Bounty Hunter, whether from our previous coverage of it or you watch it on television. And the folks out at A&E sent over a little chunk of Dog The Bounty Hunter history for us to review in the form of Dog The Bounty Hunter: This Family Means Business.

Dog The Bounty Hunter: This Family Means Business takes us back to Hawaii and beyond where the Chapman clan is once again engaged in bounty hunting. This time, we go after a variety of cases, including one that makes history. This particular DVD contains the two hundredth episode of Dog The Bounty Hunter, as well as a collection of others including a special retrospective.

This particular set of Dog The Bounty Hunter episodes is unusually preachy, I found; they spent a whole lot of time preaching to their targets about the evils of drug use. One particularly awkward moment featured the ladies of the Chapman clan going after a mother on what I’m guessing was crystal meth (they called it ice, as I recall, which I believe is another name for crystal meth), and then, once they got her, they said they were there for a “mom’s intervention”, being as they were all apparently mothers. I found that spectacularly disingenuous; we all know full well they’re not there on some kind of charity case. They’re there because they were paid to be there, not because they wanted to help. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous, to actually say otherwise is either preposterous ignorance or an outright lie.

Still, it’s interesting enough, all things considered. There’s a note of predictability here; you have a good idea what the Chapman crew will be doing at any given time, but every time the circumstances will be different. It’s a different target most every time, but the end result will generally be the same. If you’re already a fan of the show, then you’ll enjoy the interplay and the various idiosyncrasies between cases. Each one is a little bit different, if very similar at the roots, but still most of the time there will be differences to appreciate.

If you already like it, you’ll enjoy your time here. If you don’t like the show, then this will waste a little over three hours of your time.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the preachy, vaguely familiar joy that is Dog The Bounty Hunter: This Family Means Business a seven out of ten. It’s great if you like this kind of thing, but don’t look for it to win many converts.

Before I begin today’s piece, yes, I assure you that “Dinocroc Vs. Supergator” is an actual movie. How do I know? The folks out at Anchor Bay sent over a copy for me to review for you guys. It’s part of the vein of modern-day monster movies from Roger Corman that keep landing on SyFy of late, and much like the other launches, it’s not exactly Oscar material, but it’s reasonably entertaining monster movie mayhem that will prove to be fun.

Dinocroc Vs. Supergator takes us out to an island in the middle of nowhere, where a biotech firm is putting together the finishing touches on its newest creations, the titular Dinocroc and Supergator. And when Dinocroc escapes the lab, heading for populated areas, the firm figures the only way it’s going to stop the inbound menace that’s about to subject them to a whole load of personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits is to release Supergator to hunt and kill the menace down. Nothing like making a bad situation worse, huh? Now it’s down to a handful of folks–a Cajun hunter, a Fish and Game representative, and an undercover investigator to try and halt both of the massive monsters before it’s too late.

Interestingly, much of the SyFy monster movie lineup in previous releases has not proven to be as godawful as its titling and special effects would suggest. And it’s certainly helped that this is one of the last movies to feature David Carradine–that sweet shout-out to the great classics certainly can’t hurt.

Sure, this is another low budget monster movie romp, heavy on the CG monstrosities, but it’s still worth watching, especially if you’re big on the monster movie subgenre. There isn’t much here that’s straining the disbelief too hard–one big crocodile, one big alligator, getting briefly out of control and lunching up some folks before a brawl–and the scenery is absolutely beautiful. It’s really pretty worthwhile stuff, and great for a friendly get together as long as you don’t mind chucking a little popcorn at the screen or engaging in mockery in the grandest Mystery Science Theater style.

And no, I’m not going to spoiler for you, but let’s just say that there will be an actual, clear winner in the titular fight. Dinocroc or Supergator WILL have a clear winner…if not necessarily for very long. I know, that’s a downright tease, but the end result will be surprisingly satisfying.

It may be low budget, it may be less than perfect, but with results like these, it’s still decent stuff. And the Screenhead Ten Scale offers up the normal score for decent fare, a seven out of ten, making it well worth watching if you like this sort of thing.

The universe is about to get a little smaller with the final season of Stargate Universe, and you’ll likely enjoy the ride, even if you may not like where it ends up. The folks out at Fox sent over a copy of the five-disc set of Stargate: Universe, and this is going to be a big one.

Stargate: Universe takes us out to the Destiny, a massive ship that’s built with on-board Stargates. Several ships were sent out ahead of it, to seed several worlds with Stargates ahead of its arrival, thus allowing the ship to freely move from point to point via Stargate travel. And now, it’s just been seized by the show’s main baddies, the Lucian Alliance. Now, with the ship being evacuated in rapid fashion, and its human crew now looking for a way to get home, they’ll have to pull together and find a way to survive.

The interesting thing about Stargate: Universe The Complete Final Season is that it’s geared for both longtime Stargate fans as well as those who may not have any more background than the movie. And it does do a pretty passable job of putting up a science fiction epic, though it’s not hard to see why people were comparing this–and often unfavorably, to boot–to the newest installments of Battlestar Galactica. After all, on the surface, it’s pretty similar. Big ship flying around, humans who just want to get home, and so on.

They’ll do a little hopping around here, timestream-wise, with a few flashbacks tossed into the mix, and plenty of action, too. The plot is a little on the garbled side, but it’s still got a lot of exciting elements to it, and that’s better than a lot of shows will provide, especially lately.

The down side here, though, is the ending. Frankly, the ending is catastrophic. It’s a cliffhanger, and worse yet, a guaranteed (at this point) unresolved cliffhanger, so watching this will be an exercise in futility as it will not end.

Still though, it’s entertaining by itself, better in some spots than in others, but that’s how it will always be with any television series box set. And if you don’t mind a whole lot ambiguity in your endings, then you’ll be just fine.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Stargate Universe a seven out of ten for doing the best it could with what it had to work with. It’s not the best end to a long running franchise like Stargate, but, well, it tried. So it won’t be the best, but it will be worth the watch.

Very happy to be bringing this one out to you today, folks, as the crew out at History Channel sent out a copy of Swamp People Season One for me to review for you, and this is actually one of my new favorite shows. Actually, it’s one of the only reasons I keep cable around these days, and I think you’re going to like it too.

Swamp People takes us down to the bayous of Louisiana for a look at what may well be a deadlier catch than anything on Discovery Channel, as a group of bayou locals engage in alligator hunting, a practice that’s essentially a single-combat sort of activity in which gators are baited with stationary hooks, and then subsequently shot in the head. This isn’t easy, as Swamp People likes to breathlessly regale you with stories of how a gator bite can remove limbs, and the tail is roughly as powerful as your average chainsaw. So can these bold gator hunters get their limit, or will the swamp get the limit of them?

Not only will you learn a whole lot about alligators, gator hunting, and Louisiana bayou culture in general (and speaking as someone who has eaten alligator sausage, it’s fine stuff), but you will also get plenty of action and even a few good laughs in this. It’s hard to believe there’s so many different things to like in a package like Swamp People, but that’s part of the charm of the History Channel. And if you’re wondering why this is part of the History Channel, it’s because, as the text crawl before every episode loves to announce, this particular way of life is better than three hundred years old.

It’s got just about everything for just about everybody. There’s some incredible scenery, gator fights, races against time and the weather, and some good old fashioned laughs just to round out the package. It’s hard to not enjoy something about this show, and Swamp People Season One will give you nearly seven hours’ worth of this fine piece of work.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Swamp People Season One a full ten out of ten. There’s entirely too much to enjoy here, and watching it all at once like this is terrific fun. Crab hunting might be the deadliest catch, but I’ve never seen a crab that can take limbs off a human being, and that’s just what the History Channel will bring our way.

We’ve got a big treat for you today, folks, as the crew out at new contact HBO sent us out an advance copy of True Blood: The Complete Third Season for us to review, and I’ll tell you this: if you can’t get enough vampires, Louisiana, or Sookie Stackhouse, then you’re absolutely going to love this when it hits shelves May 31st.

True Blood: The Complete Third Season takes us back down to the bayou for more fun with vampires. But this time, we’re not going to be so focused on Sookie and Bill, but rather a much broader picture of things, as the vamp-blood trade gets more involved, the King of Mississippi make his appearance, werewolves get into the picture, the supernaturals are a little less involved, and we’ll finally find out just who it is that Sookie Stackhouse is sharing genes with. So if you’re a True Blood fan, it’s going to be a big season for you.

And even if you’ve already seen it, well, that’s all the more reason for you to have it all in one place.

Assuming you haven’t seen True Blood yet, well, this is not the place you’ll want to start. You’re going to be abjectly lost by the end of things if you don’t have a good idea of what’s going on going in. But, if you have at least some idea of what’s going on, you’re going to have a grand old time here, make no mistake about that.

But be forewarned, this is an HBO series, which means a lot of the traditional defenses you might expect from a television series. There will be nudity in both directions, profanities of every description, and lots and lots of blood.

And if you can get around the…enhanced…content, you’ll get a surprisingly deep, surprisingly involved vampire story that runs the gamut from romance to action to even a bit of comedy, and that makes this one something really impressive and downright fun to watch. It really blew my mind, because I’ve never been much of a one for vampire stories. And yet, this one is actually pretty good, despite the fact that it’s absolutely thick with Ventrue-style vampires that normally irk me. Maybe it’s the environment, maybe it’s the comedy thrown in, but either way, I like True Blood.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, gives True Blood: The Complete Third Season an eight out of ten. It’s fine stuff, though you’ll have to have some love for the horror genre to really get anywhere with it, and you’ll need to start from the beginning to get the most out of it, but still, for those willing to take the ride, you’ll find a very welcome treat in this package.