Charlie’s Angels: Angels Under Cover (1976)
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Cast: Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Jaclyn Smith
Extras: Featurette, Trailer
Rating:

Just as the new feature film remake of the series is slowly gathering momentum for its theatrical premiere, Columbia TriStar Home Video is releasing two episodes from the original TV series ’Charlie’s Angels’ on DVD. The DVD contains ’To Kill An Angel’ and ’Night Of The Strangler, ’ two episodes from 1976 featuring the original Angels line-up, consisting of Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett-Majors and Jaclyn Smith.

’Charlie’s Angles: Angles Under Cover’ contains both episodes in their original fullscreen format. Given the age of the material it is hardly surprising to see that the films are actually very grainy – something you would have barely noticed during the TV broadcast at the time due to the technical limitations of broadcasting technology in general. The print also contains a few occasional speckles, but fortunately these never become overly noticeable. The color reproduction on the DVD is very faithful, nicely restoring the slightly subdued 70s look of the production. Skin tones are always presented nicely and faithful, creating an overall natural looking quality. Blacks are deep and solid and never lose their definition. The result is an image that looks slightly dated, but is otherwise in good condition. The compression is flawless without any hints of compression artifacts.

You will find an English and a Spanish mono audio track on the DVD, both of which are adequate for this sort of presentation. Audio in TV productions of that period were never overly dynamic and as such, the track on the DVD shows the same slight deficiencies. The frequency response of the audio is very limited without bass and a bit of sibilance, once again clearly giving away the films’ age. On an interesting side note, the main theme music used in the disc’s main menus has been remixed and has a good, wide frequency response and is quite dynamic as well.

Fans of the series will love to get the chance to revisit the original ’Charlie’s Angels’ on this DVD. The DVD is as expected of very good quality and also offers an additional 20-minute featurette and the trailer for the new ’Charlie’s Angels’ movie as bonus. To get in the right mood for the movie, this disc comes highly recommended.