Wild Wild West 1 season

I just got for $5.00 I watched whole series on those retro stations
years .. ago I found first season the best because it was darker and gritter.
When it it went to color it went campy..

 

Which season started with color?

 

season 2

 

I just picked up the complete season 1 - 4 box set (I got tired of watching the bad quality of them as seen on MeTV). Great show, I forgot how many notable actors were on as guest stars.

 

Ross Martin was the best...

 

I agree that Season 1 was the best, my dad was a huge western fan having grown up in South Dakota in the 1920's and working on a ranch in the summers. he detested that show

 

One problem with a lot of American shows that went to color in in September 1966, the networks and studios had to cut the budgets because of increased lighting, greater expense for set decoration and costumes, and greater expense for film stock and processing. The film stock needed about 4-5 times as much light; the standard color negative film was Kodak 5251, which was ASA 50, and the B&W film was 5222 (Double-X 200 ASA) or 5224 (4X, 500 ASA). I also think the color shows got a lot grainier for the first few years.

I seem to recall one of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. books said that it cost them about 20% more to shoot in color, so they wound up with fewer big-name guest stars, fewer fancy locations, and fewer extras.

 

I agree he was probably the best part of that show. Before that show he was in Mr. Lucky and was equally good in that roll.

 

And in some cases wound up in the cancellation of shows that would have gone on for another season except the producers or network didn’t want to foot the cost of the color transition for a show that may only have had a year or two of life left (“The Patty Duke Show”, “The Munsters”, etc). “My Three Sons” would have been a victim if this, except CBS rescued it after ABC declined to finance the color transition.

 

I have the entire collection, love that show!
Really wish someone would make a serious hardcore action packed shoot em up movie based on it!

 

A tv series really gritter but with tad of sense humor..
To find the right actors have to be unknowns..

 

What kind of roll was he in? Bagel, Sourdough, Brioche, Ciabatta?

 

jelly

 

But then they were replaced by new shows, in color. Now maybe they saved a bit on actors, but in 1964-65 B&W became no longer economically viable, so the whole movie and TV world is going to color. I don't see how they could just slash actor's salaries and everything else without being outcompeted by those willing to make the investment. Of course I do not work in the business.

 

An eye roll

 

Yeah, Rose Marie of The Dick Van Dyke Show said several times in interviews (somewhat bitterly) that that show could have gone on another 2-3 years in color if they had stuck it out. Unfortunately, the two main stars and Carl Reiner were convinced they would have bigger careers in movies... which turned out not to happen. Season 2 of Wild Wild West was their entry into color, and I did feel at the time like it got a little cheaper and crappier... but hey, it was a fun show and I stuck with it, probably mostly because of Ross Martin's character.

There's a perception among many fans that the script and performance quality of the 1966 American network TV shows diminished with color. Don Knotts left The Andy Griffith Show in 1965 for a film career, but he did so because he was convinced that producer/star Griffith was going to leave. In 1966, the show went to color and it's fair to say it didn't have the charm of previous seasons. Of course, the infamous "Rural Purge" of 1970-1971 cancelled all those shows, so it was kind of a moot point within a few years.

Wild Wild West was a rare show cancelled mainly because the producers felt the whole attraction to the show was the violent fight scenes, and they bristled at having to cut back on those. It's funny to look at a 1969 episode of Wild Wild West and consider that was thought to be excessively violent back then... and then you look at one of today's current TV-MA shows, where actors are getting eyes gouged out, faces plunged into acid, fingers chopped off... it's a tad rougher today. Even network TV has gotten pretty edgy.

 

I always thought it was a shame that TDVDS was not filmed in color. The show was ahead of its time with its sophisticated scripts, and they made a real effort not to include things in the scripts that would date it, like pop cultural references. But unfortunately the monochrome dated it, because TV went to color just as the show ended. It had a healthy run in syndication anyway, but I think that run would have lasted longer had it been in color.

 

never missed an episode back during the original run and I have the DVDs. a great show indeed...

 

This has motivated to buy the dvds. Any reason why the third season is more expensive than the others?

 

Not sure. But when I bought my set of seasons 1-4 the other week it was cheaper to do that instead of buying the individual season sets.

 

There was a good reason why The Dick Van Dyke Show was shot in B&W. CBS paid for the show, and they were very anti-color throughout the first part of the '60s because their arch-rival RCA had won the "compatible color" wars more than a decade earlier. CBS chief William Paley was angry enough about it that he decreed they wouldn't produce or air any color shows, because "all that will do is help RCA sell more TV sets." (CBS did relent and occasionally show color specials, but they wouldn't commit to a regular color TV series.

Lucille Ball realized early on that color TV syndication would eventually become important, so she paid the extra money to shoot The Lucy Show on color film starting in late 1963, even though CBS would only broadcast the show in B&W. Eventually, the shows were syndicated in color, so she won that argument.

Finally, advertiser pressure started stepping up by 1965, and while they grumbled about it, CBS management grudgingly agreed that they were going to have to make the big switch to color... which required all-new TV cameras, new film chains, new VTRs, new monitors, and a lot of other equipment. I believe the Ed Sullivan Show was the first regularly-scheduled CBS color show starting in October 1965, and they scrupulously avoided buying the industry standard RCA color cameras, instead using British Marconi or the Norelco cameras from Holland. By the fall of 1966, Norelcos pretty much became the standard CBS color camera for live shows and variety shows (for the most part), and CBS was forced to shoot all their film dramas and comedies (like Wild Wild West) on color film. ABC couldn't be left behind, so they joined CBS in becoming an "all-color network" in September of 1966.

 

I heard Carl Reiner say in an interview that it would have cost them an extra 8K an episode for color. He regretted not doing it.