Search: The Complete Series

This only lasted one season which is a pity, but i remembered it and wasn't disappointed all these years later.

A Old but interesting series

This was my favourite TV series in the early seventies. Clean-cut heroic investigators travel the world searching for people or treasure, aided by a 'mission control' support group back at base through a tiny camera-sensor gadget mounted on a tie-pin. A bit of sci-fi, a bit of detective, a wash of glamour, generally good-natured & with a touch of humour. The assorted lead characters ensure variety of approach, while the irrepressible Burgess Meredith is the lynchpin back at control. Just right for taking an hour out & chilling.

Search was a American spy series made in 1972. Featuring three different actors every week. starring Hugh O'Brien. Tony Franciosa and Doug Mc Clure all working for world securities who would send them out on their missions to investigate. aided by Burgess Meredith who was the director of operations who would be able to monitor them with special devices that they would have such as a camera concealed in a ring. There is 23 episode's in this dvd import box set that will play on region 2 players. PQ is ok 1.33.1.

I had completely forgotten this gem from the 1970's. A ramped up James Bond style series starring three different agents or 'Probes' of World Securities using personal hi-tech gadgets directed by a team of mission monitors back at base directed by it's lead controller played by the wonderful Burgess Meredith. Some of the tech was science fiction then but you may not think so now! If you want enjoyable action adventure entertainment then you can't go wrong with this. Pity it only lasted one season!

As I noted in my review of the pilot for this series "Probe", I was a big fan of this show back when I was a young teen in the 70s. I must confess that watching it now it seems almost quaint; but it was very cool to a boy in the 1970s and seemed very high tech and futuristic at the time. Some of the plots are almost laughable now; and while many will disagree, much of the acting leaves a bit to be desired and seems at times, to be unintentionally comical. That said it's good fun, and it does take one back to a different time. One thing I really do like is seeing footage of older airliners landing and taking off (when's the last time you saw a Boeing 707 on the tarmac at any airport) and the 70s-era cars are quite cool as well. The set runs well and looks great given the era, so the digital transition worked well. Sometimes it's fun to remember how things were a very long time ago; and think back on a simpler time -- this series then can either be looked at in context; or judged by today's standards and shrugged off; but that's up to the beholder so, if you enjoy older television programs and perhaps remember the show yourself, then you will likely enjoy this; if you don't; then you don't! I do and I did!

字幕がなくても十分楽しめます。

The above words are from a preseason TV Guide article about "Search" -- and they were right. "Search" was one of the slickest, most sophisticated entertainment series ever. In a 1970s phosphor-dot universe full of elite detectives and spies, the operatives of PROBE were above and beyond all the others.Each detective, called a Probe, was equipped with a minuscule camera/telemetry transmitter, a dental implant for surreptitious communication, and a subcutaneous ear jack, all of which kept them connected with the computer analysts at PROBE Control. The operatives were handsome, they were smooth, and they always cracked the case and ended up with the girl. These were old-fashioned, fast-paced adventures, full of complicated criminal schemes, heroics, wisecracks and beautiful women. And for four decades only the rarely-aired pilot and some grainy uploads from an Australian TV network have been available. Now these highly entertaining episodes are FINALLY available on DVD. Thank you, Warner Archive, thank you!So how did Warner do?The packaging:This six DVD set comes in an adequate plastic storage box with spoked hubs. The box's front illustration is a little bit unimaginative. It's nice, but looks like somebody threw it together in about twenty minutes. More on that later. The box also comes with no outer or liner listing of the episodes.The DVDs:The DVDs themselves have nice printing, but are labeled "Disc one", "Disc two", etc. With no episode titles on either the box or the DVDs themselves, the only way to tell which episodes are on which DVDs is by loading them into your player and looking at the menu. Bad design, but nothing that you can't solve by looking up the info on the internet, printing it out and sticking it in the box. (I've included an episode list at the end of my review, along with the name of the PROBE agent who is featured in each show.)The DVD menus themselves are lackluster. The title "SEARCH" looks rather ragged (same as the outer box), and PROBE's twin-globe logo is pretty fuzzy. Even a moderately talented graphic artist who knows Photoshop (see me raising my hand?) could have cleaned that up and perhaps even come up with something snazzier.The DVDs lack sub-menus that take you to individual acts of each episode. It's not a big problem. They do have chapter marks in each episode, all set at the beginning of each act, and that's the next best thing.These DVDs are burned on demand, not pressed, and the packaging warns -- in very tiny type -- that they are designed to play only on DVD PLAYERS, not recorders and not computers. I managed to play them on my Magnavox DVD recorder/player, but was unable to run them on my iMac. (Update 5/1/20: they DO run on an external DVD drive I later bought for my iMac.) The disks are also Region 0, so they should theoretically play on any DVD player anywhere in the world.Thus far I've had two problems during playback. The episodes "Moonrock" and "Let Us Prey" stuck in a couple of places, for just a few seconds. It's very possible this is a result of Warner squeezing too many episodes onto each disk. It might have been better to go with an eight disk set with three episodes each. (Update 5/1/20: I’ve since acquired a Blu-Ray player, and the same DVDs play fine on it.)(Update 5/1/20: I removed a paragraph on a momentarily “stutter” in the opening credits of the first episode. I noticed later that another part of the same credits sequence diverges from the rest of the series. Obviously this is not a DVD problem but the way the original episode was designed.)The episodes:The play's the thing, and these 23 episodes shine! Colors are good in general. The odd individual shot can be muddy, less sharp with a bluish color which is very unlike the rest of the scenes, suggesting that the original 35mm prints may have been damaged at those points and Warner utilized a less-than-ideal substitute. On the other hand, tints become beautiful during scenes set inside PROBE Control, and the graphics-heavy opening credits are absolutely GORGEOUS, with clean, vivid hues. With the exception of the few bluish shots I mentioned, these film transfers are so breathtakingly sharp and clear they are almost HD quality -- quite remarkable for a show that hasn't seen the light of day in four decades!Sound is good. These DVDs do not come with closed captioning, either on the DVDs themselves or in the TV vertical interval. This is usually a big no-no for me, since I (like a lot of other people my age) am getting hard of hearing. Yet the dialogue is clear. I've noticed this phenomenon on "The Avengers" DVDs too, probably attributable to the fact that these were monaural soundtracks working within a relatively limited audio bandwidth; it's one of the few times that NOT having a rich 20-20,000 Hz 5.1 audio range can work to your advantage.If you want to be picky, that limited range does give Dominic Frontiere's versatile score a little bit of a tinny sound. But his music is so sumptuous, so perfect for the show, that it's hard to complain.Seeing these shows for the first time since I was a teenager, I'd forgotten how tightly-edited they are. In terms of story, photography and technique, they hold up very well today. The only thing that looks hopelessly passé is the use of women as rewards...but that was that era, and today is vastly different.Going through the episodes it's fun to play Spot-the-Guest-Star, what with all the `60s and `70s TV luminaries who appeared in the show. Even "M*A*S*H"'s resident idiot, played by Larry Linville, shows up in one episode in a very non-Frank Burns role as a Treasury Department official.One thing I hadn't remembered was the extensive use of locations. "Search" must have been an expensive show to produce for the time, not just because of PROBE Control, but because an individual storyline could take a PROBE to as many as five or six different locations around the world. That's a lot of use of the (pretty convincing) Warner Brothers backlot sets and local wilderness areas. Matched up with stock film depictions of London, Paris, the Middle East and other places, they gave "Search" a globe-trotting flavor. Some of the more ambitious episodes play almost like little travelogues.Fans will notice a change in the show at mid-season. PROBE Control was moved out its dimly-lit NASA-like control center into a better-lit, bunker-like setting. The reason is anybody's guess, but even more unfortunate were the decisions to de-emphasize PROBE Control and to spin considerably grimmer story lines. This sort of thing has happened with a number of other series ("Switch" is a great example), but moving away from the very concepts that made the show fresh and charming in the first place has pretty much never worked, and it doesn't work here. "Search" remained interesting to the end, but unfortunately the latter half of the series lost some of its mojo.Incidentally, somebody mentioned that it was nice that Warner included the "Search" bumpers. If they mean the red-and-blue globe motif that begins and ends each act, frankly I don't see how they could have possibly cut them off. They are similar to those little sketches that ended each act of "The Wild Wild West" -- they're part of the show. I do recall that "Search" had a pair of roughly six-second bumpers that bracketed the local station ID at the half-hour mark. Those are not included on these DVDs.Conclusion:All in all, with the few caveats I mentioned, "Search" fans will adore this release. It takes you back to a time when TV could still be light-hearted, clever and adventurous. And while the gadgets of PROBE Control are gradually becoming reality in our modern day world, the "cool" factor still runs strong in these stylish, imaginative episodes. They're a welcome throwback to an era when TV was still fun.EPISODE GUIDEDisk 1:The Murrow Disappearance (Lockwood)One of Our Probes Is Missing (Bianco)Short Circuit (Grover)Moonrock (Lockwood)Disk 2:Live Men Tell Tales (Bianco)Operation Iceman (Bianco)The Bullet (Lockwood)In Search of Midas (Grover)Disk 3:The Adonis File (Lockwood)Flight to Nowhere (Lockwood)The Gold Machine (Lockwood)Let Us Prey (Bianco)Disk 4:A Honeymoon to Kill (Grover)The 24 Carat Hit (Bianco)Numbered for Death (Grover)Countdown to Panic (Lockwood)Disk 5:The Clayton Lewis Document (Bianco)Goddess of Destruction (Grover)The Mattson Papers (Bianco)Moment of Madness (Grover)Disk 6:Ends of the Earth (Bianco)Suffer My Child (Lockwood)The Packagers (Grover)

Awesome to see this show again, I haven’t seen it since it was on TV in 1977. It’s not as good as I thought it was when I was younger though, oh well.

A couple of years ago I reviewed the 90 minute 1972 pilot episode for the series ‘Search’ called ‘PROBE’ where Hugh Lockwood, an investigator for World Securities, is telemetrically linked up to his headquarters by a neural earjack and tooth beeper and carried a tiny sophisticated TV scanner on a medallion, tie-pin or ring to relay information and be told things as he sought out a missing jewel collection. We’ve seen such technology, well, miniature cameras anyway, in shows in recent years but this was from 1972 and in those days was still regarded as Science Fiction far beyond what we could do today. This pilot used to appear on TV from time to time in the UK, the last time back in the 1980s. A ‘Search’ chat group I belong finally convinced Warner Bros to include it in the special archive release, helped a little by people there who remembered seeing it themselves when young. ‘PROBE’ had charm, humour, good casting and an intelligent plot combined with probably the best theme music ever by Dominic Frontiere. You can find a copy of the music on UTube if you need convincing. It turns out that we weren’t the only ones who remembered the show because it became a massive seller for Warner’s and convinced them to release the 23 episode series ‘Search’ that followed. If those of you in the UK remember it being called ‘Search Control’, the name change here was because there was a documentary series out around the same time so it couldn’t be called that. Said name is still used on IMDb, although I suspect that has more to do with the problem with just putting the word “Search” into search engines. As a series, ‘Search’ used the format of ‘The Name Of The Game’ (another series Leslie Stevens formatted) of having three rotating leads because actor Hugh O’Brian, having back problems, didn’t want to do a weekly recording turnover. In many respects, this was a healthy move for the show. I mean why would any organisation have a single investigator succeed at everything. This way, you got the feel of a working organisation doing their job. So, next to PROBE One, Hugh Lockwood, there was also Omega PROBE Nick Bianco (actor Tony Franciosa) who dealt with more police like-cases and stand-by PROBE C.R. Grover (actor Doug McClure), not exactly an apprentice but still finding his feet with his boss. Throughout all of this, the team back at PROBE Control is led by V.C.R. Cameron (actor Burgess Meredith). For those with keen eyes, Griffin is played by Albert Popwell, who amongst who claims to fame was in ‘Dirty Harry’ as the first person who nearly made Harry Callahan’s day and was consequently in each of the film series in different parts. Angel Tompkins as Gloria Harding also reprised her role chiefly with the Lockwood stories. The title of the show might be a giveaway as to the content. PROBEs (the initials standing for Programmed Retrieval Operations with the ‘BE’ being top secret as stated in the pilot ‘PROBE’) are there to find things or missing people using hi-tech to get things done. Its panache made it stand out because it brought an edge of comedy to the proceedings to balance the bite it occasionally had. Uniquely, I haven’t seen any of the plots used like it since. The closest relative to ‘Ends Of The Earth’ is ITV ‘The Avengers’ story ‘Bizarre’ and even that is superficial elements. The MO of telemetric communication to headquarters was one of a kind which meant it couldn’t be written like any other show. Anyone could ring their bosses but to have constant communication and relay live action by satellite, that as new and why it held an attraction to those of us who watched back in the 70s. It’s only in recent years we discovered that Hugh O’Brian and Tony Franciosa thought that the telemetrics gave them too much of an edge and hadn’t realised the significance of the show for doing just that. ‘Search’ really had its own style. I mean with ‘Moonrock’ with Lockwood in pursuit of a stolen giant diamond and no other aeroplane available, charters a 747 on his credit card with Cameron authorising the funds from his end. Even the prospect of the PROBEs getting the woman at the end was turned on its head with Cameron getting the odd date instead. Everything was up for grabs and not always predictable. The cast list was a who’s who of good actors at the time including Jeff Corey, Stefanie Powers, Bill Bixby and Barbara Feldon. Picking out favourite stories is difficult, especially as I don’t want to give away too much about the endings. For Lockwood, it has to be ‘Moonrock’, ‘The Gold Machine’,’The Bullet’, ‘Suffer My Child’, ‘The Adonis File’ and ‘Flight To Nowhere’ (this one for the stunt double jumping over the edge of a building and smashing through a window). For Bianco, ‘Operation Iceman’ and ‘Let Us Prey’. For Grover, ‘Short Circuit’ and ‘The Packagers’. ‘Moment Of Madness’ put Burgess Meredith onto the centre stage with a marvellous performance. I hate picking favourites but those were exceptional. Why has the series been hidden in the vaults so long? Creator Leslie Stevens (who alsos formulated ‘The Outer Limits’), having gotten ‘Search’ started and contributed a few scripts was also in the process of creating a different series for another studio which royally pissed off the Warner Bros executives at the time. So much so, he was effectively booted off his own show and certain changes were made to PROBE Control, with fewer people there and done in a white and brightly lit set compared to the darkness of the earlier episodes. At least that way you can tell the difference with the changes. It also had a repercussions for actress Angel Tompkins who had been promised full pay for when she had more involvement in stories than the equivalent day’s wages for working in Control and was fired and blacklisted by Warner’s for ten years after having to fight for her wages in ‘The Gold Machine’. The wrath also ensured that the series only had one airing around the world and got hidden away. No longer! That’s all history now and we’ll never know if they could have kept up this unique aspect of the show to a second series. If your DVD player is multi-regional, then ‘Search’ should certainly be on your list to watch. It’s already doing big business in the USA and if you’ve ever wondered what this editor always got inspired by and kept his interest in over 32 years, you might want to take a look. If you already bought ‘PROBE’ then ‘Search’ will be the one series you’ll be wondering how you missed it when young.