Review of Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased): Volume 4

Introduction

Randall (Mike Pratt) is a private eye who used to have a partner (Hopkirk - Kenneth Cope). Now he has a ghostly partner that only he can see. Very useful!
Randall and Hopkirk was unique in the genre in that the main (alive) character was quite plain, didn`t do anything illegal and was mostly down on his luck, nothing glamorous about detective work here. The only intrigue was whether he would get together with his ex-partner`s widow.....

The series was quirkly humorous and was recently revived by Reeves and Mortimer on the 30th anniversary of the original screenings. Their interpretation was somewhat more surreal than the original, which I feel is the better version, despite the clever special effects of the newer version.

As with previous discs, you get four episodes, which is pretty good value for money at around 190 minutes running time!

Video

I was thoroughly impressed, yet again, with the video quality of this disc. Carlton must have a vault of extremely high quality originals knocking about or a very good cleaning process....

The print is extremely clean and the transfer doesn`t suffer any apparent digital artefacts - blacks are nicely black and all colours come across strongly. The picture is a tad washed out but that just makes it look the part ;)

Audio

Dialogue is crisp and clean and the incidental music warbles nicely in the background in typical 1960`s style.

The soundtrack is still mono, but don`t let that put you off as the dialogue is perfectly entertaining - they knew how to write `em in those days....

The DVD menu plays the main titles on an endless loop that`s just a little too short but this is only a valid complaint, if you spend a long time staring at the menu writing reviews ;)
(or popping off to get a cup of tea I guess)

Features

Yet again the offering here is very similar to the offerings from the other Carlton (ITC) releases like Danger Man in that each disc has a few features that gently build up into a nice collection.

As in the previous discs in this collection, there`s a stills gallery that flicks through itself if you go for a coffee.
There`s also a brief memorabilia page with "original memorabilia" which will only interest the serious fan.

The box also features a little booklet that goes into the scripts and locations a little. Pretty good
considering the age of these productions.

Conclusion

I continue to be impressed with these Carlton releases, they are charging sensible prices and putting some quality time and work into cleaning prints and producing some nice little extras - with each series building into a good collection for the fan although I doubt these would really appeal to anyone other than a fan just like most other series out there.

Thoroughly recommended if you are a true fan, just think of all the videos you can chuck away!