Upcoming Spy DVDs: It Takes A Thief

It's been rumored for almost a year now, and now that rumor is finally taking shape.  A vague shape, but shape nonetheless!  It Takes a Thief, one of the few great Sixties spy series that remains elusive on DVD, will finally come out on that format next February, and now we know the studio who will be releasing it: eOne Entertainment (formerly E1 Entertainment).  This news comes courtesy of TV Shows On DVD (who else?), who back it up with photographic evidence sent in by a reader showing a tiny advertisement for the title included in eOne's upcoming release of Ellery Queen.  E1 was the company responsible for the Region 1 release of the ITC series The Baron. The bad news there is that that release created a lot of fan ire about the video jumping in a number of episodes and one episode with the audio out of sync.  Personally, that didn't affect me too much. I may not have watched that particular episode on E1's set (because I also have Umbrella's Region 4 version), but I did watch a number of them in Region 1 and wasn't particularly bothered. And as frustrating as it is, I'm used to audio sync issues with ITC shows thanks to A&E's Persuaders DVDs.  The good news is that E1 actually went to the trouble of porting over the audio commentaries and episode introductions from Umbrella's R4 set, something other American companies have generally neglected to do with ITC releases.  Plus, the packaging was pretty nifty.  They seem to care about their content, so hopefully we'll see some special features on It Takes a Thief (which would be highly doubtful were it just released by the studio rather than licensed out).  And hopefully the technical issues on The Baron are a lesson learned, and we won't encounter those in the company's new eOne incarnation.

It Takes a Thief starred Robert Wagner as a cat burglar named Al Mundy who's forced to use his skills for Uncle Sam's spy organization. Fred Astaire sometimes played his dad, and Peter Sellers guest-starred on one episode in dual roles. This is a major spy release on the horizons, so mark your calanders for February, 2011! Now if someone would just announce The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., T.H.E. Cat and Amos Burke, Secret Agent...