calvinnme ... because that is the only season available on DVD, and I never saw it in syndication on TV. E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed star as a father and son team of defense lawyers. I can just imagine the stink that this might have made when it first came on the air 56 years ago. For example, episode one deals with a doctor performing a mercy killing in the case of a newborn mongoloid child before there was any capability to know anything about the child one was carrying until it was born. The show also tackles rape, temporary insanity, and the death penalty among other issues. But not every episode is "ripped from the headlines" before newspapers would ever even print this material. There are quite a few basic "whodunnits" and some humorous episodes along the lines of Agatha Christie such as "Gideon's Follies" when a rich man with half a dozen ex-wives - who are all best friends - is murdered.There is a love interest for Robert Reed's character in the first episode, but then she disappears, only to reappear sporadically in a few other episodes and then she is only mentioned in a few episodes later in the season. Maybe the writers wanted to concentrate on the legal issues feeling that they had their hands full just with that. Among the future famous actors that have notable guest appearances are Jack Klugman, Gene Hackman, Hugh Herbert, Martin Sheen, and William Shatner. But not in every case is this true. In one episode near the end of the season Gene Wilder appears as a waiter at a reunion in a hotel. I was very disappointed when all he did was serve the butter and leave.Also, right out of the gate, the two main characters have their personas down, and the writing is just superb. Not a wasted or boring minute in any of the episodes I've seen. I'd highly recommend purchasing the first season if you can. It is truly classic television at its dramatic best.

ambmar This socially relevant TV series was and still is excellent! Recently, DVDs of the first season of 32 episodes have been released and I purchased a copy. I'll comment on two of them.The episode, "The Attack," examined the case of a police officer who killed a teenage boy he thought had molested his five-year old daughter. During his trial for murder, he learns that a different boy had just confessed to the crime against his daughter. It is a hard-hitting episode. Martin Sheen was in the cast. I read in an article that Sheen gave this episode credit for getting his Screen Actors Guild membership card in order to act in it, which began his career.Another episode, "The Last Six Months," has the most devastatingly effective teaser opening that I have seen. A man named Fred Braden is told by his doctor that he only has a few months to live. In the six-minute opening, the viewer sees his plight from the viewpoint of the stricken man himself at the time he becomes enraged and strangles his business partner. It is a powerful and heartbreaking episode. Braden was a conscientious objector who had served in the medical core instead during the Second World War due to his abhorrence to killing.I hope the release of the first season delights other fans of The Defenders and possibly new fans as well, because the acting and scripts are timeless! Perhaps it may serve as a harbinger toward release of the other three seasons.

sam-468-676831 before this show came out, Television was meant to be pure escapism meaning that like movies,people who watched TV often times watched it to escape from all the turbulent and sometimes horrendous things that happened in that 60's. So because of that, Most network & daytime TV shows often avoided current social issues of the day, making them seem very unrealistic. And then the Defenders came along.Now, back in the 60's if you decided to make a show that focused on contemporary controversial social issues, you would risk getting your show cancelled because most big corporations would be uncomfortable sponsoring a show that did that, and that's exactly what the Defenders did. They were the first show that was brave enough to focus on such controversial social issues of the 60's such as civil rights,abortion neo-natzis and they almost got cancelled because of it. there was one episode where the father-son lawyer team of Lawrence and Kenneth Preston (E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed) had to a defend an abortionist, and almost every regular sponsor of the show, decided not to sponsor the episode and all of the sudden, the series was hanging by a thread, until one sponsor came in at the eleventh hour to sponsor the episode, and they saved the show from cancellation singled handed. the bottom line is that this show was incredibly groundbreaking because if was one of the first TV shows to deal with contemporary controversial social issues, something no other show before or on on at the same time did, making it one of the most realistic shows of it's time. it also paved the way for socially conscious shows that came after it. Now what I really don't understand is that the show's not on DVD and it hasn't been seen in reruns in 20 years. But regardless, the show needs to be on DVD or in syndication, and it definitely can't be forgotten by the next generation of TV watchers.

Adelbert Taccone The "Golden Age of Television"-- the era of live dramas about topical events-- officially ended in 1961, when PLAYHOUSE 90 went off the air and director John Frankenheimer left for Hollywood. By that time, almost all its great writers-- Paddy Chayefsky, Gore Vidal, Horton Foote, Tad Mosel, Robert Alan Aurthur, Arnold Schulman, J.P. Miller, Frank Gilroy, Abby Mann, Leslie Stevens, Paul Monash and William Gibson-- had left television for Broadway, books or Hollywood.Writing for TV was an exhausting, infuriating occupation. Getting any meaningful idea from page to screen required endless fights with sponsors and censors. Rod Serling, who submitted a script based on the lynching of Emmitt Till, a 14-year old black in Mississippi, saw his victim transformed into an immigrant in New England. The sponsor even forbade residents to be seen drinking Coca-Cola, out of concern that it might suggest the South-- and racists might protest. Two writers had the courage to remain in TV. Serling created THE TWILIGHT ZONE, so he could use allegory and allusion to disguise social comment (nobody protested scripts where Martians were lynched, he cracked).Reginald Rose, who wrote "12 Angry Men" and "Thunder on Sycamore Street" simply challenged the industry head-on. THE DEFENDERS was based on his two-part STUDIO ONE script, where a father-son team of lawyers (Ralph Bellamy and William Shatner) defends a 19-year-old (Steve McQueen) charged with murder that he insists he did not commit.In the series, E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed played defense attorneys committed to making sure every defendant gets his rights under the law. Marshall's Lawrence Preston is very like his "Juror 4"-- careful, logical and impossible to move with appeals to emotion. Reed's Kenneth has a social conscience and burning desire to see what he considers justice done, even if it violates the letter of the law. (Some of the most effective scenes occur when two actors argue their convictions to each other.)A shorthand description of an episode for contemporary audiences would be "Keith Olbermann's Law and Order". Every one of the 132 shows argued legal issues that are still hot-buttons today. Remember: in 1961, abortion and birth control were illegal. Segregation wasn't. The US was fighting in Vietnam. Falsely-accused Communists were still blacklisted.But the Prestons defended a neo-nazi arrested for inciting the crowd to beat a protester. They defended a Dr. Kevorkian, civil rights demonstrators, abortionists, immigrants without citizenship, draft- dodgers, pornographers, atheists and road rage murderers. (The only thing I don't remember seeing was a homosexual.) As I remember, the Prestons lost more cases than they won. But they made sure everyone got his or her day in court and a full and fair hearing.THE WIRE, DEADWOOD, MAD MEN, OZ, BREAKING BAD and THE SOPRANOS are all good shows. Put in the context of their eras, not one compares to what THE DEFENDERS achieved. It still has the power to enrage. Wingnuts I've sent to YouTube to watch it die of apoplexy when they hear unapologetic advocating for civil liberties (even though their side gets equal time).THE DEFENDERS was a top-30 show when there were only three channels. It won 13 Emmies-- Best Drama three times, Marshall for Best Actor twice, four for best writing, three for best direction. The shows still hold up well. They're talky, some of their dramatic conventions, psychology and sociology has dated. But the ideas are timeless, the writing is stellar and the acting and directing is often stunning. There's a reason both MAD MEN and BOSTON LEGAL paid tribute to THE DEFENDERS in an episode. It's an outrage that a full run of this groundbreaking show isn't available on DVD-- while that execrable impostor starring Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell already is.