What do you do when you release the first collection box set of a classic Australian TV series and the launch goes extremely well?
You release the next instalment!
Welcome to another chapter of Sons And Daughters – the TV soap that ran on Channel 7 from 1982 to 1987 and scored a handful of Logie Awards for one of its popular stars Rowena Wallace, aka Pat The Rat.
In 1983, Season Two of Sons And Daughters hit the ground running as it won the most amount of Logies, such as ‘Most Popular Lead Actress in a Series’ (Wallace), ‘Most Popular New Talent’ (Stephen Comey), and ‘Most Popular Drama Series’.
The Sons And Daughters Collection Two box set released by Via Vision Entertainment contains episodes 175 to 352 – covering all of Season Two. It picks up directly where Collection One left everyone on one hell of a cliffhanger. Season Two covers themes like drug addiction, depression, sexual assault, suicide, long-lost family members, love triangles, fires, and also dragging a new family into the turmoil – the Morrells. It’s pretty heavy stuff – all while Pat The Rat still reigns terror into the Hamilton and Palmer families.
The Collection Two release contains all 178 episodes across 26 DVDs. The visuals have not strayed far away from Collection One, so expect the same layout and display throughout. The brown and yellow menus have returned, so you can dive straight into your viewing with no mess or fuss. Each DVD casing has a quick liner to say which episode numbers are contained within, but an episode guide is not included.
Like Season One / Collection One, the episodes were transferred directly from the nearly 40 year old master tapes. There are disclaimers at the beginning of a couple of episodes where there has been inferior quality deterioration, and have been replaced with 3rd party resources to complete the storytelling.
Here are the DVD details:
Four Cases total
Case One – Part One – 6 DVDs
- Episodes 175 to 214
Case Two – Part Two – 6 DVDs
- Episodes 215 to 256
Case Three – Part Three – 6 DVDs
- Episodes 257 to 298
Case Four – Part Four – 8 DVDs
- Episodes 299 to 352
We haven’t checked out every single episode yet, but we’ve noticed Episodes 176, 180, 202, 206 have a quality warning message.
Sifting through those episodes, there’s not much difference in quality – unless you’re a perfectionist. It could either be an off-site recording or a snippet of a VHS copy. Two examples we’ve noticed are one where it’s come directly off a TV broadcast re-screening in the last couple of years due to a watermark:
and some washed VHS tape.
The box set is promoted as Region 4, but if you have a region-free player, you can get away with murder. Presented in its original 4:3 aspect ratio and glorious 2.0 mono sound, the watching experience is comforting with the warm brown-esque tones of the time. Unfortunately there are no subtitles, and the audio is in English only. The full runtime of the box set is approximately 69 hours and 31 minutes.
Again, the tapes have held up quite well, so you’ll enjoy the continuation of the series that made Pat The Rat a household name.
Should you get it? YES! This is a golden nugget of classic Australian TV that was ‘water cooler talk’ for all of the early 1980s. But be careful – Pat the Rat will frustrate you so much, you might throw stuff at your TV.
Sons And Daughters – Collection Two stars Rowena Wallace, Brain Blain, Pat McDonald, Cornelia Frances, Anne Haddy, Ally Fowler, Ian Rawlings, Leila Hayes, Tom Richards, Peter Phelps, Antonia Murphy, Ilona Rodgers and Brett Climo.
Available through Via Vision, JB Hi-Fi, and other good retailers.
This boxset was supplied to us from Via Vision for review.
1 comment
Sorry: but i think the transfers, even without warnings are terrible frankly!!
Somebody on youtube 7 yrs sgo uploaded pristine transfers in Stereo!! Me and my other half watched those over 2017-2018, i wish i could remember the channel name but they were superb! these by viavision are quite haphazard terrible bleached out over bright blurry noisey inconsistent, the picture “quality” here is an absolute let down!! No way did they use masters, i’ve seen what they really could release, my other and i said 7 yrs ago that it must have been some one involved in tv who uploaded what we saw to yt there would be 3000 or so others who witnessed this because the comments people made were mostly about the picture quality and stereo sound.
I’m miffed that i spent what i have buying this drossy release, no matter what any body says the picture quality is Shocking on this release, no two eps have the same contrast brightness ratios, there is loud audio hums and high hiss’s on many eps that did’nt appear on any other broadcast i’ve ever seen, the quality looks to us in the uk, like all of them are off air copys?, theres a blurry grainey effect on viavisions dvd that i never saw on uk broadcasts, the youtube ones we saw 7 yrs ago for a 2 inch quadraplex taped video show, those yt ones looked like first broadcast transfers, no blur grain noise equal contrast ratios balanced colouretc, and the opening pilot was epsodes that were in 3 seperate 22 minute format crystal clear and in stereo episodes just like the uk regional broadcasts, i can’t believe just how bad the pilot on this viavision dvd looks, its dreadfull, compared with the yt ones i saw. At the time i asked the uploader where they got those copies from?, they never replied funnily enough, shortly after me and around 3000 other viewers watched those over that yr they were up, they took them off abruptly in 2018 november time,, so if viavision could trace the uploader of those via yt you’d see what we saw.
A very dissapointing, very hard to watch dvd this is because just how bleached out these look, however the later ones are quite a bit better the 1985-87 ones are bearably clearer with one or two issues but collection 1-4 is just generally awful muddled quality.
The show is so good with brilliant gifted actors for the most part, to have been trahsferred in such a shoddy hapshot release, it would have been kinder to not release these until better sources were sourced? viavision are notoriously lazy and venal that way.
Sorry but it’s honestly a crap release.