Route 66: The Complete Series

College boy Tod (Martin Milner) gets behind the wheel of his Corvette convertible, while streetwise lady-killer Buz (George Maharis)—a pragmatist with a chip on his shoulder—rides shotgun in the original TV road show. Created by writer Stirling Silliphant and producer Herbert B. Leonard, Route 66 was kind of a Playhouse 90 on the highway, with Tod and Buz traveling the nation looking for work and routinely finding themselves smack in the middle of dramas everywhere they turned. Each episode opens against the landscape of their new location, backed with Nelson Riddle's jazzy theme song. Maharis left the show in the middle of the third season, and Glenn Corbett stepped into the passenger's seat as Linc Case, a Vietnam vet struggling to find his place in the civilian world. Silliphant wrote most of the stories, brimming with troubled characters and volatile relationships, and the show attracted an impressive roll call of guest stars, including Lee Marvin, Walter Matthau, Joan Crawford, Robert Duvall, James Caan, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, and William Shatner. In the lighthearted “Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing,” Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Lon Chaney Jr. play themselves. Compiling all 116 episodes from 1960–64, extras include a 1990 panel discussion with cast members and production staff, and a documentary on the Corvette. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)