Ironside

[Mr. Mike]

Does anyone have any thoughts on Ironside, show where Raymond Burr (previously Perry Mason) plays a cop in San Francisco who becomes a paraplegic after he is shot.

I started to do the usual anal-ytical WWW site for this show in 2017, but soon abandoned it.

More recently, however, I started to continue working on it again. I actually spent $$ for a domain name!! http://www.ironsidetv.com/

I don't like this show very much, it is full of errors which suggest to me that the show was overwritten and then edited back after it was filmed.

I read somewhere that with Classic Hawaii Five-O, the scripts were typically limited to a number of pages like 60 which would be the equivalent of an hour-long show.

It was major contributing writer Jerome Coopersmith who discussed this on some WWW page.

[Pahonu]

Does anyone have any thoughts on Ironside, show where Raymond Burr (previously Perry Mason) plays a cop in San Francisco who becomes a paraplegic after he is shot.

I started to do the usual anal-ytical WWW site for this show in 2017, but soon abandoned it.

More recently, however, I started to continue working on it again. I actually spent $$ for a domain name!! http://www.ironsidetv.com/

I don't like this show very much, it is full of errors which suggest to me that the show was overwritten and then edited back after it was filmed.

I read somewhere that with Classic Hawaii Five-O, the scripts were typically limited to a number of pages like 60 which would be the equivalent of an hour-long show.

It was major contributing writer Jerome Coopersmith who discussed this on some WWW page.

Hey Mr. Mike,

First I want to thank you for all of the diligent work on your H5-O page. I’ve enjoyed it immensely over the years.

My father used to watch reruns of Ironside in the late 70’s/early 80’s when I was a kid. I would watch with him as we had only one TV. I think the show largely succeeded on Raymond Burr’s performance and his previous success being able to attract excellent guest stars. I have watched just a handful of episodes since then and it doesn’t hold up well for me either. Being a big fan of The Streets of San Francisco, and having been to the city dozens of times, it doesn’t take good advantage of the location either. It still used a blue screen for vehicle shots after it was no longer the norm.

[ZelenskyTheValiant (Ivan)]

Raymond Burr is too much of a sour-puss in this show to really enjoy it. Though I suppose a bullet in your back would do it. But I just always found Burr too boring and too one note. One of the reasons I could never get into PERRY MASON. Compare that show with MATLOCK and it's night-and-day! I can't get enough of Andy Griffith's charm and homespun humor and his courtroom theatrics. He made MATLOCK into a great show! PERRY MASON could just never compete. It lacks an interesting star. Burr is just dull.

And I agree about IRONSIDE looking too stage-bound/set-bound (of what little I've seen of the show). They'll show you an establishing shot of San Fran and then cut to a street which is clearly a set somewhere on the Hollywood backlot. Also the rear projection shots. That definitely hurts the show, especially later in its run when STREETS OF SAN FRAN was already on the air and actually being filmed on location in San Fran and not using process shots or rear projection. Even compared to MANNIX (which ran exactly the same 8 years from 1967 to 1975) it feels more stagey and less authentic. I know MANNIX also used studio backlot streets but I remember it being filmed more at actual locations and using wide open spaces and rural areas more often. But again, I've seen very little of IRONSIDE so maybe I'm off there.

[Mr. Mike]

[Oops, I am a dummy, I posted this in the H50 group by mistake...]

Here are timings for the first season Ironside shows. They are totally screwy. There is a difference of up to 2 minutes between some shows. One of these shows, E02, lists John Rubinstein in the end credits, and he is not in the show at all that I can see.

I was doing a review of show E20 below, and by the end, it was totally illogical. (I watched it TWICE, making detailed notes each time.)

I am sure that something was cut out of this show because it was too long as filmed. This has happened with other episodes I have watched from the first season as well, for example, E22: http://www.ironsidetv.com/ironside-1.htm#22

If you look at the timings for the first season of H50 on my site (https://fiveohomepage.com/5-0log1.htm), they don't vary so much, maybe up to 10 seconds at the most.

There are multiple releases of Ironside. One of them was done by Shout Factory (seasons 1-4). One review of these sets suggests they are based on PAL broadcasts. There is a release in Australia of all 8 seasons, and others sold on Amazon and Ebay which seem to be not from the USA (seasons 5-8 were never released in the USA as far as I know). I really don't feel like investing a lot of money in these releases to see if stuff is missing.

Note the episode numbers here may not tally with some listings elsewhere.

S01E00 - 1:36:39 - Pilot Episode
S01E01 - 49.54 - Message from Beyond
S01E02 - 47.58 - The Leaf in the Forest
S01E03 - 49.56 - Dead Man's Tale
S01E04 - 49.52 - Eat, Drink and Be Buried
S01E05 - 49.52 - The Taker
S01E06 - 48.18 - An Inside Job
S01E07 - 47:51 - Tagged For Murder
S01E08 - 47:52 - Let My Brother Go
S01E09 - 47:53 - Light at the End of the Journey
S01E10 - 49:49 - The Monster of Comus Towers
S01E11 - 47:51 - The Man Who Believed
S01E12 - 47:49 - A Very Cool Car
S01E13 - 49:51 - The Past is Prologue
S01E14 - 48:50 - Girl in the Night
S01E15 - 47:52 - The Fourteenth Runner
S01E16 - 47:53 - Force of Arms
S01E17 - 47:54 - Memory of an Ice Cream Stick
S01E18 - 50:00 - To Kill a Cop
S01E19 - 50:03 - The Lonely Hostage
S01E20 - 47:56 - The Challenge
S01E21 - 49:56 - All in a Day's Work
S01E22 - 49:56 - Something for Nothing
S01E23 - 49:54 - Barbara Who
S01E24 - 47:54 - Perfect Crime
S01E25 - 48:20 - Officer Bobby
S01E26 - 47:57 - Trip to Hashbury
S01E27 - 47:55 - Due Process of Law
S01E28 - 48:21 - Return of the Hero