Great Show; Worth The Money
If you can accept in advance that the transfers are not all that good, that you aren't going to get a great picture, you'll have no complaints about shelling out for this set. You still get a lot for your money. I think the episodes got better and better as the show went on. I am currently into my second season of this TV crime show from the '50s, and have really enjoyed it.

In fact, after about 5-7 episodes the stories really kick in and you almost get addicted to watching. Part of that is the unpredictability of star Lee Marvin's character, "Det. Frank Ballinger." You never know if Ballinger is going to mess up along the way, even though the crimes are always solved. He's a good cop, and a legitimate tough guy, but he doesn't always do the smart thing, so it's fun to see what jam he gets into every "week." The point is, Marvin and "M Squad" come across as very realistic.

Another masterfull Chicago Series
Another excellent noir Chicago cop series from the past, and it was filmed there in its entirety. As one official reviewer stated: "M Squad did for Chicago what the Naked City did for New York." Too bad it's also another great Chicago series like Crime Story that has some video quality problems, but I ignore them because these TV shows have an ambiance and innocence that one doesn't find on mainstream TV anymore. M Squad also has lots of young guest stars appearing before they were well known, hard-boiled story lines and moody music. Lee Marvin was one of a kind.

Best TV Show I'd Never Heard Of (Until Now)
Great show!! Love everything about it--the acting, writing, the cool jazz music (with Count Basie, no less), those classic old cars from the late 50's, the Chicago locations.....too bad it only ran for 3 seasons.
Lee Marvin is excellent in this role; nice to see him playing one of the good guys for a change. This show is a neglected classic; hopefully more people will discover it and enjoy it themselves. Highly recommended.

BLAST FROM TH PAST-CHECK OUT LEE MARVIN IN THE EARLY YEARS
I just started viewing the M-Squad multi-Pak, watching the show's first episode - "The Golden Look." I was looking forward to this DVD set as I had only sketchy memories of the show as it went off the air when I was three. I think WGN-TV in Chicago might have re-run the series in the early 1960s and I caught a few episodes then.

The intro warns you that the digitizers of the series had only somewhat beat-up film stock to work with (guess those guys at AFI wanting to make soft copies of all those old flicks weren't blowing smoke, so to speak). All in all, the copy quality is better than a lot of 1930s and 1940s flicks that survive on TV that weren't deemed "great works" with prime vault copies that could be mastered to DVD.

Anyway, what I saw of the first episode was wet my appetite for the rest. Lee Marvin plays Lt. Frank Ballinger, part of the omnibus M-Squad of the Chicago Police. This edition has Ballinger tracking down the lone survivor of a stick-up gang that killed three guards at an armored car office, then killed a father and son in a car collision during the get-away.

SPOILER ALERT

When Ballinger finally tracks the baddie to a merchant ship on Lake Michigan, there is no Miranda warning, only a fist sandwich from Marvin (hey, this was 1957).

I was surprised to find Bruce Gordon (yes, Frank Nitti on "The Untouchables") playing an Eisenhower-era CSI in this episode. The show edits in location shots of Marvin in Chicago (see NYPD Blue four decades later in The Big Apple) to provide the illusion that Hollywood back lot streets are the Windy City. Seeing Chicago in those location shots from 50 years ago is like stepping out of a time machine. A Drake Hotel appears in one scene, but with no John Hancock building nearby. Ballinger walks under El Tracks in the Loop, surrounded by signage that appears to have been hanging there since before D-Day.

If you like 1950s detectives with a refreshingly Draconian sense of justice, who slam down black coffees while chasing leads on rotary-dial phones with a Lucky Strikes hanging from their lips, this show is for you. If you want to see where an actor earned his chops before starring roles in "The Dirty Dozen" and "Point Blank" this is your puppy.

Finally, if you like a glimpse of times your parents or grandparents told you about, add this to your collection.

Not Bad For the Money
Ok, first the bad: Not only are the best of the episodes (imagewise) not restored, but some of worst are of poor video quality. M Squad was an important police drama of the late 50's - early 60's and you would think that NBC Universal would put some money into restoration efforts. Shows of the same era -- such as Perry Mason and Naked City look excellent by comparison. But the DVDs are better than nothing and for the price---you are getting 117 twenty-five minute episodes plus a fabulous audio CD of the jazz music from the series. Count Basie wrote the show's opening theme (for the second and third seasons) and other jazz greats contributed to the show's music.

Although Lee Marvin had appeared in numerous feature films prior to this series, you can see why this show made him a star. He had that rough and tumble, no-nonsense screen presence as Detective Lt. Frank Ballinger. Twenty-five minutes doesn't give a lot of opportunity for plot development, so there's a quite a bit of fast paced action--not a lot of talk, but a lot of shooting first and asking questions later.

But it is an interesting relic of the past and there is the pleasure of watching early performances for a lot of actors who went on to stardom: Charles Bronson, Mike Connors, Burt Reynolds, Tom Loughlin, Angie Dickenson, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, Ed Nelson, etc. Plus a lot of obscure character actors who are immediately recognizable as staples of TV for the next thirty years.

Although exteriors where shot in Chicago, most of the time the stories were filmed on the back lots in Hollywood, so the production values don't really match up with the Naked City. But all in all, the DVD is money well spent for an enjoyable time.