Violet said:
I can't believe I haven't posted here yet!
Same here!
I had been and Indy fan since 1981 so when news of the TV show came about, I was super excited and the premiere of, "Curse of the Jackal", did not disappoint at all. The next day, many people at work said that they watched and enjoyed it. This was pleasant to hear.
The 1st regular episode in London had almost no action so the shift in tone came as a surprise but I was still compelled and moved by the love story. The next one, with Teddy Roosevelt was right up my alley because I had developed a deep interest in colonial Africa just a few years earlier.
Then along came "Verdun". WOW! This one absolutely blew me away. Our main TV was hooked up to the stereo and we had 4 speakers around the room so the bullet sounds were flying all around! To top it all off, it had a preview for next week with the "German East Africa" episode. This kicked my excitement into OVERDRIVE!
About an hour before that episode started, I ran out to buy a blank videocasette and bumped into 2 friends who were going out to a bar. They wanted me to join them and I said, "N-o-o-o WAY!" There was nothing in the world that was going to stop me from watching & recording that one. It still remains one of my favourite episodes to this day.
I recorded every episode (all on the SP speed for maximum quality). Even when the show later moved to Saturday nights, my VCR was set to tape it while I was out partying. In the remaining space at the end of each tape, I would record bits of documentaries that pertained to those stories (just like how the DVDs are). For a uniform look, I had them all on Kodak tapes and kept them in 3 VHS library boxes. The boxes were brown and opened like books so they resembled Young Indy's diary. Still have my collection, too.
Thanks to the internet in 1996, I discovered that there were more episodes that weren't aired on ABC
*, plus, 4 movies from the Family Channel. The news floored me! Luckily, I found 2 people on-line who were more than willing to do a trade and within a month, I had all the missing shows and the U.K. bookends for "Mystery of the Blues" with George Hall. Then I bought the VHS releases in 1999 and the DVDs in 2007-08.
*I recorded the "Florence" episode from a French TV channel in 1994 and was puzzled why I had never seen it before.
Aaah, nostalgia.