{"id":33776,"date":"2020-09-11T08:34:53","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T12:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=33776"},"modified":"2020-09-11T08:34:53","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T12:34:53","slug":"the-bootleg-files-diana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/11\/the-bootleg-files-diana\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Diana"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 739: <\/strong>\u201cDiana\u201d (1973-74 sitcom starring Diana Rigg).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> One episode is on YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> Unavailable for many years.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Unlikely.<\/p>\n

Yesterday brought the sad news of the passing of Dame Diana Rigg at the age of 82, and there were countless tributes to her glory days as Emma Peel on the cult television series \u201cThe Avengers\u201d along with her performances in film classics \u201cOn Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service\u201d and \u201cTheater of Blood\u201d and her late-career success in \u201cGame of Thrones.\u201d Much less attention was paid to one of Rigg\u2019s more curious endeavors: an American sitcom called \u201cDiana\u201d that ran for 15 episodes in the 1973-74 television season. In a career that was rich with artistic and commercial successes, \u201cDiana\u201d was a very rare misfire for the gifted actress.
\n<\/p>\n

The concept of \u201cDiana\u201d was liberally lifted from \u201cThe Mary Tyler Moore Show,\u201d with a single career-focused woman enjoying work and life while surrounded by a circle of wacky friends and colleagues. In this case, Rigg played Diana Smythe, a divorced Englishwoman who relocates to New York to work as a fashion coordinator for a department store. By 1973, the U.S. networks were finally comfortable having a program with a divorced woman as its central focus \u2013 when Mary Tyler Moore\u2019s sitcom debuted three years earlier, the initial concept of having her as a divorcee was erased, even though the national divorce rate was on the rise.<\/p>\n

A pilot episode was shot under the title \u201cThe Diana Rigg Show,\u201d and Rigg was surrounded by Carol Androsky as her neighbor who works as a model in hand and foot advertisements, Richard B. Shull as a crotchety copywriter, Robert Moore as a window dresser whose flamboyant behavior was mid-70s code for homosexuality, David Steiner as Rigg\u2019s hardworking and beleaguered boss and Nanette Fabray as Steiner\u2019s wife. For reasons that are not clear, Fabray exited the show after the pilot and was replaced by Barbara Barrie, while the show itself had its name shortened to \u201cDiana.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the running gags of \u201cDiana\u201d was having her live in an apartment that belonged to her brother, who was traveling on business. Her brother gave apartment keys to multiple friends who would crash at the apartment, always without advance warning. In the one \u201cDiana\u201d episode that is available for online viewing, a soaking-wet man clothed only in a towel emerges unexpectedly from the bathroom to inform Rigg that her shower is broken. Rigg is not the least bit concerned over the intruder\u2019s presence and behaves as if there couldn\u2019t be anything strange about his appearance.<\/p>\n

And that was the main problem with \u201cDiana\u201d \u2013 Rigg did not seem to be connected with anything happening around her. From the footage that can be seen online and from my own recollection of the program, she went through the episodes in a somewhat robotic manner, offering the slightest of smiles and an unmistakable air of indifference while the other actors chewed the scenery with gusto. Whereas much of the joy of \u201cThe Mary Tyler Moore Show\u201d involved Moore\u2019s reaction to the nonsense happening around her, Rigg seemed to be in her own bubble.<\/p>\n

Her failure to be assimilated into the comedy was particularly evident in what should have been the series\u2019 highlight: a reunion with her \u201cAvengers\u201d co-star Patrick Macnee. In the footage of the episode that is online, the chemistry that once united the actors on \u201cThe Avengers\u201d was weirdly absent, with Macnee trying to pump energy into the scene and Rigg giving nothing to the moment. <\/p>\n

What went wrong? The scripts were certainly dismal \u2013 I recall trying to embrace the show back in 1973 but giving up after a few episodes because no laughs were to be found. It is not clear what Rigg thought about the production \u2013 she never talked about in interviews \u2013 but the fact she\u2019s not even bothering to phone in her performances suggests she had little enthusiasm for the work. <\/p>\n

Rigg\u2019s fans tried to give \u201cDiana\u201d the benefit of the doubt \u2013 Cecil Smith, the television critic for the Washington Post, charitably wrote, \u201c\u2018Diana\u2019 is as cool, as sophisticated, and as elegant as its star.\u201d NBC had high hopes for \u201cDiana,\u201d scheduling it on Monday from 8:30pm to 9:00pm against long-running hits \u201cGunsmoke\u201d and \u201cThe Rookies.\u201d But the series never truly found its footing and was quickly cancelled. <\/p>\n

To date, \u201cDiana\u201d has never been made available in any home entertainment format \u2013 and I am unaware that it was ever rerun on any cable station specializing in retro programming. One of the 15 episodes, titled \u201cThe Gilt Complex,\u201d can be found in an unauthorized posting on YouTube, and a poor quality snippet of the Rigg-Macnee episode can be seen online, too. (Rigg and Macnee appeared together at the time on \u201cHollywood Squares,\u201d but that appearance is unavailable for online viewing.)<\/p>\n

Mercifully, \u201cDiana\u201d was quickly forgotten and Rigg would continue to reign on stage and screen without interruption. Hey, we all make mistakes and Rigg was lucky enough not to be hobbled by this erroneous blip in her career.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to the award-wining podcast \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud, with new episodes beginning October 12. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 739: \u201cDiana\u201d (1973-74 sitcom starring Diana Rigg). LAST SEEN: One episode is on YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Unavailable for many years. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Unlikely. Yesterday brought the sad news of the passing of Dame Diana Rigg at the age of 82, and there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":33777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[1416,219,2525,2524,714,947],"class_list":["post-33776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-1970s","tag-comedy","tag-diana","tag-diana-rigg","tag-nbc","tag-sitcom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33778,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33776\/revisions\/33778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}