Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Little House on the Prairie: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Goodnight, Laura-girl.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 21, 2014

Michael Landon was attempting to swim upstream through several simultaneous torrents when he launched Little House on the Prairie in 1974. Like many actors who yearn for success and then find themselves trapped by it, Landon had just ended a fourteen year run on Bonanza and was indelibly linked with the role of Little Joe Cartwright. Just as importantly, the western genre seemed to be on its last remaining breaths on television, as evidenced by the cancellation of the stalwart Bonanza itself. The perennial Gunsmoke had seen its popularity decline precipitously, to the point where it had come perilously close to being canceled in 1967. And other popular westerns like The Virginian had, like Bonanza, recently bitten the dust after long runs. Lastly, as odd as it may sound to those who grew up with television’s Little House on the Prairie or who have come to love it in its innumerable syndicated broadcasts, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s source novels, while popular with the young reading set, were certainly not in the “phenomenon” league of today’s blockbuster franchises like Harry Potter. And yet there were some encouraging signs for the nascent series, including the unexpected success of CBS’ The Waltons, a homespun series based on Earl Hamner, Jr.’s reminiscences and which featured a kind of modern day pioneer spirit running rampant in its titular family who lived in rural Virginia in the mid-20th century. The Waltons was in fact the second most popular series on television during the 1973-74 season, which would have been when Landon and NBC’s Ed Friendly were no doubt considering how they could adapt Wilder’s works for the small screen. There’s a very Waltons-esque ambience running through much of Little House on the Prairie, with an emphasis on family pulling together to overcome any hardships. Perhaps surprisingly, Landon creates a sometimes brusque character with his Charles Ingalls, a notably at least occasionally "anti-Little Joe" who is a somewhat obsessed husband and father who takes his family westward in order to make a new life, first in Kansas (for the pilot) and then for the bulk of the series in Minnesota.

While there’s a sometimes saccharine sweet nature to this first season of Little House on the Prairie, there’s also an undeniably gritty edge at times that at least adequately depicts the incredible hardships faced by the Ingalls family, first as they ventured westward, and then even later as they attempted to set up what the series depicts as their permanent home in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. The heartstring tugging elements are handled relatively well, including a touching scene that starts off the pilot where Charles’ wife Caroline (Karen Grassle) has to say goodbye to her parents, knowing full well that she will probably never see them again. Charles, Caroline, and their three young daughters Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson), Laura (Melissa Gilbert) and Carrie (played by twins Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush) then head off in their horse drawn wagon through acres of deep snow.

The pilot episode spends most of its time detailing the Ingalls’ first, ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to settle in the “west”, in this case the wilds of Kansas. Charlie is under the impression the United States government is about to open up vast areas of Osage reservation territory for white settlement, and he homesteads a huge parcel there, building a home for his family with the help of his closest neighbor, Isaiah Edwards (Victor French, who would become a semi- regular on the series). There are a number of potential threats, including the Osage themselves (who turn out to be benign), other tribes (who turn out not to be) and natural disasters like fire. The pilot tends to exploit momentary crises like Charles disappearing while hunting, a gambit that recurs throughout the first season, when the ultimate outcome is really never in doubt (does anyone really believe that the show’s star is suddenly going to go AWOL?).

Once the actual series gets underway, things settle down into a more predictable, if never completely rote, state of affairs. While each episode works as a standalone entry, there’s also attention paid to some through lines, including Mary and Laura beginning to go to school in Walnut Grove and Laura’s repeated interactions with her main nemesis, the spoiled and bratty Nellie Oleson (Alison Arngrim). While there are occasional nefarious types that show up in Walnut Grove, some of whom occasionally—and usually briefly—get the better of Charles, overall the series depicts a unified and supportive community that works together whenever tragedy strikes, which it tends to do with fair regularity.

Little House on the Prairie, while almost always heartfelt and at times unabashedly sentimental, also has a tendency toward more extreme ends of the pendulum, at time wallowing in more serious moments where various characters’ well being (and in some cases even lives) are threatened, as well as almost cartoonish comedy sequences, many involving either Isaiah Edwards (who returns to the show partway through the first season) or Laura’s attempts to deal with Nellie Oleson. The first tendency is probably best exemplified in an episode where typhus breaks out in Walnut Grove and the second in two episodes, one where Edwards is forced to babysit the sometimes unruly Ingalls children and another where Laura finally is able to teach Nellie a painful lesson.

The series bears Landon’s wholesome imprint in virtually every episode, a none too surprising state of affairs give the fact that he not only starred in the show but also acted as Executive Producer, as well as a frequent director and even occasionally as a writer. The Simi Valley location work gives the series a really beautiful ambience, and the performances are uniformly excellent, though in this first season little Melissa Gilbert is still getting her sea legs and has a tendency to overdo things on occasion. Little House on the Prairie makes no bones about wanting to give viewers a lump in their throats at pretty regular intervals, but the interesting thing about that proclivity is that the series is generally so well written and executed that even jaded and cynical modern day viewers probably won’t be immune to being manipulated, and in fact may even enjoy it.

Little House on the Prairie: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Little House on the Prairie: Season One and the Pilot Movie is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and NBC Universal Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.36:1. This release is being touted as completely restored and remastered, and for the most part fans of the series will be more than pleased with the results, especially when compared to previous home video releases. First of all, this release presents unedited versions of the pilot and all of the first season's 24 episodes. Colors are noticeably more vivid now, nicely saturated and accurate looking. It appears to me that contrast has been just slightly boosted at times, something that tends to make shadows loom a bit more in darker interior scenes. It also appears that some moderate denoising has been applied here, but grain is still apparent, especially in bright outdoor scenes where things like a shining blue sky show a natural if perhaps slightly diminished grain field (see screenshots 2 and 6 for good examples). There's noticeably even more grain apparent in the optically printed credits sequences and things like dissolves, as should be expected. There is some very minor warping in the opening credits sequence, but otherwise the image is very stable and sharp looking.

Little House on the Prairie: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Little House on the Prairie: Season One and the Pilot Movie features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono mix that nicely recreates the somewhat unambitious sound design of the original series. David Rose's sweeping score sounds just fine, and dialogue is always presented very clearly. Some nice sound effects—like the increasingly menacing Native American drumming in the pilot—have actually surprising acuity and depth here.

Update: Several of our astute members have reported, and I can confirm, that DIsc 4's episode "Family Quarrel" actually repeats subtitles from the previous episode "Christmas at Plum Creek".

Little House on the Prairie: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Little House Phenomenon Part 1: A Place in Television History (1080p; 14:04) is the first installment in what is advertised as what will ultimately be a six part in-depth look at the series, released with the announced upcoming seasons. There's nothing too earth shattering in this first outing, which nonetheless offers a bit of interesting zeitgeist context with regard to Watergate and Nixon's demise as well as interviews with people like Michael Landon, Jr.


• Original Screen Test (1080p; 1:48) offers a brief scene between Landon and Gilbert that actually didn't make the final cut of the pilot.

Little House on the Prairie: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I've seen a few isolated episodes of Little House on the Prairie through the years, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's ever been a particular favorite of mine. I was therefore rather pleasantly surprised with how well done the series is once I settled down and watched the entire first season along with the pilot movie. Landon obviously knew exactly what he wanted to do with this series, and Little House's depiction of a strong family unit withstanding every challenge that comes their way is an often moving account of the sturdy pioneer spirit that helped to forge our nation. The series is very well shot and often unexpectedly well written. If it occasionally lapses into cliché and a few too many false threats, that's a small price to be paid for such an overall heartwarming experience. This new Blu-ray set has generally great looking video and sounding audio and comes Recommended.