Lucille Ball TV specials among DVD releases

A pair of Lucille Ball prime-time specials lead off this collection of television programs that are new to DVD.

"The Lucille Ball Specials: Lucy Gets Lucky/Three for Two" (MPI, 1975, $19.98). Lucy fans (and Dino and Gleason fans) will enjoy this pair of mid-'70s TV specials, hourlong comedies (sans laugh tracks) that followed the cancellation of her third sitcom, "Here's Lucy."

The first show, "Lucy Gets Lucky," has Ball as a small-town woman who travels by bus to Las Vegas to see her idol, Dean Martin. When she can't get into the show, she gets a job in the MGM Grand hotel, where Dino has planned a late-night performance for employees. Martin has some funny bits, but mostly it's Lucy getting in and out of predictable jams.

The second, "Three For Two," has Ball and Jackie Gleason playing three couples in three shorts that mix humor and sentiment. First, they are bickering middle-class marrieds visiting Europe, then they are married to others but having a clandestine meeting, and the third and longest story has them as a long-married couple at odds with their son and daughter about how to spend New Year's Eve.

The shows are rather dated, especially in their '70s chauvinistic attitudes, and though Ball is in her mid-60s, she is identified in one of the Gleason stories as being 45 years old! But fans won't care, and both programs are excellent transfers.

Personally, I enjoyed the bonus features more than the specials, in particular a pair of off-the-cuff radio interviews between Lucy and Dino, and an excerpt from Art Linkletter's variety show with Lucy doing a funny radio sound-effects skit.

Extras: full frame, segment from "Art Linkletter's House Party" (1965) with Ball as guest, two radio programs with Ball interviewing Martin, bloopers (with Ball and Martin), featurette, trailers

"The IT Crowd: The Complete Season Two" (MPI, 2007, $24.98). Of course, a "complete season" of this English sitcom is just six shows — and they go by all too quickly in this romp about two nerdy tech-support trouble-shooters and their tech-illiterate boss in a corporation that barely knows they're alive.

The best is the first, a screamingly hilarious (and politically incorrect) episode that has the trio at a musical that isn't quite what they expect. Every bit as funny (and occasionally naughty) as the first season, with many laugh-out-loud moments.

Extras: widescreen, six episodes, audio commentary, featurette, bloopers