Bo and Luke Duke are a couple of good old boys, on probation for running moonshine, who spend their time running around Hazzard County in their modified 1969 Dodge Charger, The General Lee, being chased by the incompetent county sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane who is in thralldom to the counties corrupt Boss Hogg. Along with their cousin Daisy, their uncle Jesse and their mechanic Cooter (who nobody particularly remembers), the boys got involved in an endless number of good natured jolly japes, which usually involved get-rich-quick schemes or catching bad guys...

The Dukes of Hazzard ran successfully from 1979 to 1985 with few changes in the cast. It was the sort of good natured television which also spawned The A Team, with which it shared many similarities, not least of which was the formulaic way it approached the scripts. Season Seven in presented in its original 4:3, spread over six discs.

The average episode can be broken down into the set up, which usually involved Boss Hogg trying to get the boys, unsuccessfully like Dick Dastardly with whom he shared many pantomime villainous traits; or the boys uncovering something illegal which needed stopping. Cousin Daisy would cheer the lads on in her hot pants and skimpy top with Jesse providing the sage advice. The show invariably involved the General Lee in an improbable car chase which would have wrecked you average automobile in the first five minutes, before the show wrapped the whole story up in the last ten minutes with everyone happy. The shows other mainstay ingredient was Waylon Jenning who provided both the theme tune and acted as omniscient narrator for anyone who found it difficult to follow the simplistic plots.

The show epitomised the philosophy that if it isn’t broke don’t fix it, even in this final season of seventeen episodes. That not to say that there are not highlights for fans of the show. The season opens with Happy Birthday General Lee where the patient followers of the show finally get to know how the Duke Brothers became the car's owners. The rest of the episodes pretty much follow the above breakdown of the average episode.

For a show that ran for so long the extras are a bit thin on the ground. First up is a tribute to Waylon Jennings, Remembering the Outlaw: A Tribute to Waylon Jennings (16 min, 36 sec) which pretty much does what it says on the packet, paying tribute to a truly influential country singer who played with Buddy Holly and was nearly on the fateful plane crash which killed him. Waylon passed away in 2002. Next up is a reinterpretation of the theme song sung quite well by John Schneider, Tom Wopat and Catherine Bach and if that wasn’t enough there's a Making of the Music Video (19 min, 8 sec), well you can work out what that one is about.

There is something annoyingly pleasant about this good natured show and I don’t just mean Daisy’s hot pant - though I’m sure it had many a father watching. I can understand why the show remains popular; it’s like spending relaxing time with an old friend, who will always succeed in putting a smile on your face.

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Charles Packer