With the blink of her eyes and a nod of her head, Jeannie will make your wishes come true. Captain Anthony "Tony" Nelson is an astronaut who finds himself "Master" to a beautiful and crafty genie whom he unknowingly releases from a bottle. Together, he and Jeannie are a magical match...

The first season of I Dream of Jeannie represents the show's first 30 episodes. The series ran for five seasons from 1965 to 1970 and consisted of a total of 139 episodes. Originally the first season was filmed in black and white, but has been recently colourised (which is the version included here).

The first episode sets the scene for the series. Tony Nelson is an astronaut, and when his space capsule goes off course, he lands on a deserted island miles from civilisation. He finds a strange bottle and gives it a rub, only to release a 2000-year-old genie named Jeannie. Tony thinks Jeannie is an hallucination - a side effect of the accident - so he uses a wish in order to give her free will so that she doesn't have to be his slave. This he hopes will make the hallucination vanish. But Jeannie is real and she wants to please Tony. So, when he is rescued, she follows him home.

Those that remember this show from either its original broadcast, or countless reruns, will wonder why on earth the music theme is not the one they remember. Hugo Montenegro's Jeannie theme was not included until the show's second season. Instead an instrumental theme was composed by Richard Wess. Likewise, the show's animated title sequence (created by Looney Tunes's Friz Freleng) was also absent until about mid-way through the first season.

Extras include an audio commentary on the first episode, The Lady in the Bottle, with actors Barbara Eden, Larry Hagman and Bill Daily (although Daily spends the entire time pretending he's never seen the show before and telling Eden how beautiful she is); and I Dream Of Jeannie: Out Of The Bottle (14 min, 50 sec featurette that interviews the show's creator Sidney Sheldon, as well as Eden, Hagman and Daily).

While some will remember this fondly and find much to enjoy in this box set, a younger audience might think it just a tad sexist, not to mention a little predictable.

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Nick Smithson