Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Kindness Collection - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Kindness Collection

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
Sometimes fate has a way of doing things that turn out in a positive way. For example, I had no intention of reviewing a collection of Mr. Rogers episodes on DVD, but purely by accident I slipped up and added this in along with The Strangers 4K UHD discs this last week. And low and behold I had a crummy, no good, terrible day today only to come home and put my feet up and get to work reviewing. And what should show up in the que? But said accidentally ordered set to completely reset that sour mood I had going on.

Pretty much everyone alive today knows who Mr. Rogers is. Fred Rogers was America’s dad before Bill Cosby ever was. Pretty much everyone who was a kid in the last 50-60 years grew up watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood, and have it influence their life in some way. Fred Rogers and his decades long TV show was a testament to reaching kids and teaching them the positive aspects without getting overly preachy, despite Fred being an ordained minister. While his Christian philosophy came through loud and clear if you knew what to look for, Fred and CBS made absolute gold by deciding to not preach or overwhelm the audience with philosophy, but rather simply teach by example. That is, treat people the way you wanted to be treated, and let speak for itself. As such, Fred Rogers and the hit PBS show became more than just one man’s mission to reach children with love and compassion, but a living example of how to treat people, even when you have massive differences.

This particular collection is one of a dozen or so collections PBS, using thematic elements in the episodes to bind them together into one collection. This particular collection’s focus is around kindness, pulling together a conglomeration of 30 episodes in which kindness and compassion are the intrinsic focus of each and every half hour. Blending in fantasy, real world visits to various people (such introducing us to a skywriter, who shows Fred and the viewers just how she writes in the sky with her plane), a trip to Imagination land, and of course, getting a visit from McFeely and Hnadyman Negri.

Is this collection any more special than any of the previous 30 film “collections” we’ve seen from PBS over the last 10 years or so? Not really. The entire show is gold, and this is simply another set pulling from the early 70s through 1991, giving us a taste test of what made the show great over the years. You could argue that every episode in the show’s decades long run revolved around kindness, so it’s hard to say if this collection has any major thematic elements that truly made it stand apart. But I also understand why it would be an ENORMOUS undertaking to give us complete seasons of a show that lasted over 30 years. A show that has more episodes than most of my TV collection put together, and one that has had various levels of restoration work done to preserve the show for future generations. But still, I would have preferred a slightly more complete set than these random collection of episodes.




Rating:
Rated TV-Y by the MPAA




Video:
Being that Mister Rogers Neighborhood was filmed on tape and shot in a time period where the idea of High Definition TV’s was DECADES off, the image will reflect that. And as such the varying episodes may show varying degrees of compression and upscaling to get it on DVD here. The results speak for themselves, with average detail level, plenty of compression around faces and on lines, jagged edges for old upscaled fonts, and a creamy look that is pretty typical of old tape. That’s not to say the discs look horrible, but with only 4-5 mpbs bitrate the DVDS look OK to look at, but nothing that is going to blow you out of the water. Colors are warm and vivid, that creamy beige look can be annoying, and various degrees of quality crop up depending on whether we’re on set, or out on location as Fred films his meetups with real life people out in the world for his lessons. It’s good enough, and this isn’t a knock on the DVDS themselves, but the show is never going to look stunning due to how it was shot and when as well.


Audio:
The audio fares a bit better, mostly because it was recorded on set in a very quiet environment. The 2.0 Dolby Digital track sounds quite pleasant, with nice vocals and a good musical score that really stands out. Like the video, you can sometimes have a few quirks in the audio when Fred and the crew leave set to go somewhere else, but the on set material is quite good. It doesn’t blow you out of the water, but it is a very capable 2.0 stereo track that fits right into the morning television bracket and does quite well for itself.


Extras:
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Final Score: ​

As is the case with most of Mister Rogers Neighborhood, this brings me back to a time, long, long ago, where I was free to make cheese and banana sandwiches along with Fred as he taught nutrition, and looked forward to every morning re-run that I could. So in that aspect I feel like the set has done its job at reminding us just how great this PBS show was. The flip side is that the completionist in me really would love for a chronological collection vs. the random culling that are these collections. The video and audio are solid, extras nonexistent, but the show itself absolute magic. Recommended for families looking to introduce their children to the same joy that we all grew up with.

Technical Specifications:

Starring: Fred Rogers, Betty Aberlin, David Newell
Created by: Fred Rogers
Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1 MPEG2
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles: English
Studio: PBS
Rated: TV-Y
Runtime: 840 Minutes
DVD Release Date: September 29th 2026

Recommendation: Fun Watch

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