I’ve been watching “Life Goes On,” the late 80s-early 90s television series that was groundbreaking in its casting of an actor with Down Syndrome (Chris Burke). The DVD set of season 1 was released just recently.
Probably the most iconic thing about this series was the opening title sequence, featuring the cast singing “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” over scenes of a typical morning, ending with poor Arnold the Semi-Wonder Dog waiting for his breakfast. It was there in the pilot episode on the DVD, but then on episode two the song was missing — and on every episode following it. The song had been replaced with a new, up-tempo, 80s-style pop tune which evidently had been written and produced expressly for the DVD set.
This is a new wrinkle that’s raised its ugly head in this era of TV shows on DVD: music licensing. The majority of the TV shows that I enjoy on DVD, from Roseanne to Doctor Who, have been edited or had scenes cut due to music rights issues. I can only assume that licensing that Beatles song back in 1989 was cheap compared to how much they wanted in 2007 for a DVD set — even if it wasn’t the Beatles singing it. And I’m glad the producers of the DVD went so far as to license it for use on one episode rather than on none at all.
Somewhere I think I have at least one old videotape of a few “Life Goes On” episodes from their original airing. Maybe I’ll dub that audio over the remastered picture.
Other amusements: the Thatcher family lives in the Partridge Family’s house… mobile phones were big clunky things with huge antennas… Becca not only wore glasses WAY too big for her face, but she had multiple pairs in multiple colors…
I’ve been watching “Life Goes On,” the late 80s-early 90s television series that was groundbreaking in its casting of an actor with Down Syndrome (Chris Burke). The DVD set of season 1 was released just recently, but something was missing…
