Люси и Дези: Час комедии

American TV series

The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour is a collection of thirteen black and white one hour specials airing occasionally from 1957 to 1960 (as opposed to the thirty minute regular series, I Love Lucy). The first five were shown as specials during the 1957–58 television season. The remaining eight were originally shown as part of Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. Its original network title was The Ford Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Show for the first season, and Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse Presents The Lucille Ball–Desi Arnaz Show for the following seasons. The successor to the classic comedy, I Love Lucy, the programs featured the same cast members: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley, and Little Ricky (billed as Richard Keith in his post Lucy–Desi acting assignments). The production schedule avoided the grind of a regular weekly series. Desilu produced the show, which was mostly filmed at their Los Angeles studios with occasional on location shoots at Lake Arrowhead, Las Vegas, and Sun Valley, Idaho. CBS reran these thirteen specials under the "Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour" title as prime time summer replacements, from 1962 to 1965, with a final run in 1967. 1966–67 was the first TV season in which all first run prime time network shows were in color. These "Lucy–Desi" repeats were the only black and white series aired that year, after which it, and I Love Lucy, went into syndication.

Arnaz was often questioned why he changed the format of I Love Lucy, a weekly, 30 minute program produced at 25 new episodes a season very successfully, to the Comedy Hour format of one hour specials shown weeks or months apart. He noted at the time: "You've got to change in this business. Lucy is my favorite character ever and I love I Love Lucy[;] it's my favorite show. I'd rather make a big change while we are still ahead. It would be ridiculous for us to wait until people got sick and tired of the regular half hour every Monday night. We have been the luckiest show on the air, but we've worked for it. I have never worked so hard in my life. And while I suppose it's not really for me to say, I think I can honestly say that we have never done a really bad show in six years." He also noted the high stakes involved in the cost per episode ($350,000): "They not only have to be good, they have to be great. We're going to be in an awful spot with these shows; they've got to be good." Arnaz's determination to change scheduling formats went back several years, as far back as 1954. "When I first suggested it, CBS wouldn't listen. Last year (1956) again, they talked me into continuing with the weekly half hour. But this time (1957) I made up my mind." Originally Comedy Hour was slated to produce ten original episodes per season. However, due to high production costs Arnaz cut that to eight, then five episodes. Five were produced in season one (1957–1958) and season two (1958–1959) then cut back to three in season three (1959–1960). Critics have generally regarded the series as a rather pallid continuation of I Love Lucy, with not enough of the original show's brisk pace and memorable sketchwork, and an excessive use of celebrity guest stars. Still, many fans enjoy the series because of the cast, which remained intact from the original. The Lucy Desi Comedy Hour is occasionally seen on nostalgia outlets like TV Land in its original hour long format, or in edited thirty minute installments (beginning in 1987) as We Love Lucy and run directly after the sixth season of I Love Lucy the additional "episodes" broadcast as a 7th season of I Love Lucy. Me TV broadcast the program in the original one hour format during the summer of 2012. The Decades Channel ran a weekend binge marathon of Lucy Desi in August 2015 and again in August 2021. With 13 episodes produced and broadcast during its 3 year run the series was released as one DVD box collection separate from the I Love Lucy sets. The show is briefly memorialized in the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York.

With the new hour long show, Desi Arnaz wanted to keep the famous I Love Lucy theme composed by Eliot Daniel, but with some changes. The task of updating the theme fell to music arranger Frank Comstock, who kept most of the theme (like the harp "hits") similar, but added were more syncopation and flourishes, as well as a few "punch" notes. Even though Wilbur Hatch was still musical conductor, studio musicians were employed to record the theme, as the Desi Arnaz Orchestra had been disbanded. Most, if not all, end credit music themes on each episode have been edited for time in the syndicated versions of the series. However, in 2018 a fan uploaded to YouTube a complete theme song, reconstructed from the different episodes.

CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount Home Entertainment) released the entire series of all thirteen Lucy Desi Comedy Hour specials on DVD under the package name I Love Lucy: The Final Seasons 7 9 on March 13, 2007, in Region 1, and is presented with certain edits such as "The Celebrity Next Door" when Tallulah Bankhead remarks about being allergic to strawberries (a significant plot point) and digitally remastered.

In September 2018, Time Life released a DVD set, Lucy: The Ultimate Collection, which contains 2 episodes of The Lucy Desi Comedy Hour, and also 32 episodes of I Love Lucy, 24 episodes of Here's Lucy, 14 episodes of The Lucy Show, and 4 episodes of the short lived ABC series Life with Lucy (which had never before been released to home media), plus a wide variety of bonus features. As of August 2020, the set was no longer available from Time Life.