A private eye who knew better than her whiny male partner -- she knew karate and judo, too -- Honey was a honey indeed. That's clear for the ages now with a sharp new DVD release preserving Anne Francis' entire '60s run as the sleek sleuth. (VCI's 4-disc set holds 30 episodes.) While solving her compact little half-hour mysteries, Honey packed a pistol in her purse. She had high-tech gadgets like two-way radio sunglasses. She drove a European sports convertible (with a '60s car phone!). She kept a growly pet ocelot named Bruce, took bubble baths in a snazzy sunken tub, and wore chic Nolan Miller gowns when she wasn't sporting her signature black catsuit.

Honey was quite the groovy role model for girls at her ABC debut in 1965, sandwiched between the bachelor-pad repression of Mad Men and the feminist pseudo-empowerment of Police Woman. As Honey's semi-useless partner Sam Bolt blustered and bristled, forever ranting that private eye work wasn't for women (Honey had inherited the agency from her dad), she just shrugged him off and kept karate-chopping bad guys. There's even one episode where Honey gets into a fistfight with an attack ape in a secret dungeon underneath the villain's Mexican border resort!

OK, so these DVDs make it abundantly clear that Honey's scripts didn't always make much sense. (Of course not. Her mid-'60s prime-time compatriots included Gilligan's Island, Green Acres and the ever-insane Nazi hijinks of Hogan's Heroes.) But Honey herself came off coolly clever, thanks largely to Anne Francis' unflappable poise as what might have been a cartoon character (and pretty much was a year later on The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.). Francis had always radiated a playful elegance in movies like Forbidden Planet, and she brought that same blend of smarts, sass and sophistication to this TV trifle from a rising producer named Aaron Spelling. Instead of being campy eye candy like Spelling's later Charlie's Angels, Honey was a shrewd sharpie (although she often seemed to go "undercover" in a bikini), and her cultural impact far outweighed the show's single-season run.

Just check eBay today. They're still selling Honey West comic books. And Honey West dolls. (Or is that "action figures"?) Plus the original G.G. Fickling mystery novels from the '50s and '60s that inspired the series. Fans have been clamoring for a DVD release for eons, and TV Land kept us briefly calm a few years back by airing Honey West reruns.

VCI's DVD set goes those one better, having remastered the episodes into the crispest black-and-white ever, bringing fresh clarity to Bruce's spots and Francis' trademark mole. (See clips from the show here.) The four discs also hold dozens of vintage '60s commercials that provide an ever wackier time trip. Check out golf legend Arnold Palmer in a Disc 1 cigarette spot, puffing away before a putt. (The DVDs include lots of tobacco ads, finally outlawed in 1971.) There's the oh-so-'60s hair gel Dippity-Do, too.

So why did Honey's jazzy escapades last only a single season? For one thing, she was up against Friday night competition from CBS' cornpone Marine sitcom Gomer Pyle, then a ratings juggernaut. (Go figure.) For another, the show was sandwiched on ABC's schedule between the incompatible sitcom The Addams Family and soapfest Peyton Place. And the same network had just imported the smash British hour The Avengers, whose similar chop-sockery by femmes fatale Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg had reportedly helped inspire Spelling to Americanize the act.

It would be another four decades before Anne Francis' Honey West would attain DVD immortality. Now everyone can see: Kick-ass crime solving never looked so swank.