‘Leave It to Beaver’ cast lives on in DVD set

Pristinely preserved in invigorating black-and-white, “Leave It to Beaver” is home at last on DVD.

The first season’s 39 episodes can be yours in a limited-edition collector’s lunchbox for a pretty stiff $69.98. Or you can buy the conventionally packaged three-disc set for $20 less.

Either way you’re getting a classic, mom-dad-and-the-kids comedy whose theme song and central characters still resonate 48 years after the series’ long ago, far away 1957 premiere on CBS.

Has any TV sprout before or since been any cuter than Jerry Mathers as second-grader Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver? No, although Fred Savage made it a contest as Kevin Arnold in “The Wonder Years.”

The first episode of “Beaver” finds “the Beav” hiding up in a tree after thinking he was in real trouble at both school and home.

“I’m gonna stay here until I die. And then you’ll be sorry,” he tells mom June (Barbara Billingsley), dad Ward (the late Hugh Beaumont) and big brother Wally (Tony Dow).