‘Captain & Tennille’ collection on DVD

The “Captain & Tennille” variety show is more fun today than during its initial run in the 1970s.

At least Toni Tennille thinks so.

“When we were doing it, it was so incredibly hard,” she says. “You had to learn all the numbers all in the space of a week, all the sketches, all the dance numbers. You’d do them all, and then the minute you had it in the can you were started on the next one.”

For Tennille’s husband, Daryl “The Captain” Dragon, it was even more uncomfortable.

“Toni was brought up in theater and was an English major,” he says. “I was the guy who sat in the back of the class, could barely wait for math to get over, kind of got through English and failed speech, literally.”

Then, he says, “here I am reading cue cards all of a sudden on television.”

R2 Entertainment has released “Captain & Tennille: The Ultimate Collection,” a three-DVD set featuring highlights from the variety show.

“Frankly, I have not seen these shows since we did them,” Tennille says. “I was watching on a computer with my headphones on and laughing out loud at some of the stuff (during a flight to New York). I know people thought I was nuts.”

When they started producing the show, Dragon says, he nearly did go nuts.

“We were going to call ourselves the Zombie and Tennille after about the third week,” he says. “I had to stay up literally to midnight sometimes working with the orchestra and producing the music. And then, the unions required that you had to get up the next morning and videotape the show. We had to get up at 5 o’clock.”

Of course, there were great moments as well. For Dragon, one of the best was on stage with comedian George Burns.

“I’m up there playing behind George Burns (who is) doing his schtick thing and realizing that I was listening to George Burns in the ‘40s on radio,” Dragon says. “It never occurred to me that I’d ever be within 400 miles of him.”

One of Tennille’s fondest memories is of performing sketch comedy with Bob Hope.

“He was a diamond cutter, and I was a snooty woman with a great big diamond that needed to be cut,” she says. “I’m doing this skit with him and I’m holding my own and I’m thinking, ‘My God. I’m with one of the greatest comic timing people in the history of show biz.’ “

The DVD set coincides with R2 Entertainment’s release of the CD boxed set “Songs of Joy: The Complete Captain & Tennille Collection,” containing six of the couple’s albums recorded between 1975 and 1980.

Included are all of their hits, including “Love Will Keep Us Together,” “Muskrat Love,” “Can’t Stop Dancin”’ and “Do That To Me One More Time,” along with lesser-known songs that were previously unavailable on CD.

Tennille and Dragon have been jetting around the country for promotional interviews. Just don’t expect them to launch a tour.

“I loved the performing part,” Tennille says of previous tours. “I loved the fans. … I hated the hotels and the food and the airports and missing my dogs. It was terrible.”