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If you're a TV fan, sometimes you want the DVD box set not because you plan to watch the series over and over again but just because it's a tangible connection to a TV favorite. Or because you want to hear about picayune behind-the-scenes details often found in the special feature interviews or on commentary tracks.
Whatever a buyer's or gift giver's motivation, series sets continue to proliferate. And they're not just recent shows -- sometimes these DVDs are releases (or re-releases) of classics from the 1960s and 1970s.
They often come with a hefty price tag and a heavy weight, the result of both multiple seasons of discs and heavy cardboard packaging. But there is some good news: The cost listed for DVD sets below is the retail price, which is almost always more than what consumers will actually pay for these titles. Most DVDs are heavily discounted at both online and brick-and-mortar retailers.
In 1967, Charles Kuralt persuaded his superiors at CBS News to let him travel the country for three months, finding stories about people, who, while not newsworthy, were interesting and noteworthy. Three months turned into 20 years as Kuralt and his crew traversed the nation; they got off the interstates and freeways and drove down Main Street and its side streets, country lanes and two-lane highways as well as a river or two.
The stories in this collection were originally broadcast on "The CBS Evening News." In 1993, the Travel Channel re-broadcast some of the segments in 30-minute episodes. Some of the episodes have been packaged into this three-disc collection ($39.99, Acorn Media), with each disc containing six episodes.
Kuralt brought into American living rooms stories about, among other things, the 81-year-old brickmaker who made his bricks by hand; maple sugar time in New England; a stone skipping competition in Michigan; and an all-night library. There are two stories in the collection from Western Pennsylvania, a profile of the super shoe salesman of Reyer's Shoe Store in Sharon; and a barge trip along the Allegheny River with the old American Wind Symphony.
What keeps this collection from getting four stars is its extras, which include a text-only biography of Kuralt and an overview of the "On the Road" segments. Most of the so-called updates are Web addresses to the various businesses that were profiled by Kuralt. Surprisingly, there are no interviews with Kuralt's family or crew members.
Many of the subjects of Kuralt's pieces were seniors so it can be assumed that they have died. (Kuralt died in 1997). Still it would have been interesting to have included a "Whatever happened to ..." epilogue.
-- Stephen Karlinchak,
Post-Gazette staff writer
Time to dial it back to the 1980s -- the era of big hair, shoulder pads and an innovative show that was part sitcom, part theater and part standup comedy.
"It's Garry Shandling's Show" ran for four seasons on Showtime starting in 1986. The show followed Garry Shandling's fictional life as a comedian and those of his friends, who would show up at his door unannounced.
What made the show unique was Shandling's interaction with the audience. He opened the show by setting the scene for that week's episode in a standup monologue delivered directly to the audience. He used this device frequently during the show and occasionally would walk off the set -- all with great comic effect.
Like other shows, Shandling had numerous guest stars, taking advantage of his work on "The Tonight Show," as well as co-creator Alan Zweibel's work on "Saturday Night Live." Unlike other shows, Shandling wasn't bashful about introducing his guest stars to the audience, often exclaiming, "Hey, everybody! It's June Lockhart."
The 16-DVD set's extras include the usual outtakes and commentary, which are actually about that episode. The better pieces are recent "looking back" interviews with Shandling, Zweibel and the cast and crew that were produced for the release of the DVD. You get a real sense of a tight-knit group trying to produce, write and act a show that was ground-breaking and trying to gain traction while sometimes making it up as it went along.
-- Michael Elek,
Post-Gazette staff writer
Buy his shiny plastic head.
Fans of the sci-fi cartoon "Futurama" won't need Hypnotoad to force them to purchase the sitcom's "Complete Collection 1999-2009." One look at a full-sized head of Bender the robot filled with 19 DVDs ($199.98, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment) will seem doable, even on a delivery boy's wages. For the real diehard fans who already own all of these discs, Fox is graciously selling a few empty ones, too.
Inside the case in the shape of cigar-smoking, sarcastic, alcohol-fueled, kleptomaniac Bender (voiced by John DiMaggio) -- destined for the seedy wing of the CMU Robot Hall of Fame -- are 72 episodes from the animated show's first four seasons, as well as four features, "Bender's Big Score," "The Beast With a Billion Backs," "Bender's Game" and "Into the Wild Green Yonder." The discs are all previously released, so there are no new extras.
Unlike creator Matt Groening's first animated comedy, "The Simpsons," "Futurama" is an acquired taste. From the pilot that first launches lowly pizza delivery boy Philip J. Fry (Billy West) 1,000 years into the future via a "cryogenic" freezing accident to the (spoiler) kiss he finally gets with one-eyed mutant Turanga Leela (Katey Sagal) in "Into the Wild Green Yonder," the series has worked to build characters rather than get cheap laughs, even though nearly everything is a parody. "Futurama" can be an addictive show, and the DVD commentary reveals just how detailed the writers, illustrators and voice actors were to insure that with cultural references and hidden messages. Other fun extras include a hilarious Comicon reading of the comic book "Futurama Returns" and the "Futurama Genetics Lab" that allows you to splice together your favorite characters.
"Futurama" has a huge cult following that helped spur its return from cancellation and has led to a new season, set to air on Comedy Central next year. So it might not be long before we need Bender's entire body to fill with discs.
-- Andrew Druckenbrod,
Post-Gazette classical music critic
"Fawlty Towers" is TV comedy at its finest. Starring John Cleese as frenzied hotel manager Basil Fawlty, the 1970s BBC series drew on elements of farce and physical comedy and took them to absurd new heights.
The release of all 12 episodes in a digitally restored three-volume set ($49.98, BBC Worldwide) is enough of a treat, but the extras are icing on this delightfully loopy cake. One of the best is a feature on Hotel Gleneagles, the Torquay inn that partly inspired the series. The "Monty Python" crew once stayed there, but quickly relocated because of the behavior of its brusque proprietor: Everybody except "Python" alum Cleese, who stayed on and found the inspiration for one of his most memorable comic characters.
There's plenty of backstory on the series, including lengthy interviews with Cleese, and others with cast members Prunella Scales, Connie Booth and Andrew Sachs. Other features include an all-too-brief collection of outtakes and bios of the cast and several featured actors.
-- Adrian McCoy,
Post-Gazette staff writer
There's no question that FX's "The Shield" was a fantastic series, but the question surrounding any inevitable complete series set is whether or not it offers anything new.
"The Shield: The Complete Series Collection" ($159.95, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) is handsomely packaged in a book-like format filled with pictures from the show and a short letter from series creator Shawn Ryan.
The set comes with two extras whose appeal probably depends on how deeply into the backstory of the creation of the show the viewer wants to go. "Rampart" is a 30-minute documentary about the corruption scandal within the Los Angeles Police Department that inspired the series. It's pretty detailed and offers some perspective on how Ryan created and plotted the stories of Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and his strike team. "The Barn" is a seven-minute, elegiac look back at the show's set as it was being dismantled.
-- Rob Owen,
Post-Gazette TV editor
There's no question that the first, 13-episode season of "Dawson's Creek" was pretty perfect. Despite knee-jerk concerns at the time about the show's content -- Pacey romances a school teacher! -- at its root was a pretty innocent coming-of-age story about dreamer and wannabe filmmaker Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek). The show also deserves a place in TV history because it really was the series, moreso than "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," that put the now-defunct WB network on the map.
Too bad that the show ran off the rails the deeper you got into it. The same is true for this DVD set. While packaged in a handsome rectangular book -- similar to "The Shield," which not coincidentally, is from the same studio -- this complete series set ($119.95, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) doesn't give all that many add-ons beyond the extras that were included in individual season box sets. There's a 17-minute featurette on series creator Kevin Williamson where he describes how "Dawson is the dreamer in me" and an on-screen trivia quiz.
The set also contains a CD with five songs from the show, including the theme "I Don't Want to Wait" by Paula Cole," and there are deleted scenes (with a different actor as Dawson's dad) and an alternate original ending to the pilot (the revised ending works much better as a dramatic device). The boxed set packaging claims there's "optional commentary" on these scenes, which would have been interesting to hear, but those commentary tracks were nowhere to be found on the disc.
-- Rob Owen,
Post-Gazette TV editor
Usually companies release a TV series season by season and then a complete series box set follows, but "Ally McBeal: The Complete Series" ($199.98, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment) arrived simultaneously with the release of season one earlier this fall, a welcome change of strategy. This boxed set is pretty complete, the only missing elements are commentary tracks on episodes and the re-edited-for-half-hour time slot episodes that Fox dubbed "Ally" and briefly aired in 1999.
"Ally McBeal" introduced the world to actress Calista Flockhart (now on ABC's "Brothers & Sisters"), who calls Ally "an oddball," an apt description for a woman who regularly fantasized about getting arrows to the chest and seeing a dancing baby.
In the 37-minute featurette "Bygone Days," creator David E. Kelley discusses the show's eccentric characters, use of music and fantasy elements. Cast members reflect on the series, a zeitgeisty hit at the time it premiered. Several other featurettes appear to be from electronic press kits Fox made to promote the show.
The boxed set includes a CD with 12 tracks of music by the show's singer, Vonda Shepard, and there's also an episode of "The Practice" that features the Ally McBeal characters.
-- Rob Owen, Post-Gazette TV editor
Maybe this should have been called "Farscape: The Incomplete Series" because that's a better description of a show that ends on a cliffhanger that leaves the lead characters as a pile of goo. Granted, resolution came in the "Peacekeeper Wars" mini-series, but that is not included in this new set ($149.95, A&E Home Entertainment). This is a much slimmer profile boxed set than previous releases with scads of bonus features -- 15 hours' worth -- some of it new.
Among the extras: Audio commentaries on 31 of 88 episodes, bloopers, deleted scenes, an alternate version of the season two premiere, 12 featurettes on composing the show's music and behind-the-scenes interviews with many of the show's stars, including most of the supporting players. There's also a behind-the-scenes special called "Farscape Undressed" that's never been released on home video and a featurette called "Zhaan Forever," starring Virginia Hey, the actress who brought the blue-skinned character to life.
It's as comprehensive a set as one can imagine -- albeit without an ending to the story of astronaut John Crichton who gets lost in space and ends up living among a motley crew of aliens.
-- Rob Owen,
Post-Gazette TV editor
Whether you're a fan or a student of cutting-edge British comedy, your DVD library should contain a copy of "Blackadder Remastered -- The Ultimate Edition" ($79.98, BBC Video). The character of Edmund Blackadder may have ended up on the dung heap of Britain's noble history but Rowan Atkinson, who played the title role, and other actors and writers who created this enormously popular series that premiered in 1983, will be forever associated with it. The show has aired continuously on PBS in syndication.
The series boosted the careers of British comedy stars Hugh Laurie ("House"), Miranda Richardson ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire") and writers Ben Elton, Richard Curtis and Stephen Fry.
This six-disc collection contains all four seasons of the hilarious send-up of historical drama as Blackadder travels from the Middle Ages to the battlefields of World War I.
Students of comedy could really learn by listening to an in-depth conversation with Fry, who explains how the series evolved and improved and also does a great imitation of Atkinson's facial expressions.
Atkinson talks about the series while driving to Alnwick Castle, where the show filmed during its first year, and talks with John Lloyd, the director. Low-key and thoughtful, Atkinson muses about how much fun it was to perform Blackadder in front of a live studio audience, a practice that began during the show's second season. If you loved this series, you'll come to appreciate it even more after seeing these interviews.
-- Marylynne Pitz,
Post-Gazette staff writer
The target audience for Comedy Central's "Adult Swim in a Box" ($69.98, Turner Home Entertainment) is anyone who can find humor in a drug-addicted, rock star groupie clown or an angry gingerbread bodyguard that sounds suspiciously like hip-hop artist T-Pain. But in the snarky and satirical world of Adult Swim, we're all potential targets.
This seven-DVD collection features a mix of seasons from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," "Space Ghost Coast To Coast," "Moral Orel," Robot Chicken," "Metalocalypse" and "Sealab 2021." It also includes a collection of unaired pilots, (one of which introduces T-Pain's Gingerbread alter ego) and special features and deleted scenes from each series, giving longtime viewers the best of both worlds.
-- Deborah Todd,
Post-Gazette staff writer
"SpongeBob SquarePants: The First 100 Episodes" DVD set offers diehard Bikini Bottom fans a great behind-the-scenes look at the one "who lives in a pineapple under the sea."
From the "hydro-dynamic spatula with port and starboard attachments with turbo drive" from Episode One's "Help Wanted" to SpongeBob's cousin, "Stanley S. SquarePants," who "ruins everything he touches" in Episode 100, the 14-disc set ($99.99, Paramount Home Entertainment) has something for everyone.
In addition to the 100 episodes from Seasons One through Five, the hour's worth of extras include a 45-minute history of the cartoon, "Square Roots: The Story of SpongeBob SquarePants," in which experts, celebrities and the cartoon's creator, Stephen Hillenburg, discuss SpongeBob's genesis and popularity.
Parents should take note: The history extra is labeled "viewer discretion advised" because a segment briefly discusses the controversy that erupted when some claimed SpongeBob was gay.
The eight-minute extra "Life Lessons from Bikini Bottom" examines the philosophies of each main character and the bonus feature " 'Help Wanted': The Seven Seas Edition," is the "Help Wanted" cartoon done in multiple language snippets, including English, Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian and Chinese, reflecting SpongeBob's worldwide popularity. The last extra is the "Kick-Wham-Pow-Bob" music video.
-- L.A. Johnson,
Post-Gazette deputy Magazine editor
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