tv on dvd

If there’s one thing that makes this 20-year-old sitcom worth revisiting — and there is only the one thing — it’s its value as an ethnographic specimen. What’s all the more startling is that such a thing is unlikely ever to be said in the vicinity of a Tony Danza vehicle again. But look how … more…

Upstart millionaire entrepreneur buys ancestral estate of upper-crust but destitute patrician. Gently witty class comedy ensues, as only the BBC can produce. Over the course of 20 half-hour episodes spread over three years — 1979 to 1981 — Richard DeVere (Peter Bowles) and Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton (Penelope Keith) spar over matters of taste, propriety, and the … more…

Delightfully bizarre, in a pecularily British way, and a spectacular hoot, Dame Edna Everage in a singular woman: Australian housewife, megastar, and mistress of a marvelous charisma, as she herself will inform you given half a chance. She’s also a huge put-on, of course, alter ego of comedian Barry Humphries and something of an institution … more…

Sixteen-year-old Sora does what lots of kids only fantasize about: she runs away and joins the circus. Arriving on a whim from Japan, she lucks into an audition with the Kaleido Stage, a kind of Ringling Brothers meets Cirque du Soleil, an amazing coincidence, considering that snagging an audition was precisely what brought her to … more…

Who on earth invented the term “reality show”? There’s nothing “real” about them: they’re game shows, manipulated, artificial situations in which people compete for monetary reward. The worst of the breed are the “dating” ones, which verge on prostitution, and surely the worst of that bunch is cable network Bravo’s Boy Meets Boy. Positioned as … more…

An excellent example of cultural differences rendering a story nearly incomprehensible. Oh, sure, the behavior of the characters onscreen are easily described — the mansionful of teenaged girls hang out and talk about boys and cook meals together and do various other everyday tasks of no consequence. They even bathe together and compare the size … more…

It’s one of the most anticipated selections from Masterpiece Theater to hit DVD, and it was well worth the wait. In 1897, British army major Sinclair Yeates (Peter Bowles) resigns his commission to accept the post of Resident Magistrate in West Ireland, and while his beloved Philippa (Doran Godwin) is happy to make the move … more…

Blame HBO and its hugely successful Six Feet Under for starting a fad in undead hip. Not quite a ripoff, the Showtime series Dead Like Me nevertheless spins a cynical, unsentimental angle on mortality and nondenominational religious fantasy into something attempting insight on contemporary attitudes about life and death, and manages to hit every imaginable … more…

Is it churlish to suggest that one of the most beloved and popular dramas currently on television is really kind of dull? The domestic and romantic adventures of the Gilmore girls — 32-year-old Lorelai (Lauren Graham: Seeing Other People) and her 16-year-old daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel: Tuck Everlasting) — are deliberately positioned as “family programming,” … more…

Michael J. Fox’s introductions to his favorite episodes of this ABC sitcom highlight perhaps the most important aspect of this 2-disc set: Spin City may well constitute his last live-action performances. In the recently shot video that precedes each episode, it’s obvious his Parkinson’s palsy has advanced to the point where acting would be difficult … more…