Some old TV series are getting new life on DVD

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 10, 2004 | by Chris Hicks Deseret Morning News

This is quite the week for old TV series in new DVD box sets:

-- "SCTV Network 90: Volume 1" (Shout! 1981-82, not rated, $89.98, five discs). This collection of shows from the "SCTV Network 90" program -- NBC's expanded 90-minute version of the syndicated 30- minute "Second City TV" -- features Canadian comics John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Catherine O'Hara and Dave Thomas in skits that spoof (and sometimes blend together) various TV shows, commercials or just off-the-wall bits with wacky characters.

As is often the case with shows like this ("Saturday Night Live," anyone?), some sketches are better than others, and young audiences may not get many of the points of reference for this 23-year-old show. But the members of this septet are so funny, you'll laugh anyway.

Highlights here include "Taxi Driver" starring Gregory Peck (Flaherty), a blending of Andy Griffith and Merv Griffin (Dave Thomas), a takeoff on "Jeopardy!" (Levy as Alex Trebeck, O'Hara as a clueless teen), and regular characters the McKenzie Brothers (Thomas and Moranis), Sammy Maudlin (Levy), Count Floyd (Flaherty), Edith Prickley (Martin), Johnny LaRue (Candy), etc. There are also musical guests, and they participate in skits, including Roy Orbison, The Tubes, Dr. John and Levon Helm.

Also included is an HBO special, an hour-plus reunion of most of the "SCTV" players (except the late Candy, of course, and Moranis, who was ill; Martin Short is also here -- but he's not in the shows, as he joined the cast for its second season). They reminisce with emcee Conan O'Brien, and some of their stories are hysterical.

Extras: Full frame, nine episodes (60-70 minutes each), audio commentaries (by Flaherty and Levy), making-of featurettes, interviews, tribute to Candy, HBO special, chapters, 24-page booklet.

-- "Just Shoot Me!" (Columbia/TriStar, 1997-98, not rated, $39.95, four discs). High-principled Maya (Laura San Giacomo), a serious journalist, reluctantly goes to work for her father, Jack (George Segal), a superficial millionaire who owns a high-rolling fashion magazine called Blush. They've been estranged for some time, and he's now married to one of her former classmates!

Rounding out the ensemble at the magazine are Jack's personal assistant Finch (David Spade); the photographer who specializes in supermodels, Elliot (Enrico Colantoni); and former supermodel Nina Van

Horn -- deliciously played by Wendie Malick, who steals every scene she's in.

This show is pretty funny right out of the gate, and the actors play very well off of each other. The box set includes the first season, which consisted of just six episodes, and the entire second season.

Extras: Full frame, 31 episodes, audio commentary, making-of featurette, photo gallery, chapters.

-- "Quantum Leap" (Universal, 1989, not rated, $59.98, three discs). Scott Bakula stars in this sci-fi comedy-drama, which places more emphasis on character and story than fantasy. He's Sam Beckett, a physicist who finds himself "leaping" into other people's bodies in various historical time periods, where he has to "make things right" - - even if it means altering history. Each episode ends with his landing in the new body he'll occupy during the next show.

In the two-episode pilot, Sam, who can't fly, finds himself inside the body of an Air Force test pilot, while other episodes find him as a college professor, a boxer, a veterinarian, a Mafia hit man, a black chauffeur in the segregated South, a high school nerd and a private eye.

Upon his arrival, he's never quite sure who or where he is, however, so a colleague (Dean Stockwell) acts as a holographic guide. Guest stars in this season include a young Teri Hatcher, Nick Cassavetes, Claudia Christian and Jason Priestley.

At the end of this season's last episode, Sam becomes a woman in a bubble bath! Can't wait for "Season 2."

Extras: Full frame, nine episodes (including two-part pilot), making-of featurette, trivia about each episode, subtitle options (English, French, Spanish), chapters.

-- "Who's the Boss?" (Columbia/TriStar, 1984-85, not rated, $39.95, three discs). If you can get past this show's extreme case of the "cutes," there are a few chuckles to be had as macho former baseball player Tony Micelli (Tony Danza) goes to work as a housekeeper for harried career woman Angela Bower (Judith Light). Tony is a widower with a young tomboy daughter (Alyssa Milano, who has since grown up to play a sexy witch on "Charmed"), and Angela is a divorcee with an even younger son (Danny Pintauro).

The scene-stealer in this ensemble is Katherine Helmond as Angela's mother, Mona, who typically drops the best one-liners and plays the character as an older woman trying to recapture her youth. The hilarious Helmond had practice on "Soap" a few years earlier, and these days can be seen in the occasional role of Deborah's mother on "Everybody Loves Raymond."

Extras: Full frame, 22 episodes, strung-together clips, chapters.

-- "Tour of Duty : The Complete First Season" (Columbia/ TriStar,1987-88, $49.95, five discs). This show is, more or less, an update of the 1960s World War II show "Combat," with the action and sensibilities updated to 1967 for Vietnam. And while some episodes briefly address the more complex issues of this particular war, mostly the show is gung-ho and gritty action, with such familiar Vietnam touchstones as ambushes, firefights, rocket attacks, napalm, land mines, Viet Cong tunnels, POWs, etc.