I am – Hercules!!
A good day in DVD land! If I had a nickel for every email that asked when “NewsRadio” was coming out on DVD, I’d be the proud owner of a great many nickels! And for good reason: This long-dead series is far funnier than any “three-camera” sitcom in production.
“Newsradio” was masterminded from beginning to end by Paul Simms, who came out of two of the other all-time great TV-comedy franchises, NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman” and HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show.” Simms’ key writers on the NBC sitcom included fellow “Late Night” vet Joe Furey and “Saturday Night Live” alumnus Lewis Morton, who went on to “Futurama” and “Undeclared.”
The series launched in 1995, and appears to have been modeled on NBC’s just-departed megahit “Cheers,” with its central on-and-off workplace romance. Simms created the show with the intention of casting Dave Foley as the romantic lead, Phil Hartman as the mean guy and Andy Dick as the stupid guy. A dreamy 30-year-old Maura Tierney (the 40-year-old version now gets top-billing over at “ER”) plays Foley’s romantic interest.
My favorite supporting character is arguably the series’ most original: wily, eccentric and lovelorn multimillionaire WNYX station owner Jimmy James, on whose whims the other characters’ lives seemed to hinge. James was assayed by the great Stephen Root, who (among many, many other things) went on to covet a stapler in “Office Space” and launch the recording career of the Soggy Bottom Boys in “O Brother Where Art Thou.”
The DVD set appeals to one’s love of a deal. Twenty-nine episodes at $27.97 comes to about 97 cents per installment. And that includes a making-of doc, a blooper reel, and commentaries on 20 (!) of the episodes.
Simms supplies at least some of the commentary, so perhaps we’ll learn what became of him. His DVD contributions notwithstanding, he seemed to have fallen off the face of the planet following the “NewsRadio” series finale. (Could his disappearance have something to do with his apt description - in the pages of Rolling Stone - of NBC’s then-dominant Thursday-night lineup as a “shit sandwich”? Simms was at the time lobbying NBC for a Thursday-night timeslot! Imagine how he talks when he isn’t!)
Get a load of that hideous Andy-and-Aunt-Bea cover for the second-season “Andy Griffith Show” DVD set! You’d never guess that arguably the funniest sitcom of the 1960s lurks within!
Though Frances Bavier won her own Emmy during her final season of the show, nobody ever watched “The Andy Griffith Show” for Aunt Bea. The franchise belonged to Don Knotts, who won five Emmys for his epic portrayal of Mayberry’s hilariously insecure and high-strung deputy sheriff Barney Fife. (Note that two of those five Emmys were garnered for Knotts’ work in seasons one
and two.)
Knotts left the series after season five. It wasn’t his idea; Griffith kept telling the network and the studio that he would shut down the series after its fifth year, so Knotts signed a contract to make movies at Universal. When Griffith apparently changed his mind at the last minute, Knotts was already prepping for “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.”
But the “Andy Griffith Show” hatched in Don Knotts and Barney Fife a perfect combination of man and role. Knotts never earned an Oscar for “The Reluctant Astronaut” or “The Shakiest Gun in the West,” nor additional Emmys for his work on “Three’s Company.” “The Andy Griffith Show” never won an Emmy for Andy Griffith or Ron Howard and, in fact, became a trial to watch in its sixth and seventh seasons following Knotts’ departure, focusing too often on the wince-inducing exploits of local service-station attendant Goober Pyle.
You can order "Challenge of the Super-Friends" and “Super-Friends Volume Two” separately, but if you buy both you can take advantage of that sweet, sweet free super-saver shipping!
"Challenge of the Super-Friends" is the series that ABC ran in 16 first-run installments between Sept. 9 and Dec. 23, 1978. It installed Green Lantern, Flash and Hawkman permanently to their rightful places alongside Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman in the Justice League. It also apparently eliminated the presence of the Wonder Twins, Zan & Jayna. The set includes something called "Saturday, Sleeping Bags & Super Friends: A Retrospective.” Big-deal comic-book writers Geoff Johns (“JSA”) and Mark Waid (“Kingdom Come”) contribute audio commentaries to two episodes.
“Super Friends Volume Two” apparently contains the 16 “Super-Friends” half-hours that also aired on ABC between Sept. 9 and Dec. 23, 1978, immediately prior to the “Challenge of the Super-Friends” installments. The “Volume Two” episodes don’t feature Green Lantern, Flash or Hawkman, but do feature the Zan & Jayne characters introduced in 1977 on ABC’s “All-New Superfriends Hour.” (Though I can’t confirm it at the moment, this set seems to even contain “Invasion of the Brain Creatures,” “The Incredible Space Circus,” “Batman: Dead or Alive,” “Battle of the Gods,” “Journey Through Inner Space” and “The Rise and Fall of the Super-Friends,” episodes which apparently haven’t aired in decades.) The set also includes “Pajama-Rama: Super-Friends Retrospective” with the ubiquitous Kevin Smith and “guests” discussing the show.
Note that, though there were separate “Super-Friends” series that aired in 1973-1974, 1979-1980 and 1983-1986, none of them appear yet to have hit DVD.
More season-box DVD headed your way:
Last Week
Adventures of Pete & Pete 1.x
Cheers 5.x
Clarissa Explains It All 1.x
Golden Girls 2.x
Monarch of the Glen 3.x
Scrubs 1.x
Seinfeld 4.x
Six Feet Under 1/2/3.x
Six Feet Under 3.x
May 24
Airwolf 1.x
The Andy Griffith Show 2.x
Baa Baa Black Sheep 1.x
Batman: The Animated Series Vol. 3
The Batman 1.x Vol. 1
Chapelle’s Show (Uncensored) 2.x
Combat 4.x
The Dick Van Dyke Show: The Complete Series
Fat Actress 1.x
The Job 1.x
Law & Order 3.x
M*A*S*H 8.x
NewsRadio 1/2.x
Samurai Jack 1/2.x
Samurai Jack 2.x
Speed Racer Vol. 3
Super-Friends, Volumes 1 & 2
Voyage to the Planets and Beyond
May 31
Danger Mouse 1/2.x
Dark Shadows Vol. 18
Dukes of Hazzard 3.x
Home Movies 2.x
Moonlighting 1/2.x
The Rifleman Vol. 4
The Tomorrow People 1/2.x
June 7
Davey and Goliath Vol. 1
The Dead Zone 3.x
Degrassi Junior High 2.x
Dragnet 1967 1.x
Father of the Pride 1.x
Frasier 5.x
Frasier 1/2/3/4/5/11.x
Home Improvement 2.x
I Love Lucy 1.x
Lois & Clark 1.x
MacGyver 2.x
Newlyweds Nick & Jessica 2/3.x
Quincy 1/2.x
Rescue Me 1.x
Sanford & Son 6.x
The Sopranos 5.x
Too Close For Comfort 2.x
Wanted: Dead or Alive 1.x
Wonder Woman 3.x
June 14
Good Neighbors 1/2/3.x
Highlander: The Raven 1.x
The King of Queens 4.x
The League of Gentlemen 2.x
The League of Gentlemen 3.x
Little House on the Prairie 8.x
Northern Exposure 3.x
Rambo, Vol. 1
Rambo, Vol. 2
Reno 911 2.x
Rosemary & Thyme 1.x
Saved by the Bell II 3.x
Tilt 1.x
Two's Company 3.x
Walker: Texas Ranger 9.x
June 21
Bewitched 1.x
Oz 5.x
Tabitha 1.x
June 28
The Daily Show: Indecision 2004
The Doris Day Show 1.x
Game Over 1.x
Homicide 7.x
House of Eliott 1.x
La Femme Nikita 3.x
Ren & Stimpy 3.x
Spencer For Hire: The Movie Collection
A Touch of Frost 6.x
The Twilight Zone 3.x
July 5
Fantastic Four 1.x
Monk 3.x
Starship Troopers 1.x
Tour of Duty 3.x
July 12
Butterflies 1.x
Hercules 6.x
Hunter 2.x
The Nanny 1.x
Sealab 2021 3.x
Tales From the Crypt 1.x
Titus 1/2.x
Wire in the Blood 1.x
Wire in the Blood 2.x
July 19
All Creatures Great & Small
Cleopatra 2525 1.x
Dead Like Me 2.x
Def Poetry 3.x
Earth 2 1.x
Laguna Beach 1.x
Lost in Space 3.x Vol. 2
Saved by the Bell 5.x
Sliders 4.x
July 26
America's Funniest Home Videos, Vol. 1
The Brady Bunch 2.x
Cold Feet 3.x
Errol Morris' First Person: The Complete Series
Dark Shadows Vol. 19
Gilligan's Island 3.x
Mary Tyler Moore Show 2.x
Remington Steele 1.x
Silk Stalkings 3.x
Star Trek: Enterprise 2.x
3rd Rock From the Sun 1.x
August 2
The Cosby Show 1.x
August 9
Columbo 3.x
Dallas 3.x
Greatest American Hero 3.x
McCloud 1/2.x
McMillan & Wife 1.x
Profit 1.x
Roswell 3.x
Thundercats 1.x Vol. 1
August 16
'Allo 'Allo 3.x
The Simpsons 6.x
Undeclared 1.x
August 23
Boy Meets World 3.x
Codename: Kids Next Door, File Two
1st & 10 1.x
1st & 10 2.x
Kung Fu 3.x
Life As We Know It 1.x
The OC 2.x
Once and Again 1.x
Once and Again 2.x
Six Feet Under 4.x
21 Jump Street 3.x
August 30
Chef 1/2/3.x
Garfield Vol. 4
Nip/Tuck 2.x
Roseanne 1.x
The Saint 1.x
September 6
Lost 1.x
September 13
SCTV Vol. 4
September 20
Crime Story 2.x
Desperate Housewives 1.x
October 4
Three's Company 5.x
