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by Nick Redman
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| Since their inception, DVDs have been primarily focused on features. Recently, television is becoming equally in demand by DVD customers. Supplementary materials for television programming have also expanded, in some cases, equaling that found on feature films. Here are some recent releases that may be of particular interest to directors. |
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One of the best new shows on television, exhibiting a consistently high standard is The Shield, demonstrating ably that TV is still capable of bucking formula trends as well as developing an engrossing character study of believable, flawed, corrupt and corruptible human beings. Airing Tuesday nights on the FX cable channel, The Shield is now in its third season and showing no sign of buckling under the strain of week-in week-out assembly line production. Season 1 (2002) and Season 2 (2003) have been issued by Fox Home Entertainment in handsomely produced DVD box sets that preserve the show's sharp-edged originality. Featuring Michael Chiklis as Vic Mackey, The Shield details a police station house, "The Farm," in an unspecified, tough, working-class suburb of Los Angeles. Infested by gangs, the area is in sore need of "cleaning up," so enter Mackey and his tactical team of bad-ass plainclothesmen. Mackey doesn't exactly play by the rules, or rather he invents a few of his own in his preferred methodology of torture, beatings and other assorted practices not endorsed in the police training manual. Unpredictable in its plotting, with the line dazzlingly blurred between right and wrong, good and evil, The Shield takes Mackey and his crew down desperately dark and blind alleys as they grope their way toward a light that isn't always clearly defined. The terrific cast is filled out by Walton Goggins as Shane, Mackey's right-hand man, Catherine Dent as "Danny Sofer," a uniformed beat cop trying to get through the day; CCH Pounder as detective Claudette Wyms who has Mackey's number; Jay Karnes as "Dutch" Wagenbach and Benito Martinez as the slimy commander "politicking" his way to the top. Created and co-written by Shawn Ryan, the show has a gritty handheld realism and a desaturated look that perfectly describes the world the characters inhabit. Several directors, including Clark Johnson, Scott Brazil and Guy Ferland regularly helm, but Gary Fleder, John Badham, Scott Winant and Paris Barclay have also appeared on the roster. The DVDs are awash with audio commentaries from the directors, most of the principal cast and crew, as well as making-of featurettes and deleted scenes. The extra content is nice, but this is really about the show. In an era of un-engaging, cynical formula pap, The Shield takes us by the scruff of the neck and shows us what is possible when fresh talent fearlessly takes a stand.
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For yet another take on law enforcement, albeit a more cerebral and literary view, there's MPI Home Video's DVD set of The Return of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett as perhaps the most faithful interpretation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's brilliant detective. MPI has done a much better job on transferring these episodes to DVD than they did on their previously released The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. And there's more in the way of extras for fans of the series to delight in. Director John Madden, who would receive nominations from the DGA, the Motion Picture Academy and BAFTA for his 1999 direction of Shakespeare in Love, provides an illuminating, and never elementary, audio commentary on his episode for this popular Granada television series that made its way to America via PBS. In addition to the 11 adventures found in this set, there's an extended interview with Edward Hardwicke who took over in the role of Dr. Watson from David Burke as well as extensive production notes. MPI seems to be the home for Holmes, as they've also recently released remastered versions of the beloved Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce series of films from the 1940s. This three-volume set features an introduction by Robert Gitt, preservation officer at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, rare footage of Arthur Conan Doyle, production notes and photo galleries as well as audio commentary from Holmes expert David Stuart Davies.
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A groundbreaking show in its day, Kung Fu (1972), has just been released by Warner Home Video. The complete first season, along with the "pilot" TV movie that prefigured the series, is prettily boxed in an appropriately tasteful "zen" package. David Carradine stars as Kwai-Chang Caine, a Chinese-American schooled as a boy in the ritualistic Shaolin Temple. There he learns the mystical ways of the ancient East, along with some spectacular martial arts techniques that, on occasion, we all wish we possessed. Emerging from the temple, Caine is doomed to wander the America of the old West, searching for lost family members and hoping to find peace of mind. Kung Fu lives large in the memories of those of us who were young enough to be enamored of its "message," and the show's highly unusual, stylized visuals were quite unlike anything else around. Created and co-written by Ed Spielman, and (mostly) directed by Jerry Thorpe, the show's unique tone set a very high level. The extras in the box set feature interviews with the show's writers, and director Jerry Thorpe offers a number of heartfelt comments in delineating how a show goes through hoops before finding its niche. The theme music, (and episode scores) by the late composer Jim Helms are also vivid, stark, beautiful reminders of why this program was so popular a cult item.
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HBO brings us the complete first season of Larry David's witty self-portrait, Curb Your Enthusiasm, which debuted as a one-hour comedy special called Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm, a faux documentary about Larry's failed attempt to mount his own standup comedy special for HBO. Larry David's sense of humor is one of those things I suppose that people either love or hate, there's apparently no in between. I fall into the former category, although it's difficult not to wring one's hands with embarrassed despair over Larry's misbegotten antics. Semi-improvised, the scenes and narrative are decided upon, then the dialogue is brought to life on the spot, Enthusiasm is a riotous nightmare of ordinary, everyday situations as experienced by a multimillionaire comedian living in Brentwood. The cast is fantastic; Larry himself — Jeff Garlin as the comedian's long-suffering manager — Cheryl Hines as Larry's pampered bitch-goddess wife — as well as various and sundry "guest artists" including Richard Lewis playing himself as Larry's pal and Mary Steenburgen who Larry secretly lusts after — are marvelous standouts in what is probably the funniest ensemble on television. Holding this motley crew together is Robert B. Weide, who directed the pilot special and six episodes of the first season, and who I think is a genius in his simple ability to make this chaos seem the most natural thing in the world. Additional episodes were directed by David Steinberg, Larry Charles, Andy Ackerman and Bryan Gordon. The audio commentaries from Weide, David, Garlin and Hines are a hoot because they are as awkward and weird as the show, especially as the epicenter of the maelstrom, David, clearly doesn't want to be there.
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Remember those heady days of the late '70s and early '80s when the miniseries ruled? When a "special event" deemed too big for a single TV movie had to stretch to three or four. Well, The Thorn Birds (1983), one of the last of those high-end mammoth moviethons has just been issued on DVD by Warner Home Video. Boasting the kind of cast you couldn't assemble now for love or money, The Thorn Birds pits Richard Chamberlain, Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Simmons, Richard Kiley, Earl Holliman, Ken Howard, Mare Winningham, Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown against each other in an Australian face-off that threatens to blow the small screen apart. Brought to hyperbolic realization by the powerhouse team of David L. Wolper, Stan Margulies and director Daryl Duke, adapted from the bestseller by Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds is 487 minutes of greed, longing, lust, despair, poverty and fabulous wealth, glued in place by Henry Mancini's typically memorable music. Towering above everything and everyone, at least for the first episode, is Barbara Stanwyck, a screen colossus so powerful, so dominant, that the program can't recover from her enforced absence. Worth watching for its larger-than-the-biggest-life-you-can-imagine indulgences, The Thorn Birds is an elegant and flashy reminder of the size and scope television could attain when the ambition was there. A pleasant documentary on its making accompanies the program on the two-DVD set.
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In closing we'll time-travel back 40 years, which is correct and proper when dealing with Doctor Who, a lord of interstellar dimension-bending who has been inhabited by a number of different actors in his long life. In the earliest times, he was played by cranky veteran William Hartnell, and his black-and-white encounters with his arch-foes the Daleks were certainly the stuff of '60s children's nightmares. Happily preserved in a DVD capsule, the 1964 adventure The Dalek Invasion of Earth has just materialized courtesy of BBC Video. Six half-hour episodes, plus a battalion of special features featuring contemporary and archival interviews with the creators and an audio commentary from director Richard Martin, fill out a neat memento of an innocent, space-addicted time when we all the thought the moon was made of cheese and we didn't care that the Daleks were made of foam rubber, plastic and cardboard. Ah nostalgia, where would we be without it?
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