Newsradio: The Complete Series (Slim Packaging)

Paul Simms created a TV Series that (sadly)lasted only 97 episodes. The indisytry requirement for syndication is 100 episodes. This show is called "News Radio" and it makes "WKRP" look like "My Mother The Car." To begin with we have an ensemble cast that rivals any of the legendary casts in history (including "Friends", "The West Wing" and "Will & Grace") with outrageously funny writing that bordered on the insane from time to time- as did the characters themselves- and a set as brilliantly designed as "Cheers". There are episodes of this series that rival "Chukles Boites The Dust" as funniest epsiodes in history (Matthew Brock and his hysterical mispronounciation of Joey Buttafuco on the air; Jimmy James' heart attack, The Jumper,) It's almost a Bob Newhart style, where a rational and normal man is set into a group of luhnatics and expected to lead them.Two things occured to this show that held it back. The first was the untimely murder of one of it's stars, Phil Hartman and though they replaced him with Jon Lovgtiz, one of the fiunniest men in America, no one really fell into a pattern of how to write for him- his strengths weren;t utilized and where he was Hartman's best friend it's possible that the chemistry could never have worked anyway. The second was the Network who kept throwing in stupid tested elements, forcing 434 productions to do things to placate the American audience, thinking they would please as many as possible and subsequently dissapointing all. In Season 5 we had the addition of Future "gilmour Girls" star, ANdrea Plan B who dominated an Arc that caused me to stop watching the series while it aired. Then the addition of a tall handsome wino to whom Lisa got married pushed us away from the characters we'd grown to love and into worlds with characters we simply didn't like. For this, ther show loses a star.Despite this, it's well worth buyingthe series and watching the first four seaqsons over and over and over. Enjpoy Viki Lawrence- a remarkable talent, and Phil Hartmen, who is a lovable cipher, Steven Root and his remarkable comic timing, Then there is Andy Dick who is a blend of Andy Kaufman and David Schwimmer; his willingness to do anything to make us laugh and his knack for physical comedy. Joe Rogan, who would become famous for feeding goat entrails to idiot Americans on "Fear Factor" is an actor and comdeian of such brilliance that his chemistry with Andy Dick on this show was worthy of ruminating over possible ways to pair the two if not in "The Odd Couple" on Broadway, then some sit-com. one would never guess that the beef-cake brilliant actor Rogan and the skinmny, long fingerer Dick could have a Tracy/Hepburn or Newman/Redford chemistry, but they do.The show is full of mistakes, but it's a rare series that isn;t and watching a series upwards of ten times gives a critic the opportunity to do something no one of the production team could do: How many siblings did Matthew have? How many birthdays each year did Catherine Duke have? (It's like Helen CHappel's sister, "Wings", Lorraine who is then brought onto the series full time in season six and her name is Casey and came from San Francisco, not Maui.)There are many inside jokes with this show that must have begun withg the production team (certainly I'm not the only one who wished they would fired their cosume designer) but it became clear that our writers either epent a lot of time drinking or a lot of time discussing "Firefly" while playing Video Games. I'd guess that the writers room had no living plants and the coats stretched across chairs were denim or polar fleece and not Burberry, but these guys were brave and brilliant.So I place this one in the top ten of all time simply because half the erpisodes are brilliant. Some of the episodes were phones in, but they handled the motion picture schedules of Hollywoods finer actors, the murder of one of their best actors and a network who was fighting to learn that there IS no formula to creating and producing a hit sit-com; like all art, it is a miracle and it doesn';t always have to do with quality. This is why ALF was a hit and Stiudio 60 lasted only 24 episodes. George's Seurat never sold a painting in his lifetime and Norman Rockwell died a millionaire.As for the manty typos here I apologize: I suffer from a severe pns neuromuscular illness and to take the time to correct the errors would delay this review further- a review I've been meaning to write for more than a year.Secondly, buy this- gift this and you heard it here first: "Good times... good times..."

Haven’t seen this in years and it’s good to recap in old shoes

Good show! The cast is super talented and you get familiar with them pretty quickly... they run around acting silly and doing stuff that in real life would get them fired in a flash! They could never run a radio station and act that wacky at the same time! But it's funny!My favorite character is probably Bill, he has the radio voice and his mannerisms are hilarious! Catherine is gorgeous and I love the way she slaps the stuffings out of people! I didn't like Beth at first, but she grew on me and I started finding her quirkiness sort of charming - but she (along with Matthew) are probably the silliest out of the bunch! I get a kick of how Matthew does clumsy fall-downs at the beginning of most episodes! Dave and Lisa are the most level-headed out of the bunch, but they still do off-the-wall stuff - like Dave playing a Defender arcade game all night long before having to take an IQ test the next morning! Joe is the electrician and he runs around fixing stuff. Mr. James is the owner of the station and is probably my #2 favorite character on here - he says stuff off-the-cuff that you wouldn't expect that cracks me up every time!So it's silly - but a good show that I find myself watching around 3-4 times a week! Not every episode is family friendly, which is the only reason I can think of as to why it didn't do better in the TV ratings! Should have been a hit anyway! I think all-in-all this show is better than "Seinfeld" and "Friends" which were its competitors in the mid-90's. But everyone has their own opinion on that!I recommend this to adults that wants something funny and wacky to watch - it won't be disappointing!

Since the reviewers generally seem to agree the show is terrific, I won't address that here. I will add my two cents to the whole packaging debate. The first TV series released on DVDs were events. The packaging was huge, featuring full-color pull-out booklets with photos, reviews, interviews, etc. The DVDs played minutes-long introductions with theme music and highlight clips. The extras were extensive, with commentaries, making-of videos and deleted scenes. Those were great, but in general so 10-years-ago!Today's media companies know you are downloading their content. Some are doing it legally, while many are not. While some companies try to sue their customer base out of existence, others are apparently taking us at our word when we opine: "I wouldn't torrent these files if they made them available at a reasonable price."These discs are definitely made by and for today's peer-to-peer crowd. I've spent a fair amount of time in foreign countries where the US copyright law is less respected, and these discs look like they came right from one of the counterfeit markets I remember. Not the high-quality, hard to tell copies from Asia; these are the made-at-home DVDs you find in the Middle East and South America.The first two seasons are packaged on three discs with zero frills. There's no introduction screen, no play all feature, no episode description, not even a distinction between seasons 1 and 2. There's simply a 1-28 list of episode names with poor-quality still photos taken from random places in the episode. Inexplicably, S03E25 "The Injury" is added to the last disc of "Seasons 1 & 2."Season 3 adds some "special" features such as the ability to play all episodes and commentaries, but not all of the episodes even have commentary tracks on them. About half of the episodes have just one audio track which means a commentary track wasn't added. Maybe they tried to save money by paying the actors to comment on every other episode--who knows?Despite all this, don't get the idea that I look down on the packaging or the DVD features. There was a time I paid a large sum of money for the fluff (West Wing, Sopranos, I'm looking at you!), but now I "Fair Use" all of my purchased media directly to a NAS while the originals are packed away and safe from my children's hands. These discs are perfectly priced to transfer the media from Amazon to my house to my media server with as little fuss as possible.If you're looking for more than this, maybe you can convince the living members of the cast to get back together and film some specials. Clearly there's a market for that. They can throw in some color photos so that you have a booklet advertising the set you already bought.If you're fine with low-cost, no-frills, pop-in-the-dvd-and-watch, this is absolutely the best way to get NewsRadio back on your TV set. Enjoy!

Had to buy a multi region DVD player but was worth it - fantastic series. Thoroughly recommend to anyone who liked Frasier, Seinfeld, Home Improvements etc...This series is quite unique as it doesn’t delve into personal lives of characters - all situation comedy and very funny indeed!Watch it!

The mail screwed up the first order but this seller re-issued and made sure I got what I’d paid for.

I really like and recommend the show as it both funny and fast-paced but the case for the DVDs is flimsy and turned up crumpled

Excellent.

I dunno what people are complaining about the quality for... It's the native resolution. This show was never up-rezzed. That's a ridiculous thing to rate the product by.. I was relieved because I was worried I might be getting some garbage bootleg, but it's just what the show looked like lol. It's an obscure, tough to find show these days. You can't find it to stream anywhere and it's been a long time since you could.I was STOKED to find this. I'd looked in the past without luck. For the price, to get the entire series in one package is awesome.The discs did NOT come stacked like some reviews suggested, they are in individual cardboard sleeves inside the box. This is indicative of how obscure, dated, and uncirculated this product is. There's nothing wrong with it at all! It's more than sufficient protection.If you're a fan of the show and you've been looking for it, definitely jump on this while you can. You'll kick yourself if you don't.