The Beginning of the TV Shelf

One of the wonderful things about the advent of DVD is the number of full seasons and full series that have come onto the home movie market, sure there was VHS releases but it just wasn't the same. I have an incredible number of Television on DVD titles, from both sides of the pond. This regular thing will deal more the television stuff I've been watching and making my way through.

A quick catch up with Christmas. I got a few titles. NewsRadio Season Four, Robot Chicken Season Two and Saturday Night Live: The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse (all on R1, these seem unlikely to recieve a British release).

NewsRadio Season Four is the third of the NewsRadio DVD releases and ran the 1997-1998 season, notable for the fact it was Phil Hartman's last. The series is funny from start to finish and the show clearly didn't give a damn about attracting an extra audience anymore so they just had funny. Bill (Hartman) is playing a piano for a number of the episodes. Very funny stuff, now I need to decide whether I should get the Phil Hartman-less Season Five

Robot Chicken Season Two, a show for Adult Swim created by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich as some great little bits but isn't as instantly memorable as the first season. Hogan's Heroes (featuring Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan) and Captain Planet are probably two of my favourite bits, pretty darn good rather then exceptional as an whole though.

Saturday Night Live: The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse is the brainchild of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog creator Robert Smigel is at times hilarious, the most brilliant animated bits are of course the Ambigously Gay Duo (picture above and voiced by Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell), The Michael Jackson cartoon, Saddam and Bin Laden, The New Adventures of Mr. T, Sexual Harrarsment and You and Shazzang are all hilariously funny. Recommended cause there's also about an hour of extra cartoons.

A couple of DVDs I've been watching since Christmas...

Lost Season Three is a great season after the sometimes clumsy and lacklustre second season. The episode features a lot of memorable twists (including the last scene in the last episode) and some great characters in Ben, Juliette and Desmond (who are all main characters this season). It's like what the first season was: Gripping from start to finish, plus you finally learn how Locke ended up in a wheelchair and many other little things.

St. Elsewhere Season One (file under What I'm Currently Working my way through) is an amazing medical drama (with an often quirky nature) that began in 1982 and featured an amazing cast including William Daniels, Howie Mandel, G.W. Bailey, Christina Pickles, David Morse and Denzel Washington, I'm only 5 episodes in and I'm enjoying it lots. The fourth episode "Cora and Arnie" featuring Doris Roberts and Tim Robbins is the first truly brilliant episode of the series and I very much recommended. On a note Tim Robbins is deliciously vile and I wish one of the doc's would punch him in the face.