Newsradio Season Three DVD is now available...
It took NBC/Uni quite a while to get Newsradio DVDs in the pipeline, and when they did, series creator Paul Simms supposedly pulled it out of the pipeline for a while to add extras, but they're here, and they're wonderful. Season 3 just became available
, and Season 1 & 2 have been available for some time.Newsradio was an astonishingly underappreciated show in it's time. It had a loyal and significant following, but it was overshadowed by Seinfeld in the press and on NBC. Seinfeld was a game-changing show, but Newsradio may have been the second best sitcom of the 90s.
On last week's Sound of Young America, Andy Daly talked about how difficult it is to be a great straight man. Dave Foley's effortless work on Newsradio made it look easy. The best TV straightman since Newhart, says I. It's tough to get laughs working against the wackos, and Foley did it consistently.
And that's to say nothing of the wonderful work done by the rest of the cast. Phil Hartman was of course the most heralded among them, but everyone else deserves kudos as well. Andy Dick did the most consistently excellent work of his life as dim-witted cub reporter Matthew. Stephen Root was stunningly fantastic as the bombastic boss Mr. James. Maura Tierney and Khandi Alexander both got tremendous humor out of their sometimes-straight-woman, sometimes-nutty-woman roles. Even final season additions Jon Lovitz and Patrick Warburton distinguished themselves.
I had the chance to drive Dave Foley around for SF Sketchfest 2006, and we talked a bit about the show. He described it as the best job he'd ever had, and a joy to be a part of. It was certainly a joy to watch.
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posted by Jesse Thorn at Wednesday, March 01, 2006
4 Comments:
Fantastic news, Jesse! I've got the first set and have been waiting for the rest to be released. To have the opportunity to see Jimmy James use Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" as the theme song for his presidency again is worth the price.
Newsradio is the only long-running series I ever watched from beginning to end. There's a few (like say, Arrested Development) that were cut down before their time, but this one was special. I watched the first episode because of Hartman and Foley, and I was hooked for the rest of the run.
One nice thing about seasons two and three is that there aren't any of the random extras walking through the scene that inexplicably populated much of season one.
Yeah, Simms talks about that in the commentaries. There were always so many things going on in each episode anyway that it became pointless to have extras.
Newsradio was and still is a fabulously entertaining body of work. The manic plot lines are dizzying in a refreshing way and the fun everyone is having is pretty undeniable.
This was truly a brilliant cast. Foley and Hartman won places in my heart forever and meeting Foley this year at Sketchfest was definitely a dream come true. I've never seen another show like this and I doubt I ever will.
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