Wednesday, October 1, 2008

MY SHOW IS ON, MY SHOW IS ON: 10 years ago this week, a little piece of television called "Sports Night: The Apology" aired (YouTube has it), and in honor of that momentous occasion, the good folks at Shout! Factory have come out with a new edition of the complete series. Sure, many of us own the original version of the DVDs, but this is probably worth it for fans in any event, as it includes a bunch of new stuff:
  • Cleaned up transfers and new menus.
  • 8 Commentary tracks (on "Pilot," "Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee," "Small Town," "Sally," Eli's Coming," "Kafelnikov," "The Local Weather," and "Quo Vadimus")--featuring in various combinations 4 of the 6 principal actors (Huffman and Guillaume do not participate), several recurring actors, Sorkin, directors Tommy Schlamme and Bob Berlinger, and editor Janet Ashikaga. (The two I've listened to are both great--in the Pilot commentary, Sorkin reveals he used to bartend with Peter Krause and Camryn Manheim--that's a bar I'd like to go to.)
  • Gag Reels
  • A featurette with new interviews with the whole cast except Sabrina Lloyd.
  • A featurette profiling the similarities between Sports Night on CSC and SportsCenter
  • A separate interview with just Sorkin and Schlamme.
  • A booklet with an episode guide, trivia, and the plan for the show's very complicated set.
Worth the upgrade? Maybe not on its own, but my old disks tend to skip and have horrendous quality. Worth buying if you haven't seen the whole series? Absolutely.

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