Spin City – Season One (Shout! Factory DVD)
Picture: C Sound: C+ Extras: C Episodes: C
Showing
that he could make lightning strike twice, Michael J. Fox gave DreamWorks one
of their first TV hits with the formulaic, safe and not so funny Spin City. Season
One has arrived on DVD from Shout! Factory and it has not aged all that
well. Fox plays a deputy mayor trying to
help out his Mayor boss (Barry Bostwick) from various disasters to keep him
popular, successful and in power. With a
cast that also includes Richard Kind, Michael Boatman, Alan Ruck, Connie
Britton and Alexander Chaplin, there is some chemistry, but it never worked for
me.
And now
you can see for yourself in all 24 half hours.
Of course, Fox’s unfortunate health problems eventually sabotaged the
run of the show, but he is in top form here, even if creator Gary David
Goldberg created a show that simply did not hold up to the ugly realities of
politics we were about to witness. The
result is that all dates quickly and seems more naïve than innocent.
The 1.33
X 1 image is softer than usual and though it was likely shot on film, it was
finished on analog videotape and it shows, along with all kinds of aliasing
errors. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is
better, but not by much and it is flat.
Extras include audio commentary tracks on select episodes, highlights of
a 1996 seminar on the show and a behind the scenes piece with interviews simply
dubbed The Spin.
- Nicholas Sheffo
