Sports Night: The Complete Series Boxed Set

Buena Vista Home Entertainment ($59.99)

Perhaps the best way to chart the course of ABC’s tragically short-lived Sports Night is to look back at some of the headlines it drew during its 1998-2000 career: “Sports Night makes you think” (Cincinnati Post); “Sitcom or Tragedy? High drama and low ratings at Sports Night” (Newsweek); “You Can Hate Sports, Sitcoms and Still Love Sports Night” (The Miami Herald); “Camera ready: the vibrant mix of visual and verbal makes Sports Night worth watching” (Sacramento Bee); “More viewers needed for Sports Night” (Cincinnati Post); “Sports Night Season Finale Is a Home Run, a Slam-Dunk, an Ace” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch); “Sports Night Deserves Another Season” (Denver Rocky Mountain News). Unlike the show within the show, Aaron Sorkin’s ingenious ensemble “dramedy” never got another season, because it never got more viewers. Because the viewers never got it. This was unfortunate at the time and still is. What’s fortunate now is that all 45 episodes, including the pilot, are available for your own personal marathon, minus commercials: no bonus material, I’m afraid, but still more than worth it. Watching Casey (Peter Krause), Dan (Josh Charles), Dana (Felicity Huffman), Isaac (Robert Guillaume), Natalie (the lovely and talented Sabrina Lloyd), Jeremy (Joshua Malina), and Sam (William H. Macy) three years later is bittersweet but better than ever.

This article appears in December 13 • 2002.

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