A smart and comprehensive guide to shows you can buy or rent
5000 Episodes and No Commercials: The Ultimate Guide to TV Shows on DVD 2007. By David Hofstede. Back Stage Books/Watson-Guptill, 346 pp., $14.95, paperback
By Janice Harayda
I used to spend hours at the video store trying to remember what I’d heard about new arrivals. Now I spend hours on the Netflix site trying to remember what I’ve heard.
David Hofstede offers partial relief for people who have the kind of memory I do, the kind that stalls out in the “new releases” section. His 5000 Episodes and No Commercials combines TV criticism and history in a smart and comprehensive guide to shows you can buy or rent on DVD, all listed alphabetically from The A-Team to Xena: Warrior Princess.
A television critic and historian, Hofstede offers some nice extras with each listing, including a “Great Moments” section that descibes highlights and tells where to find them. (“Julia misses the pan when she flips her potatoes” appears on “The Potato Show” on The French Chef.) And his pithy and well-informed opinions help to set his book apart from the many television encyclopedias you can find at most bookstores and libraries.
Hofstede is neither a mindless cheerleader for bad television nor one of those ponderous academics who’s always reading deep sociological meanings into Punky Brewster. He strikes just the right balance between fandom and detachment as he analyzes the merits of the various editions of Star Trek or the abysmal editing of the DVD of the first season of The Cosby Show. And he’s not above quoting other TV critics if it will keep his book lively. Variety predicted that Gilligan’s Island had no future, and a critic for United Press International said of the show: “It’s impossible that a more inept, moronic or humorless show has ever appeared on the home tube.”
5000 Episodes and No Commercials has a few drawbacks. One is that it lists the stars of shows only on a hit-or-miss basis. The entry for The Sopranos is typical: It doesn’t mention James Gandolfini but does list Steve Buscemi Michael Imperioli, who offer commentary on Season 3. The book also omits, inexplicably, some classic shows that Amazon.com lists as having been available on DVD for years, such as the comic 1960s spy series Get Smart (with its famous shoe phone). And it has no listings for series that came out on DVD after the book was completed, including Saint Elsewhere.
Even so, 5000 Episodes and No Commercials is a font of ideas for viewing and gift-giving. If you need a 50th anniversary present for your grandparents, you could do worse than to leaf through it for hits of their youth, such as The Ed Sullivan Show or This Is Your Life. And you might make a baby boomer smile by wrapping up The Best of the Mickey Mouse Club or a season of Leave It to Beaver as a 60th birthday gift. Just print out this review or bookmark this site now if you’ll need such a gift later this year. If your memory fails you at the video store, you don’t expect to remember the title of this book, do you?
Best line: Many entries offer sharp social commentary along with insightful criticism. Here’s an example from the listing for The West Wing: “Aaron Sorkin’s take on the Josiah Barlet presidency is certainly idealistic, which in Hollywood means Democratic, but The West Wing transcends party lines with characters that even a Conservative can embrace. If Barlet actually ran for office, a lot of GOP loyalists would switch parties.”
Worst line: Hofstede describes the birth of Little Ricky on the I Love Lucy show as “a seminal moment in TV history.” True statement, bad pun.
Recommended if … you’re looking for a gift for a friend who shuffles his or her Netflix queue compulsively.
Publication: November 2006 www.watsonguptill.com
© 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
