Law & Order: The First Year

One of the best shows ever finally on DVD!
Law & Order now enters its 13th season on NBC. For all those years no one's been able to get it on commercial recording, save the 6-episode VHS set that came out in 1999. But this wasn't satisfactory to represent a show with so much history.

Now you can get the first season of this hit drama on DVD! With its renewal through 2005, you'll probably be getting the "15th Year" on DVD soon. By then Law & Order will be the longest-running police show and second longest-running drama in the history of television.

With season one you get the first appearance of Lorraine Toussaint as the infamous Shambala Green (Subterranean Homeboy Blues), both the CBS original pilot with Roy Thinnes (Everybody's Favorite Bagman) and the NBC pilot with Steven Hill (Prescription for Death), moving episodes (Indifference), and mainly the beginnings of a show that would become one of the most popular dramas of the 1990's.

The original cast features George Dzundza as Sergeant Max Greevey, the amicable but...

Season 1 = Great acting, slower action, features missing.
The first season of Law and Order lacks the bang-bang short attention span plot advances and twists of the later years, but more than makes up for it by deeper plots and better acting, along with some nice background. Unfortunately, the DVD quality isn't what it could be, which is why this is 4 stars and not 5.

From season 3 or 4 on, the Law and Order formula came into full flower. Every 'donk-donk' signifies a quick advance in the plot as a year-long investigation and trial gets compressed in an hour, except for those delicious times when it reverses in a wild plot twist. Three spinoffs prove this works regardless of who is in the role. Season 1 isn't quite like that. For instance, it often meanders slowly, spending 4 or 5 minutes at the beginning actually witnessing the crime, having the cast walk down the street talking to each other rather than going from one interview to the next. (This actually gives some great background - you finally see the full precinct room and DAs...

A great television series finally arrives on DVD
One of tv's longest running and more critically acclaimed series is now available on DVD. "Law and Order: The First Year" collects the entire first season of this quality show. Featuring the show's original cast of characters (ADAs Ben Stone and Paul Robinette and Detectives Mike Logan and Max Greevey), the First Season contains classic "Ripped From the Headlines" styled episodes including "Subterranean Homeboy Blues" (about a woman who may or may not have shot a trio of black teenagers in self-defense), "By Hooker, By Crook" (which has Stone prosecuting a socialite/madam who is based upon the "Mayflower Madam" Sydney Barrows), and "Out of the Half-Light" (where the cops try to debunk a black teen's false accusations of rape at the hands of white police officers and prevent an Al Sharpton-inspired character from using the girl to advance his political adgenda).

Other original story episodes includes "Poison Ivy" (where Logan and Greevey investigate the death of an Ivy League college...

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