Review of Caroline In The City: The Complete Series 2 (Three Discs)

Introduction

What can I say about Season Two of Caroline In The City that I haven`t already said about Season One? That`s the problem. What can I say?

When you`ve reviewed the first season of a continuing series, you`ve pretty much covered all the interesting side facts you`ve discovered about the show, so you`re forced to actually go over the contents of the disc - which upsets the spoilerphobes in the readership, so you can`t really win.

Caroline In The City is a charming Friends/Frasieresque American comedy series about Caroline Duffy (Back To The Future`s Lea Thompson), a newspaper strip-cartoonist, her ex-fiance Del (Eric Lutes), her waspish colourist Richard (Malcolm Gets) and her best friend Annie (Amy Pietz). In this second series, Caroline is benefitting from the merchandising of her "Caroline In The City" comic strip, but her private life leaves a lot to be desired.

Having broken up with Del between the end of last season and this one, Caroline falls for a vet treating her cat Salty. Richard has wound up in Paris broken hearted at losing Caroline to Del and Annie is getting audited by the tax people.

Season Two features guest appearances from "Frasier" stars David Hyde Pierce and Dan Butler, Mark Feuerstein, George Segal, Helen Slater, Judd Hirsch (from "Taxi"), John Byner, Elizabeth Ashley and Dame Julie Andrews.

The second season loses none of the charm of the first season, although the ups and downs of the characters` relationships can be rather trying. Season Two is generally a downward trend as characters wind up with the wrong people (if you`re an incurable romantic), but there are still another two seasons to go before things sort themselves out (or not.)

I don`t know whether I should mention this, but having looked at the discs and checked them against tv.com, Revelation have again chosen to put the episodes in production order rather than transmission order which makes for continuity errors which they have again highlighted in the extras.

Video

As with the previous season, Revelation have done an excellent job of transferring the episodes. Presented in the original 4:3, colours and contrast are excellent.

Audio

The sound is in Dolby Digital 2.0.

Features

The discs do not carry subtitles, but there are episode synopses, a photo gallery and a collection of the title sequence cartoons. A textual continuity error list highlights Revelation`s erroneous production ordering of the series rather than the transmission order. Ooops.

Conclusion

A charming series, but once again Revelation has shot itself in the foot by choosing to author the discs in production order rather than transmission order (leading to some continuity problems). Whether the set, already on sale, is recalled and reauthored depends on anybody else noticing.