Review of Northern Exposure: Season 5

Introduction

`Northern Exposure`, originally broadcast by Channel 4 as part of the their US TV stable, was an offbeat, almost cultish show that seemed to resonate well with a significant British fanbase. Running from 1990 to 1995, and set in the fictional Alaskan town of Cicely, Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow) was the fractious New York doctor forced to repay the state for putting him through school by serving as a physician to the isolated Northern community. Cue culture and personality clashes as the doc adjusted to his new life among the oddball denizens.

The fifth season, originally running between 1993 and 1994 and consisting of 24 episodes, is available now from Universal`s Playback label.

Video

Presented in TV broadcast standard 4:3, the set is a little grainy and sufferers from a spot of artefacting, but it doesn`t look half bad for a show getting on for 15 years old with this particular season. Perfectly watchable, even if it isn`t at the top-end of TV-sourced DVD transfers.

Audio

Dolby Digital 2.0. While the stereo track is good, clear and free from audible defects (with a great theme tune), there are no subtitles; an all too common side effect of no-frills DVD releases.

Features

7-minutes worth of deleted scenes from three separate episodes.

Conclusion

The fifth season of `Northern Exposure`, just like the last season of the show to have winged its way to Reviewer Towers for critique, has arrived from the distributors minus the first disc in the set. Now, while it`s hardly a crippling tragedy, it does make things more difficult when you consider that series fan and the reviewer of the last set of DVDs we received, Stephen Morse, has moved onto pastures new, meaning that there`s no-one particularly competent to review this set either from a fan perspective or as an entire season from start to finish. So this reviewer, always up for a challenge, began his first roll in the hay with `Northern Exposure` at episode five of the box set. Yet despite being cast in at the deep end, it`s not hard to see the appeal of `Northern Exposure`, and precisely why it has a dedicated following so many years after it ended that will seemingly ensure the show`s entire six season run makes it to DVD.

It`s an of-its-time 1990s comedy-drama that falls somewhere between `Moonlighting` and `Due South` on the spectrum; the former is more comedy and the latter more dramatic. But `Northern Exposure` handles the blend better than most of its cross-genre contemporaries did, and acts as a sort of natural ancestor to the slew of American dramas laced with a strong comic effect which in part gave rise to the importance of TV as a medium and showcase that it`s currently enjoying. Quirky characters in a town that runs on its own rules, the show is perhaps the quintessence of comfortable, easy-going viewing. The drama isn`t particularly pungent, but that doesn`t seem to be what the show was aiming for. After four seasons, Joel is clearly no longer the fish out of water he once was, but the eccentricities of Cicely`s residents still remain, and is what continues to drives the character-driven dramedy into its fifth year. Series producer and sometime-writer David Chase would go on to create `The Sopranos` which itself occasionally displays - albeit much, much darker - flourishes of humour, and while stylistically the two shows are poles apart, Chase obviously cut his teeth on the instantaneous switch-up between moods with `Northern Exposure`, a series that doesn`t appear to have gassed much with age. This fifth box set will inevitably go down a storm with series fans.