TV on DVD

IT'S EASY TO SCOFF at baby-boomer nostalgia until your own favorite television series gets added to the gold mine that is DVD. Then, even the most cynical of writers suddenly begins acting like a crazed collector of Franklin Mint por­celain figurines. I have to have it! Such was the reaction around the office to several TV titles new to disc, all of them Seattle Weekly picks, all of them essential in their own peculiar way to their own peculiar enthusiast. Eds.

Freaks and Geeks: The Complete Series
Shout!, $69.98

There are no doltish, one-dimensional parents who just don't understand on this brilliant series, no soulless bullies or hopeless misfits. The short-lived show (1999–2000) makes every character count. Never mind the Scooby-Doo movies: Linda Cardellini brings astonishing intuition and emotional realism to Lindsay, a brainy good girl at a Michigan high school who gets curious, naturally enough, about being bad. During a particularly formative year (1980), she ditches the wholesome "Mathletes" to hang out with a band of stoners led by slacker hunk Daniel (James Franco). But Lindsay's rebellion isn't TV-typical: Despite occasional spats with her parents, her relationship with them rarely devolves into shouting matches. They're slowly growing apart, but she doesn't really hold it against them. Her freshman brother, Sam (John Francis Daley), has worries of his own; as a recog­nized geek, he dreams of a time when "PYGMY GEEK" won't be scrawled on his locker, all the while nursing a timid crush that involves never actually speaking to the object of his affection.

Even F&G's secondary characters are drawn with care. Hippie guidance counselor Jeff (Dave Gruber Allen) is laughable in his concerned efforts to befriend "troubled" students, yet he occasionally manages a startling insight. Among its extras for all 18 episodes, this six-disc set contains more than two dozen commentary tracks. Series creator Paul Feig's episode-by-episode remarks in the "collectible booklet" are funny and sweetly personal, but F&G stands perfectly well on its own as a rare and precious work. Much like a skinny, bespectacled high-school geek, it slipped by unnoticed before; today it deserves to be hoisted on somebody's shoulders and cheered. NEAL SCHINDLER

Horatio Hornblower: The New Adventures
A&E Home Video, $39.95

Horatio Hornblower is hot—well, at least actor Ioan Gruffudd is. Playing C.S. Forester's beloved British naval hero, he has all the dashing prerequisites: Adonis cheekbones, smoldering brown eyes, and a leading-man chin that might give Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe pause. Thankfully, he's back at the helm of the Hornblower series' two new installments: Duty and Loyalty. Both follow the winning Hornblower formula—disaster strikes and Horatio must save the day.

In Duty, during a short peace with France, Hornblower is left decommissioned and destitute in Portsmouth. Like watching Robin Hood clean the manure from the stables, one feels sorry for a man clearly working beneath his station. Back then, officers were given a lifetime to dedicate themselves to war—the Napoleonic wars lasted 50 years—and one would never think of Patrick O'Brian's Capt. Jack Aubrey (Master and Commander) having to hock his sword to pay the rent, yet Hornblower must. Fortunately, his landlady's daughter, Maria, (Ab Fab's Julie Sawalha), keeps him from homelessness. But before Hornblower can sink any lower, Napoleon's perfidiousness sends him back to sea, with the command of his own vessel, the Hotspur. Once again, he must save the British from the French.

Loyalty concerns Hornblower's subsequent mercy-marriage to Maria and his search for a missing British ship. Both films are as entertaining as the original A&E series, though this set doesn't contain any extras. You'll have to buy the Complete Adventures for those.

Considering this is a made-for-TV venture, the broadside battles and fighting sequences are well orchestrated and suspenseful. (Even when the Hotspur looks like it's slicing through the water, it's actually just the camera moving past the anchored vessel on a dolly.) But with Horatio at the wheel, the viewer is easily swept away by this attractive captain. SAMANTHA STOREY

The Jack Paar Collection
Shout!, $29.98

Steve Allen created The Tonight Show, but Jack Paar reinvented it as the modern talk show when he took over from 1957 to '62. (Then Carson succeeded him.) Scrapping the variety-show format inherited from vaudeville, Paar introduced the late-night host persona, the tone- setting opening monologue, the chair/desk/sofa setup, and young unknowns like a not-yet- sourly-arrogant Bill Cosby, a terrified, self-deprecating Woody Allen, the uproarious Muppets, and the free-associating Jonathan Winters. This delicious three–DVD set captures these skyrocketing stars and more, with emphasis on Paar's later prime-time show (1962–65). Also included, the PBS documentary Smart Television: The Best of Jack Paar offers a dandy assortment of clips and interviews with Regis Philbin and Dick Cavett (both Paar employees), Tom Smothers, and Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales, who notes how much more journalistic Paar was than his successors. Would Leno or even Letterman have had the balls to sympathetically interview Castro when he was about as popular as Saddam? Or the brains to talk, seriously and at length, with JFK and Goldwater? And how the hell did Paar manage to talk Nixon into making his weird TV debut as a composer/pianist?