Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16673 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-05-25
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 384 minutes

Amazon.com
Whether it's a snowy nude sprint down Main Street, the mysterious appearance of a long-lost relative, or the improbable death of yet another of Maggie's boyfriends, life's never dull in the remote hamlet of Cicely, Alaska. Colorful characters and quirky plots propelled Northern Exposure into the hearts of millions of viewers, earning the CBS "dramedy" series seven Emmy awards between its 1990 debut and its demise six seasons later.

In season 1, we meet Dr. Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow), an urban New York yuppie who consents to four years of rural servitude after Alaska pays his medical-school tuition. Joel's fish-out-of-water adventures drive the show, but it's the quirky ensemble of characters--Chris, the DJ/philosopher (John Corbett), Holling, the bartender (John Cullum), Maurice, the town patriarch (Barry Corbin), Ed, the filmmaker (Darren E. Burrows), and Maggie, the bush pilot (Janine Turner), among others–-that keeps the series consistently entertaining. The town develops its own offbeat personality as well, a Mayberry-meets-Twin-Peaks blend of Native mysticism, Aurora Borealis-induced dreams, unlikely tales of long-lost family members, and rumors of a Bigfoot-like creature known simply as "Adam."

Northern Exposure provides a utopian escape--a place where life is interesting but never dangerous, everyone's insightful, the mystical becomes real, and nobody's burdened with a mundane 9-to-6 desk job. Cicely is a delightful place to visit, even if it's only for an hour at a time.

A mid-season replacement, season 1 consists of just eight episodes on two DVDs. Each episode includes 5-10 minutes of outtakes and deleted scenes. --Shane Burnett

Customer Reviews

Best Series Ever
Northern Exposure is the one T.V. Series that my wife and I will watch--on DVDs--over and over again. All considered, it's the very best.

Brilliant, Innovative - And Not Likeable
In Denver, they're broadcasting this series on the local PBS station. They're using it as a centerpiece of fundraising, in fact. That made me buy this collection to view in order.

It's a very innovative show, and brilliantly written, with some completely new-for-its-time approaches to TV.

After watching disk one, though, I turned to my wife and said, "How do you like it?" Her response was, "I cannot find anything to like about the characters."

She's right.

We loved "Frasier" because, for all their quirks, there is something downright likeable in every character. That's not the case here. The quirks and foibles of each character are really funny, but it's tough to empathize with any of them because the characters seem to be trying hard not to be likeable.

Delightfully odd first season in an equally odd DVD package
The early 1990s saw a major public interest in the bizarrity of smalltown shows, clearly evidenced in three shows: TWIN PEAKS, PICKET FENCES, and NORTHERN EXPOSURE. Each was very different and completely unlike anything on television before or after. NORTHERN EXPOSURE was the lightest and most wacky of the bunch. The series revolved around Dr. Joel Fleischman (Rob Morrow), a young New Yorker fresh out of medical school. His tuition was paid by the state of Alaska, on the condition that Dr. Fleischman be stationed in Alaska after his graduation. Expecting to be positioned in Anchorage, Fleischman happily accepts. But to his immense dismay, he finds himself thrown into the middle of nowhere, also known as Cicely, Alaska, a town with a population of 215. At first Fleischman wants nothing more than to escape from the bizarre town and its even more bizarre inhabitants, but as time goes on he comes to appreciate the town and the individuals living there. Those individuals include cocky pilot Maggie O'Connell (Janine Turner), burly ex-NASA pilot and "owner" of the town Maurice J. Minnifield (Barry Corbin), amiable young aspiring filmmaker Ed (Darren E. Burrows), and peaceful early-morning radio DJ Chris Stevens (John Corbett).

NORTHERN EXPOSURE is a show like no other. The first season contains a mere 8 episodes, but is as charming as any series in history. The simplicity of life in Cicely, the beauty of the scenery, the companionship between the town's inhabitants, fills one with love and warmth, and was no doubt a major factor in what made the show so attractive to viewers when it debuted in 1990. The acting is wonderful all-around, the writing is witty and often absurd, and though the first season has not one dramatic scene, it's profoundly moving and irresistably enjoyable. For TWIN PEAKS fans like myself, I warn that NORTHERN EXPOSURE has little in common with that show, although the fifth episode of this season contains a very silly and funny spoof of it. Still I would highly recommend this show for anyone willing to try a new flavor of television.

As for the DVDs, the NORTHERN EXPOSURE sets are probably the most infamous TV DVDs ever released. On subsequent seasons, almost all music contained in the show was replaced with generic tunes (save for the theme). I personally find this despicable, but Universal has no intention of re-releasing the seasons with the original music at the moment. Season one, however, contains all the original music. The picture and sound quality are excellent, and the menus are very nice. It can be a little confusing to watch the series in order, however, as the first side of disc 1 actually contains the second batch of episodes, and the episodes are not numbered, nor is there any booklet for easy navigation through the season. I recommend tv.com for a chronological episode listing. Lastly, the packaging. Consumers have complained about the parka packaging used for the first two seasons, but I myself believe it is the most charming and wonderful TV-DVD packaging ever. I absolutely adore it, and I'm very sad that Universal did not continue doing this for the rest of the series. Nevertheless, this is a fine set, and it's better to have a lightly toyed-with release of the series than none whatsoever.