Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10006 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-04-29
• Number of discs: 17
• Format: NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 17

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Opening with a Dido theme song and featuring character-driven, sweet-natured melodrama, Roswell was a show with a surprisingly dedicated fandom, who twice won it reprieve from cancellation. One of its main strengths was, of course, the extent to which its premise--alien teenagers trying to sort out their identities while emotionally involved with their human contemporaries--was a free-floating metaphor for race and sexuality issues. Another was the strong ensemble that its cast developed: you believed in the strangeness of the alien trio and the well-intentioned normality of their three human friends. Jason Behr gave the alien Max a quiet authority and Majendra Delfino took the sidekick role of Maria and gave it both intensity and fine comic timing. It was also a show in which you were never sure which adults you could trust--William Sadleir trod a fine line of ambiguity as the local sheriff and Julie Benz was silkily sinister as an FBI agent. Anyone who ever loved this show will want these DVDs--and many others may want to find out what the fuss was about.

Roswell is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. The special features include commentaries by writer Jason Katims, the directors, and various cast members as well as featurettes. The commentaries are unusually insightful on the casting process, and the discs also include the auditions for the part of Tess as well as deleted scenes and a music video. --Roz Kaveney

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Roswell - The Complete First Season
Opening with a Dido theme song and featuring character-driven, sweet-natured melodrama, Roswel was a show with a surprisingly dedicated fandom, who twice won it reprieve from cancellation. One of its main strengths was, of course, the extent to which its premise--alien teenagers trying to sort out their identities while emotionally involved with their human contemporaries--was a free-floating metaphor for race and sexuality issues. Another was the strong ensemble that its cast developed: you believed in the strangeness of the alien trio and the well-intentioned normality of their three human friends. Jason Behr gave the alien Max a quiet authority and Majendra Delfino took the sidekick role of Maria and gave it both intensity and fine comic timing. It was also a show in which you were never sure which adults you could trust--William Sadleir trod a fine line of ambiguity as the local sheriff and Julie Benz was silkily sinister as an FBI agent. Anyone who ever loved this show will want these DVDs--and many others may want to find out what the fuss was about.

Roswell - The Complete Second Season
Season 2 of the cult science-fiction series Roswell opens on a promisingly positive note, with the rescue of alien teen Michael (Brendan Fehr) by Max (Jason Behr) and his pals, but as soon as things settled down, new challenges threaten their existence. That was par for the course on this imaginative program, which hit its stride in its sophomore year (2000-2001) with a tighter blend of thoughtful youth drama and otherworldly action. The season's chief threats to aliens Max, Michael, Isabel (Katherine Heigl of Grey's Anatomy), and newcomer Tess (Emilie De Ravin of Lost), and Earthlings Liz (Shiri Appleby), Maria (Majandra Delfino), and Alex (Colin Hanks) are Vanessa Whitaker (Gretchen Egolf), a congresswoman with a very sinister secret agenda, and Brody Davis (Desmond Askew), the new curator of Roswell's UFO Museum, who harbors an equally unpleasant plan for the friends. The struggle between human and alien forces, both good and evil, to uncover the truth about Max and his companions leads to a pair of shocking events--a death among the group, and in the season finale, Max, Michael, and Isabel's possible return to their home planet. Other highlights from season 2 include the imaginative period piece "Summer of '47," with the series regulars assuming the roles of townspeople and government officials at the time of the original alleged UFO crash; the two-parter "Meet the Dupes" and "Max in the City," which poses the alien quartet against their physically identical doubles (with extremely different personalities); and "A Roswell Christmas Carol," which offers an unsentimental retake on the Dickens story.

Roswell - The Complete Third Season
The sci-fi-themed teen drama Roswell begins its third and final season with Max (Jason Behr) and Liz (Shiri Appleby) back together and taking a desperate chance to find Max's son. After the many cosmic concepts of the previous season, the series dialed back the mythology to focus on the more--excuse the expression--human aspects of the characters. Roswell was often described as Dawson's Creek meets The X-Files, and accordingly Isabel (Katherine Heigel) finds romance with a lawyer (Adam Rodriguez), but struggles both with her mixed feelings about revealing her alien identity and with the aftermath of the tragedy in season 2. (The romance is later spoofed in a Bewitched-style episode.) At the same time, Max and Michael (Brendan Fehr) travel to Los Angeles in search of an alien bounty hunter that might be able to help them find Max's son. (They also find Roswell executive producer Jonathan Frakes making a guest appearance as himself.) Michael takes a night job that at first is played for laughs (in "Michael, the Gang, and the Great Snapple Caper"), then takes on threatening implications in a rousing two-parter that eventually leaves all parties not too much different from how they started. Michael also struggles in his relationship with Maria (Majandra Delfino), first when he makes new friends and later when she meets a figure from her past (Clayne Crawford) who revives a longtime music dream that might lead to bigger things. All the while, the alien trio faces the constant struggle of keeping their identities secret, even as the net seems to be tightening around them. When a key character returns in the series' penultimate episode, both the aliens and the humans they love face a critical decision.

Customer Reviews

Roswell - The Complete Series Seasons 1, 2, & 3 are a must own!
I first became familier with Roswell after purchasing the first season DVD set early last year. Since then I have became one of the shows biggest fans. I was a bit concerned that the second and third seasons would not be as good as the first, but to my surprise they are just as good if not better. Roswell is still one of my favorite TV shows. Season 1 deals more with the relationship/love story between Max and Liz. The second season deals more with the sc-fi aspect while the love story takes a backseat. The third and final season has the best of both the love story and sci-fi story. I have to say I have never cared much for sci-fi series but Roswell is so much more than just that. Like the wonderful first and second season, the third season still takes you on a emotional journey. As you go through each episode you still find yourself growing more and more attached to the characters as they go on their own emotional journey and self discovery. The sad thing is with the final season the characters are not always hanging out together at the crash down cafe. They are doing their own things which is a bit hard for me because I was so accustomed to them being together, but it was just part of there characters growing up. It was so hard to see the last season of Roswell come to an end. I have discovered one of the best shows with Roswell and highly recommend this show to anyone who enjoys a great tv show that will inspire and get them addicted!

Flawed but excellent series..well worth owning
I didn't get this full set, but the individual seasons in box set, since I never saw the show on TV, and was originally sceptical about whether it would be worth getting; got Season 1 to see what it was about. By the end of the first show I was hooked; as others have said, Season 1 was the best due to the depth and reality of the character interactions, with enough action/sf to keep things moving. Without putting in any spoilers, there were episodes in the later seasons that weren't worthy of the total effort, the "off world" story was weak (like Flash Gordon, say) and there were major "out of character" moments, and some excessive revisiting of previous angst..and boy, there was a lot of angst. As I remember being a teenager, they did a good job of recreating that age.. idealism greater than adulthood, more sweetness, less selfishness, more awkwardness, etc. Unusually for a TV series, you really get involved with the 3 dimensional characters, and much of the plot seems true to real life. As others have also said, that's what makes the brain-farts on the part of the writers more irritating when they occur. In spite of the flaws, some sloppy (Michael forgetting Max's name late in Season 1; using California foothill landscape for New Mexico, etc.) and some deeper as mentioned above, the whole series hangs together and preserves its punch right through to end, which is generally satisfying. Life is tough; it's bitter sweet but it beats the heck out of the alternative. If you like the premise of "alien" teenagers and an in-depth exploration of the combination of romance/melodrama/s-f I would highly recommend this series. It handled all the elements imaginatively and almost always kept me caring about the characters. Not perfect but up there with Stargate, Dark Angel, etc. and better in terms of the deeper exploration of human interaction. That said, this is much less action/adventure oriented than Stargate etc. so if you want heavy plot driven action show this isn't what you're after.

Buy it and enjoy the emotional rollercoaster and inventive sidelights. You keep thinking it's about to slide away down a rathole but it never does.

A fair to decent show.
Allot can be said about the teen drama's that have ruled the airwaves for years now and here is my take of this teen drama. It seems to me that Roswell was trying to capitalize off the success of Dawson's Creek. Except this teen drama had a sci-fi twist. All in all this show was not half bad. It had it's hokey moment's and it had it's triumphs. Lead actress Shiri Appleby looked remarkably similar to Katie Holmes and the gorgeous Katherine Heigl used her looks and sex appeal often during the show just as Michelle Williams (Jenn Lindley) did in Dawson's Creek. The stand out performer in the show was William Sadler (Sheriff Valenti) which would not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with this actor and his work. The show takes some bizarre twists and ends up backing up on its self a time or two but was surprisingly entertaining. The complete three seasons is a bit of a wild roller coaster ride with quite a few surprises surprisingly. So you get the attractive cast with Majandra Delfino who went from ugly and homely to knockout status in a span of a summer and the gorgeous Emilie de Ravin in her "Pre-Lost" days and the equally attractive male cast who actually did a fairly good job of acting. However this show was doomed from the beginning as the network and the creator/producers of the show could never agree which direction to take the show. This made for some fairly absurd story lines and abrupt endings to interesting story lines. This show was not sure what it wanted to be. But yet...it is a bit of a guilty pleasure in it's own right. The first season was the best and the show was fair to decent from then on with a bit of a disappointing series finale.