Seinfeld: Seasons 1 - 3 [DVD]

Never a huge popular hit in England (not helped by the BBC shuffling it around the late night BBC 2 schedule), Seinfeld is nevertheless a superb sitcom, based, as Jerry Seinfeld has said, about the gaps in society - those judgement calls about appropriate behaviour in the city jungle for which no guide exists from one's parents and improvisation is necessary, with - and I actually mean this - hilarious results.It's also darker than you might think: self-absorption is the order of the day (something made explicit in the final show, where the quartet are imprisoned for watching a fat man being mugged without stepping in to help).What's fascinating about this DVD set for the first three seasons is that you can see the show's gradual evolution into something which is very densely plotted with separate storylines for the four principals, and the standup routines becoming squeezed out to fit more story into the 22 minutes afforded each episode (sans ads). The pace also picks up significantly, so that by the third series there is a sense of subdued, or not-so-subdued, frenzy.The commentaries are instructive: Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld watch early show The Stake Out, criticising the pace and their use of Seinfeld's parents to little purpose, but in that episode there is a conversation between George and Jerry which doesn't advance the plot much but which is clearly the template for so many later conversations (George fantasises about being an architect) that you can understand the creators' delight in watching it again.There is also explicit acknowledgement of the debt owed to Abbot and Costello routines in the writing. And you can see how Kramer, initially a reclusive neighbour, becomes woven into the trio of friends. The seriousness with which Michael Richards takes preparation for his role is a little disturbing but then again this is a sitcom over which care has been taken. It's fascinating that they had no scripts stored up, wanting the show to evolve organically, and Larry David's heroic resistance to input from executives is also one of the reasons why Seinfeld will be remembered: they weren't trying to write a conventional sitcom but to explore what concerned them. (Significantly, one studio executive who passed on the show used to screen that Jerry/George conversation to people who came into his office.)For a long time I felt that a TV critic's reference to Seinfeld benefitting from the "associative darkness" of being screened alongside Larry Sanders (in England) was true; now I'm more inclined to see them as of equal quality, the one "a fugue in insecurity" (a TV critic's phrase), the other a fugue in self-absorption.One small sadness - or maybe not: Jason Alexander become upset when one episode didn't feature him. In what he describes as "a George-like moment" he told Jerry Seinfeld either he was in all the episodes or he didn't want to be in the show. It's a pity because the episode in question, in which Jerry and Elaine go to stay with Jerry's parents, gives us a rare sense of intimacy between the two which other episodes don't have time to explore. Maybe it would have been interesting to have more of that, maybe not. Certainly the central four mesh very well together. And central to the whole thing is George, the character based on Larry David, Hank Kingsley to Jerry's Larry Sanders, but with a base cunning when it comes to dealing with women which Jerry can only admire.Watching the episodes in quick succession, too, it becomes clear why Jerry needs George: schoolfriends who never grew out of being friends. And now it's too late, for better or worse. The judge in the final episode referred to earlier (I mean the final final one, not the last on this DVD set) said he didn't know what caused the four of them to find each other; we can only be grateful that they did.

I have to admit that I had never seen a Seinfeld show until this year ( 2024 ). Am now sorry to have missed out. I have been working my way through the box sets. The shows are very funny - great scripts and great performers. The presentation of the shows on the DVDs is excellent, lovingly put together by someone who cares; with lots of extras and interviews with the cast and writers, which are often also just as funny, but also very engaging. You get an excellent sense of how the shows developed, and how the actors-comedians developed their characters. A real feel-good factor. Also, however, an edgy kind of observation of character - the behaviour of the characters can often be unpleasant, particularly in being selfish, but also very charming and witty at the same time - which is where a lot of the humour resides.

I have only recently got into Seinfeld, being too young to watch it when it was first produced in the early `90's (I wouldn't have understood it, and it was shown in a graveyard slot on BBC2).The great thing about Seinfeld, and as many, many people have noted, is it is a show about nothing, except everyday life. Rather than devising ridiculously elaborate situations and forcing the humour, as most comedies seem to do (and unfortunately rarely get right), Seinfeld instead focuses on the humour that can be found in everyday, seemingly mundane situations. Looking at the episodes here, who can't relate to the predicaments our protagonists find themselves in?The characters are wonderfully formed. Jerry himself seems to actually take a back seat much of the time to the antics of the other characters, and is more of a commentator. George is an exaggerated neurotic, Elaine is Jerry's pushy ex-girlfriend and Kramer, his deranged neighbour. The actors all play their characters very well, and you really can't fault their comic acting skills.Season one of the show is really only an introduction to the show, featuring only five episodes. Things only really begin to kick off in the latter half of series 2. By then, the writers are really on a roll, and this carries through to the third season, which comprises the second half of this box set.Although Seinfeld didn't get a huge commercial following until its fourth season, the first 3 series are still extremely funny. Even today it is still leagues ahead of most comedy series, and doesn't rely on cheap devices or obscenities to be successful.With a great variety of DVD extras, this box set is a must-buy not only for fans of Seinfeld, but for any comedy fan.

Excellent DVD set of Series 1-3 showing how Seinfeld, possibly the first (and very funny) show about 'nothing', i.e. about the everyday things that happen in life, got started. Excellent DVD extras too (which are also available on the DVDs for the individual seasons) including a 1-hour doc for Season 1 on how the show got put on the air despite terrible ratings for its pilot episode, Inside Looks (Making Ofs) for many episodes, commentaries, deleted scenes, Easter Egg, trailers, outtakes, bloopers etc.. All episodes remastered too.