THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW: THE ENTIRE FIRST SEASON
Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
3-DVD Set, $50.95

The Larry Sanders Show, a witty satire of late night talk shows, originally aired on HBO during the 1990's.  In addition to guest appearances by real-life celebrities, the program followed the behind-the-scenes exploits of the fictional talk show's host, Larry Sanders, and his crew.  This three-disc set contains all thirteen episodes of the first season: What Have You Done for Me Lately, Promise, Spiders, The Guest Host, The New Producer, The Flirt, Hank's Contract, Out of the Loop, The Talk Show, The Party, Warmth, A Brush with the Elbow of Greatness, and Hey Now.

The Larry Sanders Show stars Garry Shandling, Jeffrey Tambor, Megan Gallagher, Wallace Langham, Jeremy Piven, Penny Johnson, Linda Doucett, Janeane Garofalo and Rip Torn.  The three-DVD set is not rated and features a total running time of 322 minutes.           

The show is presented in a non-anamorphic, full screen version (4:3).  The overall quality of the transfer is good.  Images are somewhat soft but colors remain accurate with saturated hues.  There is decent contrast and black levels are adequate.  On the whole, picture defect mastering is solid but we did observe occasional instances of film grain and digital compression artifacts.

Video Rating: 6 out of 10

The following spoken language options are available for this DVD set: English Dolby Digital 2.0 channel surround.  The following subtitle tracks are available: English and Spanish subtitles, and English closed captions.  The English Dolby 2.0 track is the basis for this review.  Dialogue is clear and intelligible.  The surround channels are largely inactive and used only for ambient effects like music and audience applause.  Discrete channel activity is restricted to music and sound effects occurring across the forward soundstage.  The LFE channel is mostly silent, as there is little low-end information present in the soundtrack.

Audio Rating: 5 out of 10

The tactile sound effects are below average, but are present in each of the show's thirteen episodes.  Subtle impacts are the only type of tactile effect that can be experienced on these discs and they come courtesy of the brief music segments.

Tactile Sound Effects Rating: 3 out of 10

Bonus features include a 28-minute featurette entitled, Garry Shandling Talks… No Flipping; episode access and interactive menus.

Bonus Features Rating: 5 out of 10