The Practice? (1 Viewer)

[Holadem]

What's the story with this show? Any rumors/buzz/interest?

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[Robert_M_Clark]

I would love to see this show on dvd!! My personal prediction is that James Spader will get nominated for an Emmy this year, and that may generate more interest in the show, and in a dvd release.

 

[Holadem]

Robert, it seems like only you and I are looking to own this fine show? Jeebus!

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[JulianK]

There'd be a problem with releasing the first season of The Practice. because the producers went back and completely re-edited the first few episodes after they'd initially aired, changing the focus of some episodes, and introducing some characters earlier than they originally were brought in.

So - which versions do you release on DVD? Presumably the remixed versions, but then you'd disappoint the series' hardcore fans.

I'd love to see this series on DVD, particularly as it's been very shoddily treated here in the UK.

 

[Holadem]

Anything new?

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[Rob T]

I'd definitely get it.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Both. If it was only the first few episodes, then have the re-edited versions as the main versions, and then offer the original versions (either through seamless branching if possible, or on a seperate disc) as special features.

 

[Eve Brown]

Put me down for this as well. I would really want the bobby and helen episodes. I can't stand lindsey to begin with and it really bugs me that most of the stuff like fanfic on the net is bobby/lindsey. I want the original episodes more but both would be best.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Julian, are you sure the shows were re-edited? I thought what happened instead was that the shows were aired "out of sequence" so that the new character Helen Gamble could be introduced earlier in the second season.

"The Practice" originally aired for just six weeks, although 13 segments were ordered. The remaining seven were held back for the Fall.

In the interim, a new character (D.A. Helen Gamble) was introduced and some other characters (such as Frank Shea and Renee Williams) were dropped.

I don't think anything was re-edited. Just looking at production codes and airing orders, if would seem that episodes containing an "arc" might've been aired together, and once the continuous threads were resolved, they dipped back to a different batch of episodes (OW 1-3 aired consecutively, followed by PR 6-8). Certainly, Helen Gamble hasn't been edited into any of the "PR" episodes.

The episodes I've seen in syndication, incidentally, seem to be airing in their proper production order, so perhaps they just made careful choices of which episodes to air in which sequence at the time.

Incidentally, I think the reason we've heard nothing on DVDs of this show is that in the online voting poll rgiven by the rights holder last year (which contained many, many different series from a variety of eras), "The Practice" ranked near the bottom (I think it got maybe 5% of the votes).

 

[JulianK]

Well, I can't claim to be an expert, but I've certainly compared different recordings of the first couple of episodes that are radically different. These are recordings made in the UK.

What I believe happened is that the first few episodes were aired once in their original format, and then re-redited with later episodes to create a new set of opening episodes, which blended material from the first batch of episodes and the next batch they made. I'm sure I read something to support this, a year or two after the series started.

A complication is that it seems that many of the episodes apparently aired in the UK before they were shown in the US.

Comparing the UK transmission dates with the American dates on this episode guide the UK got episodes PR06 to PR12 before *any* of the season two was shown in the US. (8402 to PR12 were originally shown in one uninterrupted run between April 29th 1997 and the 22nd of July 1997. After this, I don't have any UK dates catalogued, I'm afraid).

It certainly wouldn't be the first time producers have gone back and changed footage in a series to match later changes (the replacement of Fairuza Balk in The Sopranos, for example).

I've no idea whether there was any footage removed in this revamping process. I think it was simply re-jigged in a different order.

I'd love to have some hard and fast information about this, since I really don't want to go hunting for my old tape copies!

Of course, if there are two versions of some episodes available, and they were to have both on a DVD set, it might push up the price by perhaps $20-30, so I'm not sure I'd *need* both!

 

[Sabine.VDA]

Hi, this is my first post on this board.

I already have all of the Ally McBeal. This was my first "TVShowOnDVD" and pretty expensive too, 2 years ago.

I reallllly love TVShowsonDVD and I have started collecting quite a lot of them.

The Practice would be my next must have collection.
I already voted for this show, but reading in this thread that this show only gets 5% of the votes is pretty dissapointing. Are we sure about this statistic ?
Any recent news ? Surely Music right can't be the problem here? What's holding them up ?

Another show that I might look into is Family Law. Does anyone know more about FL on DVD ?

 

[Rob T]

The studio is probably unsure about whether or not it would sell.