Synopsis: Schoolteacher Johnny Smith (an agreeable Anthony Michael Hall) awakens from a years-long coma to find his mother dead and his girlfriend, Sarah (Nicole de Boer), married with child to the town sheriff (Chris Bruno). With only his newly minted powers of second sight to instill him with purpose, he becomes a kind of guardian angel for the future-impaired. ~ The Silver: A mesmerizing, Vancouver-lensed production, "The Dead Zone" rather quickly carves out a niche for itself so that it makes good on the pregnant ideas of its sources--Stephen King's source novel and its lasting feature film adaptation from David Cronenberg--instead of coasting on a familiar brand. "The Dead Zone" actually takes off when it starts to deviate from King; by the time Greg Stillson (Sean Patrick Flannery), a key character from the book, surfaces for the stark season finale, the writers have found the show's voice and are able to incorporate Stillson much more organically than earlier borrowed elements. A handful of episodes are truly inspired, such as "Unreasonable Doubt" (in which Johnny serves on a jury that's reluctant to hear his psychic evidence) and "Netherworld" (in which Johnny becomes trapped in a halcyon vision of life with Sarah), the latter demonstrating that the show is at its most lyrical when poking ruthless fun at Johnny for his losses. Often depressing and clever in equal measure, the series is rich boob-tube mythmaking... ~ The Tinsel: ...nonetheless susceptible to unadulterated mawkishness. I'm thinking of "Enemy Mind," wherein a girl from the Atom Egoyan school of teenage runaways is responsible for exposing Johnny to homespun pharmaceuticals that not only niftily tamper with his visions, but also turn this into a Very Special Episode about the dangers of E and going places without telling your mom. ~ The DVD: Each "Dead Zone" is presented in eye-catching 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix of surprising gusto. Commentary tracks accompany all 13 episodes, their participants representing a healthy enough cross-section of the show's crew, and seemingly numerous Peter Black featurettes supplement the four discs. As an aspiring screenwriter, I want to highlight the second platter's "Writing," which takes us inside the pitch-room where story treatments are fleshed out beat-by-beat on a white board that ain't white by the time a given teleplay's been plotted. Show-runner Michael Piller tells us that he encourages his staff (and the odd freelance interloper) to violate the blueprint during the actual writing stage if instinct beckons, something you're genuinely surprised to hear a small-screen producer say, especially after witnessing the intensity of the group brainstorming sessions. Culture Club's Roy Hay imparts insight into his own artistic process in a piece on the show's haunted music ("Like a sitcom has a laugh track, a drama has the score," offers executive producer Shawn Piller (Michael's son)) and even the bigger-name guest stars (such as "Malcolm in the Middle"'s Chris Masterson) have their day in court. A detailed case insert of that fictional rag the "Bangor Daily News" provides episode summaries at a glance, while an empty slot for a fifth disc can be filled by mailing in a coupon to receive the uncut pilot. ~ Perfect For: Fans of high concept. (Lions Gate)

Synopsis: A band of lovable smugglers traipses around the galaxy in a lemon called "Serenity". ~ The Silver: I have a theory as to why no one watched this riveting, Asian-influenced sci-fi western, and it's that series creator Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and its spin-off "Angel"), for all his success in genre television, was stamped with a scarlet "A" for his previous discursion into outer space, the widely loathed Alien: Resurrection. (That and the fact that The Big Four have taught us that the lifespan of debuting shows is so short, it's not worth tuning into them--a paradox that has transformed network television into a giant snake eating its tail.) To say I was caught off-guard by "Firefly" is an understatement: relatively speaking, this is Whedon's crowning achievement, certainly better than the first seventeen episodes of either "Buffy" or "Angel" (and blessed with a terrific, Whedon-penned theme song performed by Sonny Rhodes)--but as with "My So-Called Life", one wonders if cancellation was a blessing in disguise for the show, which was exhibiting signs of peaking early. The rock-solid ensemble--led by the charismatic Nathan Fillion as Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds and including "Barney Miller" vet Ron Glass as a preacher--gelled instantly and the individual characters blossomed quickly as well; this bears out when you consider the effectiveness of a low-key episode titled "Out of Gas," in which a mishap aboard "Serenity" sentences Malcolm's crew to an agonizing death-by-suffocation. I don't know which was the more miraculous feat of this infant series: that "Out of Gas" put a lump in my throat, or that it was the fourth or fifth hour of "Firefly" to engender a palpable sense of jeopardy. The show also marks a new level of visual sophistication for Whedon, the CGI made convincing through faux handheld camerawork (especially in "The Message," featuring a dazzling chase through snow-capped canyons) and the Chinese décor cohering with frontier motifs to create a divination of the future that ducks both the utopian and dystopian clichés while speaking to some fascinating, blessedly unexplained political shake-up. (In an innovative circumvention of FCC regulations, "Firefly"'s profanity is in Chinese.) And I'd be remiss if I failed to mention guest stars Christina Hendricks and Richard Brooks, the former because she is a package of formidable range and sex appeal, the latter because he's on his way to becoming the next Samuel L. Jackson. Brooks' turn as a truth-seeking bounty hunter in the bold, clever "Objects in Space" is the stuff on which careers are built. ~ The Tinsel: Some of the cast members are better at selling the gunslinger patois than others--bubbly Canadian starlet Jewel Staite is, alas, exceptionally bad at it, suspending our belief in ship mechanic Kaylee's otherwise amusingly risqué backstory (elaborated upon in "Out of Gas"). I composed a list of other grievances, but to rhyme them off would be churlish: "Firefly" deserves a little mercy for a change. ~ The DVD: Fox loads four platters with the entire run of "Firefly" in production order. (That's equal to 17 episodes, three of which never aired.) The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers are across-the-board stupendous, though grain occasionally intrudes on low-light scenes, particularly in "Jaynestown." The Dolby Surround soundtracks are quite punchy, but there are a few episodes, like "The Message," or the two-hour pilot, that cry out for the full 5.1 treatment. I couldn't get one of the unaired episodes to play on any of my machines, but I'm thankful it was "Heart of Gold" and not "Trash," Hendricks' second triumphant appearance on the show. Commentaries featuring various participants abound, my personal favourite being Whedon's solitary yakker for "Objects in Space," in which he illuminates the topic closest to his heart ("Me") by way of discussing art that has profoundly impacted his writing, everything from Sartre's Nausea to the Gattaca soundtrack. The 29-minute "Here's How It Was: The Making of 'Firefly'" is excellent but more like an elegy than a documentary, with Glass saying he looks forward to the day when the series' cancellation no longer causes him to weep and composer Greg Edmonson having the epiphany that the heart-wrenching music he wrote for a funeral passage in "The Message" was his way of bidding farewell to "Firefly" proper. Here and in the commentaries, Whedon and co-producer Tim Minear are outspoken about Fox's mishandling of the show. "Serenity: The 10^th Character" (10 mins.) covers the construction of Mal's vessel (from both practical and digital standpoints), which Whedon explores briefly for himself in the 1-minute "Joss Tours the Set." Four deleted scenes (the one from "Objects in Space" actually aired but was trimmed for DVD to make this collection feel more self-contained), Alan Tudyk's audition tape, a 3-minute gag reel, and a demo version of the theme song performed by a tone-deaf Whedon round out one of the best DVDs of the year. ~ Perfect For: Latecomers. (Fox)

Synopsis: The adventures of the teenaged Clark Kent (Tom Welling) as he struggles to balance standard hormonal changes with becoming Superman. ~ The Silver: After getting hooked on the WB network's girly upstart offerings "Dawson's Creek" and "Felicity", I decided to sit out "Smallville"--there's only so much insipid, "Lilith Fair" montage a man can take. But then, like the son of Jor-El crash-landed on the Kent's farm, so too was this 21-episode box set deposited at the doorstep of FFC HQ, and life since the discs ran out seems just a little bit duller. True, once a WB show always a WB show, but week after week in its first season, "Smallville" delivered subversive commentary on the trappings of youth culture, most consistently high school football, which the show sees for a helmet-cult and not, as myopically depicted in the execrable documentary Go Tigers!, a branch of patriotism. The first season's ancillary hook is that fragments of Kryptonian debris from Clark's spaceship have burrowed their way into the nooks and crannies of the titular town, imbuing innocent bystanders with superpowers that are often direct manifestations of the id, and it's no coincidence that if a jock isn't the one affected, a jock is usually the first one punished by the affected. (In episode one, the football team hazes Clark, crucifying him on a scarecrow rack in the middle of a cornfield; in episode three, the coach (Dan Lauria) literally self-immolates with rage; in episode seven, a former fatty (Amy Adams, suggesting Cynthia Nixon after Oil of Olay) eats the football player who drove her to anorexia; and so on.) It's a show about how they'll never live in harmony, jocks and non-jocks, mirrored in Clark's tentative relationship with Whitney (the repugnant Eric Johnson), his true love Lana's (Kristin Kreuk) quarterback boyfriend, and epitomized by Clark's own outsider status as the ultimate athlete. "Smallville" is supremely confident--its imagery sometimes has an astounding grasp of archetype for TV (such as in "Hourglass," where Clark and his (yep) best friend Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) encounter a blind psychic (named Cassandra (Jackie Burroughs), natch), facilitating a disturbing vision of Luthor's future in which flowers wilt under a blood rain), and its self-referential humour, such as a choice "Dukes of Hazzard" reference (John Schneider, the erstwhile Bo Duke, plays Clark's dad), respects the hipsters in the audience without alienating less pop-culturally conversant viewers. ~ The Tinsel: Modelling itself very explicitly after "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (particularly the machinations of its debut season), "Smallville" does suffer from freak-of-the-week syndrome--we realize we're incredibly jaded by the time the overachiever who can control bees (Shonda Farr) shows up. Also, why doesn't Lex Luthor ever lock the door to his mansion? Oh, and with the teenage corpses piling up, shouldn't the flag outside Smallville High be at permanent half-mast? ~ The DVD: This is an almost blindingly colourful show that sports beautiful saturation on DVD. Unfortunately, with the exception of the season finale (which gets a platter virtually to itself), the 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfers contain heavy pixellation and occasional PAL-style frame delay. And though the show's stereo mixes are indisputably good, it's a shame that the opportunity for an exciting surround field was passed up. Co-creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar unite with director David Nutter in a yak-track for the first half of the two-part premiere and merely pair up on the second, but for some reason their shorter optional commentaries over a handful of deleted scenes from the pilot (with comically self-explanatory titles like "Lex Meets Gabe Sullivan in the Fertilizer Plant") and an "Interactive Tour of Smallville" are more edifying. A torpid storyboard-to-screen montage (7 mins.) and a smattering of promos, including rare commercials for the WB dramas "Tarzan" (which recently went tits-up) and the Jerry Bruckheimer production "Fearless" (which was dropped from the fall schedule at the eleventh hour), round out the hefty, six-platter package, save the ROM-enabled "Wall of Weird" (a clickable interface that allows you to peruse the tabloid articles amassed by Clark's would-be girlfriend Chloe (Allison Mack)) and mock "LutherCorp" website.

Perfect For: Those who want to get in on the neo-Ginger/MaryAnn debate of who's hotter, Lana or Chloe? Me, I'm still crushing on Clark's mom (Annette O'Toole) from back when she portrayed his girlfriend (!) in Superman III. (Warner)