Product details

Actors: Dan Castellaneta, Nancy Cartwright, Julie Kavner, Yeardley Smith, Harry Shearer
Writers: James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Sam Simon
Format: PAL
Subtitles: English, Spanish Dubbed: French
Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired: English
 Number of discs: 3
Classification: PG
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox DVD
Release Date: 29 Mar. 2004
Run Time: 352 minutes

Product description

DVD Special Features:

All 13 episodes

Ratio 1.33:1

Dolby 5.1 Surround

Subtitles: Spanish

Disc 1:

Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

Bart the Genius

Homer's Odyssey

There's No Disgrace Like Home

Bart the General

Moaning Lisa

Bonus Features: Original scripts featuring notes by Matt Groening for "Bart the Genius", "Bart the General" and "Moaning Lisa". All episodes are accompanied by commentary.

Disc 2:

Call of the Simpsons

The Telltale Head

Life on the Fast Lane

Homer's Night Out

The Crepes of Wrath

Krusty Gets Busted

Bonus Features: All episodes are accompanied by commentary

Disc 3:

Some Enchanted Evening Bonus Features: Original script notes by Matt Groening

Outtakes from un-aired version of an episode

Animatic of an episode with commentary by Matt Groening and David Silverman

The Making of The Simpsons "America's First Family"

Easter Egg ABC News Special on a reported controversy

"Tracey Ullman Show" First ever Simpsons to air on Tracey Ullman Show

Five Foreign Language Clips

Early Sketches Stills Gallery

Magazine Covers

From Amazon.co.uk

From practically the first episode, broadcast in 1989, The Simpsons impacted on planet TV like a giant multi-coloured meteor. With a claim to being the defining pop cultural phenomenon of the 1990s--hip, fast, sharp and primary--there was nothing even in rock & roll to match this. The Simpsons is possibly the greatest sitcom ever made. Although the animation was initially primitive, never before had cartoon characters been so well drawn. There had been loveable middle-aged layabouts on TV before, but Homer Simpson successfully stole their crown and out-slobbed them all in every department ("The guys at the plant are gonna have a field day with this," he grumbles in "Call of The Simpsons" as he watches scientists on a TV news item who can't decide whether he is incredibly dense or a brilliant beast). However, in this first series he isn't quite yet the bloated man-child he would become in later series; instead he's a growling patriarch with a Walter Matthau-type voice. His sensible half Marge's croak, meanwhile, has yet to settle down, while the vast cast of minor Springfield characters have yet to find their place. Bart, however, was a smash from the start: dumb as Homer but spiky-haired and resourceful, he sets out his manifesto in "Bart the Genius"; while "Moaning Lisa" spotlights his over-achieving sister and is a good early example of the series' clever handling of melancholy bass notes.

Throughout its life there's always been confusion as to whether The Simpsons is a show for kids or adults, but with allusions in these first 13 episodes to Kubrick, Diane Arbus, Citizen Kane and (in a very satisfyingly anti-French episode) Manon des Sources, it should already have been clear that this was a programme for all ages and all IQs from 0 to 200. Dysfunctional they may have been, but the Simpsons stuck together, and audiences stuck with them into the 21st century. --David Stubbs

On the DVD: The packaging is good but the 13 episodes are spread very thinly here, with just five each on discs one and two . The commentary track is intermittently interesting though a tad repetitive, as creator David Groening is joined by various other members of the team. The third disc has some neat extra stuff, including outtakes, the original Tracey Ullman Show shorts and a five-minute BBC documentary, but is again fairly brief. The menu interfaces are pretty clunky, annoyingly forcing you to watch endless copyright warnings after each episode and with no facility to "play all". The content is wonderful, of course, but three discs looks like overkill. --Mark Walker

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