Night Court: The Complete Seasons 1-3

i've always loved sitcoms, but let's face it: The Official Record has HIGHLY questionable standards about what a sitcom should be or do. (there's only one thing more annoying and/or depressing than seeing an unimpeachable masterpiece like THE ADDAMS FAMILY, GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, or THE MONKEES dismissed as an abject piece of [censored], and that's seeing an abject piece of [censored] like I LOVE LUCY, CHEERS, or THE SIMPSONS misclassified as an unimpeachable masterpiece.)
on the whole i prefer the sitcoms from the '60s because the canvas was so much wider. you had a sitcom about castaways on a deserted island, not one but two sitcoms about "monster" families, not one but two sitcoms about beautiful women with magical powers, even a western sitcom. compare that to today, when every (repeat, EVERY) sitcom is set in a workplace or living room in the same "real" world. (GET SMART, not merely the greatest ever american sitcom, but the greatest series of any sort that american television is ever likely to see, is something that wouldn't happen today. such a thing wouldn't even occur to today's "creative" minds.)
don't misunderstand me. the real world does have it's comedic potential. (what makes me so nuts is that that's ALL any more recent sitcom even tries to do. I mean honestly, what kind of fool actually expects something to profit from narrowing it's horizons?) the world around us has it's absurities ripe for the pouncing. this had already been proven via gems like THE HONEYMOONERS and THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW. and it would be proven via NIGHT COURT.
what's great about NIGHT COURT is that it effortlessly bridges the gulf. this is a reality where the perils of real life and fantasy are possible in roughly equal measure. Judge Harold T. Stone has the surreal whimsy of a Maxwell Smart as well as the no-nonsense wisdom of a Mike Nesmith. Bailiff "Bull" Shannon is a fine naive yet somehow savvy character cut from the same cloth as Gilligan and Herman Munster. D.A. Dan Fielding has the sleaze factor of an Eddie Haskell (sometimes even a Boris Badenov), but the occasional integrity to rise above it a' la Archie Bunker. (of course, like most such characters, Dan IS most amusing at his most negative.) and those are only the most obvious of the rich characters that contribute to this rich, underrated tapestry.
ironically, this review is kind of depressing, considering where it's had to shine it's light. once upon a time the sitcom qualified as an art form. it still is in England, where "Britcom" masterpieces like RED DWARF and AS TIME GOES BY hit their stride in the '90s. in the '00s, Canada came out of left field with a little gem called CORNER GAS. but alas, the AMERICAN sitcom hasn't even tried to come anywhere close since NIGHT COURT.

Night Court was one of the best comedy series ever produced. It's a picture of the more genteel sleeze of 1980s NYC. The main characters are finely drawn and work together in completely outrageous storylines. As Selma Diamond puts it in one episode when the judge (Harry Anderson) says, "You mean an orangutan has been loose for three days in the Courthouse for three days and nobody has noticed him?" "God, I love New York."
It's too good a series to miss if you missed it the first time around and too funny even if you weren't around then

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews  5.0 out of 5 stars