Northern Exposure was a breakout hit that aired from 1990 to 1995. It combined comedy and drama with both procedural and serial storylines. The show starred Rob Morrow, Janine Turner, Cynthia Geary, Elaine Miles, John Corbett, Darren E. Burrows, Peg Phillips, Barry Corbin, and John Cullum. Recurring and supporting cast members included Valerie Mahaffey, Adam Arkin, Anthony Edwards, Diane Delano, Moultrie Patten, Richard Cummings Jr., and Graham Greene. Paul Provenza and Teri Polo joined the cast during the final season as series regulars as Morrow was leaving the series.
The show's premise is that Morrow's character, Joel Fleischman, a doctor from New York, is forced to move to Alaska because the state underwrote his medical school tuition. He believes he will be working in a hospital in Anchorage, but is sent to the small, remote town of Cicely, filled with a bunch of quirky residents. It is basically a fish-out-of-water story as Dr. Fleischman adjusts to life in a small town full of quirky people. As the show went on, the focus shifted more to the town's eccentric nature and its various residents than to the fish-out-of-water storyline that began the series.
The show ran for six seasons. Seasons one and two were extremely short (a total of fifteen episodes between them), and then full seasons from season three onward. Morrow had a widely publicized contract dispute with the powers that be that saw his role reduced over the course of the series until he was written out of the show entirely partway through the final season, after which the show just fizzled out and was canceled. Janine Turner played Maggie O'Connell, a pilot and Fleischman's landlord, and on-and-off love interest again. Barry Corbin plays Maurice Minnefiled, an ex-astronaut who basically owns the entire town of Cicely. John Cullum plays Holling Vincoeur, the owner of the local bar, and Cynthia Geary plays Holling's much younger wife, Shelly. John Corbett plays Chris Stevens, the DJ at the local radio station; Darren E. Burrows plays Ed, a local teenager and aspiring moviemaker; Peg Phillips plays Ruth-Ann, the owner of the local convenience store; and Elane Miles plays Marilyn, Dr. Fleischman's office assistant.
This set is a 24-disc Region 2 set. Thus, the discs can only be played on a Region 2 Blu-ray player. I tried playing them in a region-free player, which plays many Region 2 discs perfectly well, but it did not work to play these. So, you will probably need to get a Region 2 player (if you don't already have one) to watch these. Most, but not all, of the bonus content included on the US DVD releases is included here. It does include the deleted scenes and gag reels, but the DVDs had commentary tracks on select episodes that are missing from this version. One big drawback is that this set is not closed-captioned at all. Also, there is a weird audio issue: specifically, when you are on the menu screen on each disc, the theme song plays extremely loud, then when you go into the episodes, the volume is very low. So, you have to turn up the volume to hear the dialogue in the episodes, and if you go back to the menu screen before turning the volume down, you are blasted out of the room. The A/V transfer is pretty good. The video quality of the Blu-Rays is, on the whole, better than the DVDs. However, some of the early episodes did not get as good a video transfer as later episodes. So, it is an upgrade, but not what I would call a reference-quality or extremely high-quality A/V transfer.
As many are aware, the show was released on DVD in the US back in the mid-2000s. It has also finally received a Region 1 Blu-Ray release. The significant issue with the DVD releases was that, from season three on, Universal did not pay for the rights to some of the original music and replaced many of the original songs, which often were tied to the storylines of the episodes, with canned instrumental music that was akin to Muzak played in elevators. Many die-hard fans of the series hated those releases because of that. The Region 1 Blu-Ray release has some, but not all, of the original music restored. This set finally delivers the episodes with all of the original music. As someone who owned the DVD releases, I can confirm that songs that were definitely missing from the DVDs were put back in for this set.
Overall, if you can get this set at a reasonable price (about $100 in US dollars), I would say it is well worth it. Because it is an import, the cost can fluctuate, and if it goes out of print (or is out of print when you read this), it will be significantly overpriced. Ultimately, because it is unlikely to get a truly comparable US release, if you can get it at a reasonable price, it is worth the pickup, as it is the only way to see the show as it aired with all the original music.
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