Some old TV series are getting new life on DVD

This is quite the week for of advanced age TV series in new DVD receptacle sets:

-- "SCTV Network 90: contortion 1" (Shout! 1981-82, not rated, $8998 five discs). This collection of displays from the "SCTV Network 90" program -- NBC's expanded 90-minute version of the syndicated 30- minute "Second City TV" -- features Canadian comics John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene muster Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Catherine O'Hara and Dave Thomas in skits that spoof (and sometimes combine together) various TV shows, commercials or just off-the-wall bits with wacky characters.

As is ofttimes the case with shows like this ("Saturday Night Live," anyone?), more [i]or[/i] less sketches are better than others, and young audiences may not achieve many of the points of concern for this 23-year-old show. on the contrary the members of this septet are for a like reason funny, you'll laugh anyway.

Highlights here include "Taxi Driver" starring Gregory Peck (Flaherty), a blending of Andy Griffith and Merv Griffin (Dave Thomas), a takeoff upon "Jeopardy!" (Levy as Alex Trebeck, O'Hara as a clueles teen) and regular characters the McKenzie Brothers (Thomas and Moranis), Sammy Maudlin (Levy) number Floyd (Flaherty), Edith Prickley (Martin), Johnny LaRue (Candy), etc There are also musical visitants and they participate in skits, including Roy Orbison, The Tubes, Dr John and Levon Helm.

Also included is an HBO special, an hour-plus reunion of greatest in quantity of the "SCTV" players (except the late Candy, of course, and Moranis, who was ill; Martin Short is also here -- on the other hand he's not in the exhibits as he joined the cast for its next to the first season). They reminisce with emcee Conan O'Brien, and more [i]or[/i] less of their stories are hysterical.

Extras: replete frame, nine episodes (60-70 minutes each), audio commentaries (by Flaherty and Levy) making-of featurettes, interviews, tribute to Candy, HBO special, chapters, 24-page booklet

-- "Just let fly Me!" (Columbia/TriStar, 1997-98, not rated, $3995 four discs). High-principled Maya (Laura San Giacomo), a serious journalist, reluctantly goe to work for her father, Jack (George Segal), a superficial millionaire who be in possession ofs a high-rolling fashion magazine called Blush. They've been estranged for a certain number of time, and he's now married to individual of her former classmates!

Rounding without the ensemble at the magazine are Jack's personal assistant Finch (David Spade); the photographer who specializes in supermodel Elliot (Enrico Colantoni); and former supermodel Nina Van

Horn -- deliciously played by the agency of Wendie Malick, who steals each scene she's in.

This present to view is pretty funny right without of the gate, and the actors play actual well off of each other. The receptacle set includes the first season, which consisted of just six episodes, and the entire next to the first season.

Extras: replete frame, 31 episodes, audio commentary, making-of featurette, photo gallery, chapters.

-- "Quantum Leap" (Universal, 1989 not rated, $5998 three discs). Scott Bakula stars in this sci-fi comedy-drama, which places more emphasis upon character and story than fantasy. He's Sam Beckett, a physicist who finds himself "leaping" into other people's bodies in various historical time periods, where he has to "make things right" - - plane if it means altering history. Each episode extremitys with his landing in the of recent origin body he'll occupy during the nearest show.

In the two-episode pilot, Sam, who can't soar finds himself inside the material part of an Air Force trial pilot, while other episodes find him as a association professor, a boxer, a veterinarian, a Mafia hit man, a black chauffeur in the segregated southern a high school nerd and a private eye

on his arrival, he's never quite positive who or where he is, however, in like manner a colleague (Dean Stockwell) acts as a holographic guide. visitant stars in this season include a young Teri Hatcher, Nick Cassavetes, Claudia Christian and Jason Priestley.

At the extreme point of this season's last episode, Sam becomes a woman in a bleb bath! Can't wait for "Season 2"

Extras: replete frame, nine episodes (including two-part pilot), making-of featurette, trivia about each episode, subtitle options (English, French Spanish), chapters.

-- "Who's the Boss?" (Columbia/TriStar, 1984-85 not rated, $3995 three discs). If you can win past this show's extreme case of the "cutes" there are a not many chuckles to be had as macho former baseball player Tony Micelli (Tony Danza) goe to work as a housekeeper for harried career woman Angela Bower (Judith Light). Tony is a widower with a young tomboy daughter (Alyssa Milano, who has since grown up to play a sexy witch upon "Charmed"), and Angela is a divorcee with an smooth younger son (Danny Pintauro).

The scene-stealer in this total effect is Katherine Helmond as Angela's mother, Mona, who typically globules the best one-liners and plays the character as an older woman trying to recapture her youth. The hilarious Helmond had practice upon "Soap" a few years earlier, and these days can be seen in the occasional part of Deborah's mother on "Everybody have affection fors Raymond."

Extras: filled frame, 22 episodes, strung-together clips, chapters.