What is it? Tales of the City, 20th Anniversary Edition, six hour-long episodes on two discs from Acorn Media
How much? $49.99
When? Now
What city, exactly? San Francisco. It’s 1976 and Mary Ann Singleton (Laura Linney), a normal, rather sheltered young woman, ends her San Francisco vacation by calling her mother and informing her that she’s not going home to Cleveland, Ohio. She has decided to stay out West permanently.
It doesn’t take her long to find an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, where the landlady is even more colorful than the scenery. She’s Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis), an eccentric but motherly sort who grows marijuana in the garden and shares freely with her tenants.
As for the tenants, they include the free-spirited Mona Ramsey (Chloe Webb), womanizer Brian Hawkins (Paul Gross), Mona’s best pal Michael “Mouse” Tolliver (Marcus D’Amico) and the very odd and possibly sinister Norman Neal Williams (Stanley DeSantis).
A job quickly follows, with Mary Ann becoming secretary to wealthy Edgar Halcyon (Donald Moffat). Edgar is in poor health but a chance meeting with Anna might be just what he needs to make his last months a little brighter. Then there’s Edgar’s son in-law, the narcissistic, bisexual philanderer Beauchamp Day (Thomas Gibson), and Edgar’s unhappy socialite daughter DeDe (Barbara Garrick).
Over the course of several months, the various characters bump in and around each other’s lives as Mary Ann tries to get over her culture shock and adapt to free-wheeling San Francisco.
Many of these characters have secrets and there are some that remain secrets even after the final episode ends. That’s what the eventual sequels were for.
What’s it like? This miniseries, based on the first of a series of novels by Armistead Maupin, has been called one of the best miniseries ever made. And it certainly is excellent, though not as fast paced as you might be used to. This is a character-based story with a meandering sort of plot. Look at it as more of a “slice of life” series - a snapshot of a very specific time and place and the people who lived there.
It’s the people who are important and for the most part, they’re three-dimensional characters played by excellent actors, some of whom would go on to make bigger names for themselves.
There are definitely some soap opera elements at work. For instance, you do have to be willing to swallow some pretty big coincidences about how these people’s lives intersect.
At the time it first aired (1994 in the United States), it caused quite a stir for its frank depictions of drug use, nudity and sexual relations (homosexual and heterosexual), though it’s pretty tame by today’s standards. You’d see more graphic stuff on cable these days.
Are there extra features? A few, yes. Three episodes have commentary tracks and there are 36 minutes of raw, behind-the-scenes footage from rehearsals and shooting, which are interesting. The set also comes with a booklet with an essay about the series.
New this week: Beauty and the Beast, Season 1; The Big Bang Theory, Seasons 1 and 2 (Blu-ray); China Beach, Season 1; Downton Abbey, Seasons 1-3; Glee, Season 4; Highway to Heaven, Season 2; How I Met Your Mother, Season 8; Magnum, P.I., Complete Series; The Mod Squad, Season 4; Murder, She Wrote, Complete Series; New Girl, Season 2; Wings, Seasons 1 and 2.
Next week: 90210, Season 5; American Horror Story, Season 2; The Avengers, Emma Peel Megaset; Bones, Season 8; Centennial, Miniseries; Inspector Gadget, Megaset; The Middle, Season 3; Psych, Season 7; White Collar, Season 4.
Style, Pages 52 on 09/29/2013