Product Details

• Actors: Greg Germann, Peter MacNicol
• Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 6
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: October 6, 2009
• Run Time: 969 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000TGURZ8
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,380 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Ally McBeal, Calista Flockhart, and Vonda Shepard fans are finally being given the entire first season of the groundbreaking, and wildly entertaining, show--all 23 episodes and original music collected and presented as originally broadcast. What a treat! David E. Kelley presents a legal series set in Boston (two of his favorite subjects) with a believable heroine reportedly loosely based on his lovely actress wife, Michelle Pfeiffer. As played by Flockhart, Ally is an intellectual, a brilliant legal mind--and one of the most neurotic young heroines ever to grace TV screens. It's not that Ally isn't confident--given a thorny legal issue or complex case, she's one of the best. But Ally's rocky love life, and vivid imaginations that materialize right in the middle of a scene, make her believable, slightly annoying, and altogether endearing.

Ally McBeal rocketed Flockhart to stardom when it first aired in 1997, and rightly so. Her Ally is nervous, hard on herself, yearning, vulnerable, a girl's girl still secretly (and not so secretly) hoping for Mr. Right. As a young associate at the law firm of Cage & Fish (Peter MacNicol and Greg Germann), Ally has to navigate around working with her first true love, Billy Campbell (Gil Bellows), who's now married to yet another associate, Georgia Thomas (Courtney Thorne-Smith). The entire cast throw themselves into their comic/serious/absurd roles and stemwinders--many of which take place in the now-infamous single-sex restroom.

Ally McBeal also launched the careers of Jane Krakowski (30 Rock), Lucy Liu (Charlie's Angels), and Portia de Rossi (Arrested Development). Additionally, it shone the spotlight on a crazy-talented singer-songwriter named Vonda Shepard, whose music provides the theme song ("Searchin' My Soul") and who anchors most of the episodes as a local bar singer reinterpreting '60s soul through a late-'90s prism--brilliantly. The boxed set has not only every episode, but every memorable Shepherd song from the first season for the true fan. Bring on the dancing babies! --A.T. Hurley 

Stills from Ally McBeal: The Complete First Season (Click for larger image)

Product Description

All 23 episodes from Season 1 on 6 discs – on DVD for the first time ever.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ally McBeal: Just as funny now...., February 1, 2010

By 

Doobster6 (PA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ally McBeal: The Complete First Season (DVD)

When the series first came out I remember thinking how creative the writers all were and being pleasantly surprised by the unexpected complexity and depth of the characters, at least for a sitcom. A decade later it's still funny and at times, even thought provoking. Even though the ground they broke then has since been thoroughly tilled by the many series that followed, the topics and issues are still relevant. My wife and I are enjoying it!!

15 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will it ever be available...?, February 9, 2008

By 

jdougan273 "JD" (Eureka, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ally McBeal: The Complete First Season (DVD)

I guess only time will tell if the U.S. will ever see the glory that several other countries currently can. According to Wikipedia on 2/09/08, "Due to music rights issues, the first complete season of Ally McBeal has not been made available on DVD in the United States (only 6 random episodes can be found on the R1 edition, Ally McBeal - Ally on Sex and the Single Life)"

I know this doesn't really help matters, but at least there is a reason we haven't seen it around yet.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Justice is only for the lawyers, not for all, March 17, 2010

By 

Jacques COULARDEAU "A soul doctor, so to say" (OLLIERGUES France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ally McBeal: The Complete First Season (DVD)

This series is hilarious and intends to be. Lawyers and lawyers and lawyers in all their antics to win cases every time they can, even more than they should. It is first of all a serious criticism of that kind of jury justice that essentially manipulates the members of the jury and at the same time surprises the judge and the various counselors and even the accused, the defendant and the accuser, and everyone in the case. Justice appears then like and as a farce, because it is a farce, the farce of a purely conventional and opportunistic institution for whom freedom and truth are absolutely unheard of as rules, and are at the most circumstantial elements. The series though is a lot more interesting if we forget about this justice. The people are mostly neurotic, if not psychotic, and they cultivate those characteristics to create some kind of funny, strange and bizarre and ah-ah of not oh-my-god plot and intrigue and never mind what else. Love in all directions and the impossibility to love in just the same number of directions. Love turned into exhibitionism or pure violence if not sadism. Fetishism turned into a fine art and hunting into a parlor activity if not a court distraction and entertainment. You laugh for sure but there is little depth in all that and it only aims at making you laugh. In the end we could even say that we are laughing at justice which is a sham, lawyers who are clowns and men and women in all their ages, colors and personalities who are all disposable pawns on the social board.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID