Product Details

• Actors: David Duchovny, Sigourney Weaver, Ioan Gruffudd, Judy Greer, Fran Kranz
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: September 25, 2007
• Run Time: 86 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000RO6JYU
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #63,362 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The TV Set" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 25-SEP-2007
Media Type: DVD

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tension-free satire (but the commentary is good), October 1, 2007

By 

Clare Quilty (a little pad in hawaii) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The TV Set (DVD)

This is an airless, somewhat smug, fatally mild-mannered satire about the production process behind a doomed television drama. Duchovny plays a writer/producer whose autobiographical show is, bit by bit, compromised by Weaver's executive -- the casting, the tone, the plot and even the title are all eventually distorted by a suit who takes demographic readings from her teenage daughter.

This war between artistry and commerce isn't exactly breaking news, and in fact it was already tackled years ago by the smarter, funnier "The Big Picture."

"The TV Set" is pitched too loose. Though he has plenty of opportunities, Duchovny's character never really articulates any kind of vision, and the film loses a lot of tension because the story he wants to tell really doesn't look much better than the compromised version. Even when the final version of the show appears, he seems more angry over its implied failure than he does over the loss of his vision.

Ioan Gruffudd plays a supposedly ingenious BBC executive lured to America who seems to have Duchovny's back but he, too, never asserts himself in a realistic way -- his character seems like an incomplete thought, as does the go-nowhere failed courtship/feuding between the show's two leads. And Weaver's lines are all on-the-nose jabs at a corporate mentality ("Original kind of scares me," she says, surprisingly without the accompaniment of a rim-shot).

What's up with Kasdan? He made the wonderful "Zero Effect" followed by the sort of cynical teen comedy "Orange County" which wasn't nearly as funny as the films that inspired it. But I miss the wit and imagination that I thought "Zero" offered a promise of. Those qualities certainly don't arrive in "The TV Set."

One ammendment to my 2-star review: There's a commentary track on this disc between Kasdan and Judd Apatow that, to my mind, is far more enjoyable than the movie itself. They don't talk a lot about what's going on on-screen, but spend more time discussing the television work they've done that inspired the movie -- "Freaks and Geeks," "Undeclared," "Larry Sanders," "The Ben Stiller Show." I give that commentary 4 stars. Well worth listening to.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What can I say? Good but not great -- a rental, October 1, 2007

By 

R P (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The TV Set (Amazon Instant Video)

What to spend a couple of hours in the depths of the LA TV show development process (and its attendant dramas?). Well then TV Set might just be for you.

Engaging performances from Sigourney Weaver (whose father was a network exec so the role must have been interesting) and David Duchovny (as the put upon writer producer); genuine feeling of the real process; but at the end of the day this story is just not a big story and the characters aren't that memorable. It just does not capture the most important moment in anyone's life or provide any insights into them or our culture that are particularly profound. So it winds up being a middling sort of entertainment. Funny, but not super funny; kind of dramatic without being really moving. Insightful, but not in a super profound or memorable way. Sigourney Weaver is kind of like a slightly less amazing version of Faye Dunaway in Network.

Kasdan's Orange County was definitely better.

If you like this you might also like Christopher Guest's "For Your Consideration" or HBO's "Entourage".

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Sitcom's Genesis Covered in Clever Though Repetitive and Insular Detail, November 22, 2007

By 

Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The TV Set (DVD)

Even though the movie's conscience, no matter how tattered, is carried by the well-intentioned characters played by David Duchovny and Ioan Gruffudd, it is Sigourney Weaver who easily steals this 2007 television industry satire as Lenny, the Machiavellian head of a struggling network. With her natural authority and scathing wit, she goes back to lacerating Working Girl mode and makes Lenny the complete embodiment of the decline of commercial television with her mantra, "Originality scares me." Acerbically written and directed by Jake Kasdan, Lawrence's older son and a TV insider himself, the film focuses specifically on the development of one sitcom pilot from its casting to the show's presentation to the network affiliates. Its creator is Mike Klein, a seasoned TV writer whose brother's suicide inspired him toward his autobiographical concept.

The story's scope is brief compared to what Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chavefsky already covered with visceral aplomb thirty years ago with the brilliant Network, but Kasdan treads familiar subject matter here. The interactions between Mike and the network suits, in particular, Lenny, are funny, but they begin to get repetitive as the plot meanders toward a rather abrupt conclusion. The other shortcoming is the erratic shift in the movie's perspective between Mike and Richard McCallister, a BBC-imported programming whiz who sympathizes with Mike but finds himself inextricably tangled with network politics. Both Duchovny and Gruffudd are fine in their rather curtailed roles, and there is a smart supporting cast that helps to propel the slim plot - Judy Greer as Mike's perpetually waffling manager, Justine Bateman as his grounded wife, Fran Kranz changing from doofus to egomaniac as the sitcom lead, Lindsay Sloane as the increasingly savvy ingénue, and Andrea Martin in a funny bit as a cynical costumer.

The film's wry tone reminds me of Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration, though Guest cuts a broader and deeper swath on the entertainment industry. Kasdan presents a more insular world in this movie, and the result feels less than resonant to the casual viewer. The 2007 DVD boasts two commentary tracks, which seems excessive for something so small-scale - the first is with Kasdan, Duchovny, Sloane and producer Aaron Ryder about the details of the production and the second again with Kasdan but with executive producer Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) to discuss more of what inspired the film itself. A deleted scene is included as well as a brief making-of featurette.