MGM/Fox Home Entertainment

“Baby, if you’ve ever wondered, wondered whatever became of me. I’m living on the air in Cincinnati, Cincinnati WKRP.”

In the interests of full disclosure, I must confess that I am a HYOOOGE fan of WKRP in Cincinnati.

Set in the late 70s, WKRP follows the lives of a rock n’ roll radio station. We have an odd little news director (Les Nessman), a fast-talking sales manager (Herb Tarlek) and a DJ (Dr. Johnny Fever) that occasionally needs to look at his coffee mug to remember who he is.

The first episode shows the station from easy listening to RnR. The scene were Johnny officially changes the format alone is worth the cost of this set. But that is not all! We are also treated to one of the true classic episodes: The legendary turkey drop. If you can sit through that and not laugh, you simply don’t have a funny bone.

If that is not enough, we also get the Scum of the Universe!

The bonus features are a tad on the skimpy side, especially when you think about how long they have had to work on this, but that hardly matters because the show is so good.

A word of warning: the episode Turkeys Away has a commentary track, don’t bother with it. It simply features Loni Anderson and producer/creator Hugh Wilson laughing over the best parts.

Also, a lot has been made of the removal of classic rock songs from season one. While this is true, it really does not detract from the show. The reality is that the humor, or at least much of it, comes from the writing and the exceptional chemistry of the cast.

Plus, people from Fox have said that the music was removed for financial reasons and that if season one does well, they would like to retain the original music for the forthcoming seasons. In other words, if we buy it, they will give us the episodes with original music intact.

The 80s may have given us The Cosby Show, and the 90s Seinfeld and Friends, but my heart belongs to the big WKRP in Cincinnati.

Jeremy Lynch
Click here to order WKRP in Cincinanati: Complete First Season from Amazon.
Click here to an interesting article on the cost of licensing music.