Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman--The Complete First Season

Comic books started growing up and having serious fun with this enchanting series in which the romantic saga of the Man of Steel and Lois Lane takes center stage and benefits from a screwball-comedy spin, pulled off with elegant, witty panache. Dean Cain is charming as the boy from Smallville making his way in the big city but puppy-dog lost around his whip-smart-aleck coworker at the Daily Planet newspaper. Teri Hatcher's star reporter has a Katharine Hepburn scalpel edge and a Rosalind Russell sparkle. Together, Lois and Clark are a combustible pair...or would be, if clandestine bad guy Lex Luthor weren't also the smooth romantic competition for Lois' affections (the indomitable John Shea plays the mogul villain like Donald Trump's bewitching younger brother). All 21 episodes from the 1993-1994 debut season are here, drolly reinventing Clark Kent's life--his wonderfully frank relationship with his adoptive parents (Eddie Jones and K Callan) is particularly delightful--and in the process humanizing the man from Krypton, burdened with his lonely secret. DVD extras include a retrospective documentary, a behind-the-scenes featurette, interviews with Cain and Hatcher, and commentary on the pilot by Cain, creator Deborah Joy LeVine, and director Robert Butler. Highly recommended. (M. Johanson)