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| Reviewed by: Jason White 30 Sep 2005 21 Jump Street: Season Three
| |  21 Jump Street will be forever best known as making Johnny Depp a household name before he went to a big push in movies. Creator Steven J. Cannell was a master of TV back in the 80’s having given us so many classics such as The A Team and more of the like. Towards the end of the 80’s, more emphasis was on reality with action, so a cop show with young adults moving about and doing things that seasoned cops could not do, well it was different for the time and easily seen as a forerunner for changes to come in the TV landscape. The show ran for 5 seasons and spawned a few actors out there of some note, but most are just the TV type while Depp obviously went huge.
Season 3 moves towards the end without a doubt. Seems seasons 1 and 2 tapped out the writers, as here in season 3, much is stretched out paper thin in terms of stories. The saving grace I guess, or curse to others, is the addition of Richard Grieco as Booker, a rival of sorts to Depp’s Hanson character. The show goes with setting up circumstances around events of some controversy or two sided value, often playing up both sides and trying to remain neutral. A wide variety of dramas do that today over and over, so Jump Street again may have been a forerunner here too.
21 Jump Street is presented in 1.33:1 full frame. The quality is not the best. No bad quality but not much better than VHS. The image is not super sharp, not much definition, not much for coloring either. Lot of bleed, blurriness, and well just a lot of age. It looks the same as I recall years ago, but nothing too great. A few other shows of this vintage have looked similar, so I guess most fans will probably know what to expect.
Audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 and holds up better than the video. Dialogue is a bit low in the balance scheme though, as music and some effects are way louder. Still everything is clear with a good crispness and little distortion beyond some echoing.
No extras which is not a big surprise given this is a season 3 box set of a not too popular of a show.
Steven J. Cannell rules the 80’s action TV market and 21 Jump Street is a good example of the near end of the road run. Smart and hip for the youngsters, but still pretty good fun for what it is and was. Anchor Bay does an okay job here, but without doing some major restoration work, this is as good as it will be. The show was never super huge, so no chance of that happening. For fans though there is still a lot to like here and the set does do well in getting the episodes out and ready to watch.
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Copyright (c) 2007 Rock Star Media Works, Inc. All rights reserved.
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