The Complete West Wing: Seasons 1-7 (44 Disc Box Set) [DVD]

If you are new to The West Wing, I cannot tell you how good it is. I remember when I bought the Season 1 box set a number of years ago. At the time, I had no interest whatsoever in politics and I was merely going on a handful of recommendations. I had no idea that I would be buying not only the best TV show ever created, but also the best piece of entertainment ever created in ANY format.First and foremost, the writing is of the absolute highest quality. The only thing that comes close to the intelligent and often hilarious writing is Aaron Sorkin's (creator of the show) other work, i.e. A Few Good Men, The American President (which is like a condensed, movie-version of the show). Sorkin wrote nearly every episode of Season 1-4 and I think he is the closest thing we have to a modern day Shakespeare. The fast paced, overlapping dialogue that he penned is simply sublime, as brilliantly crafted, heavyweight characters spar with each other over colossal issues that impact millions of people or over the day-to-day banality of working in the office (albeit the most important one in the world). Sorkin has taken the senior staff of a White House Administration and created a unique and endearing character for each position. The pitch perfect casting of these characters is the second thing that makes the show so special.I can praise the standard of writing or the exceptional acting forever, but perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay is to reveal how inspirational this show has been for me. Before I bought The West Wing, I was languishing in my final year at University, simply going through the motions of trying to briefly memorise facts and figures for exams. After watching this show, I developed a thirst for knowledge and a desire to become more dynamic. I wanted to debate two sides of an important issue by calling upon a body of knowledge and citing numbers from `three sources'. I wanted to be this informed and resourceful individual who could delve into his college work in an organised `what's next?' kind of way. I stopped reading my textbooks simply for the sake of reading them and I even based a vital university assignment on the first year episode that dealt with a delivery company strike over two-tier hiring. The pros and cons of two-tier hiring were superbly argued in this episode and, by expanding on the points raised, I received a very good mark for my `Strategic Human Resource Management' assignment. Please don't be put off, however, by talk of mundane things like two-tier hiring. Even if The West Wing did an episode on wheat prices in Russia, it would still be an outstanding piece of smart and funny entertainment.For those of you who didn't know, this complete box set contains the region 1 extras that aren't available on the individual box sets. This includes deleted scenes and features - a whole wealth of bonus material that has never been available to region 2 DVD owners before.It is a big investment to buy all 44 discs and 154 episodes at once, but I couldn't imagine spending all this money on any other show. The series is understandably affected when Sorkin departs at the end of Season 4, but I would give anything to discover The West Wing again. I had to wait for several agonising months before I could see what happened after the amazing season one cliffhanger - I am green with envy to think that you can switch discs in a matter of seconds to find out what happens next. Then again, you never got that great feeling I did on the day when the old `Season 2, Part One' box set was FINALLY released.

I had a lot of trouble playing these on a PC and couldn't return them as they were purchased in 2009.I found that by washing the discs in hot soapy water then drying and polishing firmly with a soft flannel, all the marks and sticky stuff could be rubbed off. Even the seemingly immovable jagged circle disappeared.

A few years ago it used to be common for British critics to crow about what wonderful intelligent drama we produce and how U.S. television lagged far behind us in sophistication. We haven't heard that view so much of late and The West Wing is one of the prime contributing factors to their silence.The West Wing wasn't just another drama: it was a phenomenon. Literate, clever, witty and profoundly serious, it set out a vision of "liberal" politics that took the ideals of the Clinton White House and recast them on a heroic scale. In Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) the writers created a Democrat president who brought the charisma of the JFK era into the twenty-first century, while his staff - the zealous ideologue Toby Ziegler, pragmatic fixer Josh Lyman, Capra-esque innocent Sam Seaborn, sassy press secretary C. J. Cregg and irascible Chief of Staff Leo McGarry - provided an articulate forum for the ideas under discussion. The acting was rarely less than superb; the scripting consistently evocative of Preston Sturges and the golden age of Hollywood dialogue.Over the seven seasons, the quality falters occasionally, but never for long. Some of the more sensational plot threads - an abduction, a state-authorised assassination, some improbable foreign policy manoeuvres towards the end of the administration - stretch the credulity of the audience, suggesting that the writers occasionally struggled to maintain the narrative over such a long run. Nevertheless, there are sequences of episodes, such as the assassination attempt on Bartlet, or the long campaigns that dominate seasons six and seven, that can be counted as some of the best political drama to see the light of day in any form. During the long close of the series, the performances by Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda are themselves outstanding examples of television acting at its best, and there are recurring characters (such as those played by Adam Arkin, Oliver Platt and Emily Procter among many) that go a long way to explaining why this has been regarded as one of the strongest ensemble casts of recent years.Especially noteworthy is the fact that the series only very rarely stoops to soap opera. Tendencies in that direction - the relationship between Charlie Young and Barlet's youngest daughter, or C. J.'s relationship with a Secret Services bodyguard - are quickly curtailed, sustaining the integrity of a body of work whose worst moments of self-indulgence (such as the presidential debate in series seven - which was performed live by Smits and Alda - or the "Access" mockumentary on the work of the White House press secretary) were always noble in conception, intelligent in approach.There are full seasons here that I must have seen approaching ten times, and their ability to educate, inform and entertain is unrivalled in my DVD collection. There are plenty of my TV-on-DVD purchases that have failed to repay the investment of purchase ... this is emphatically not one of them.

The first two episodes on disk 1 were fine but episodes 3 & 4 were unplayable. The disk had a jagged line half a centimetre from the edge all the way round the disk. The other three disks of series 1 had the same thing. Picked another series at random and all those disks had the same issue, so are sending them back. So disappointed.

Excellent. Talented writing, engaging team, insightful.