Maybe the funniest show you never watched
[I rate it 4.5 stars.]”Sports Night” is about an eponymous fictitious hour sports news show on the fictitious Continental Sports Channel. It’s a sit-com targeted at an audience who knows what “eponymous” means without consulting a dictionary. But this comedy isn’t really about sports at all. It’s about intelligent, articulate people who use humor to relieve the pressures that their demanding jobs entail.Aaron Sorkin is the creator of “Sports Night”. He also created “The West Wing” a year later, and when he realized that it was a lot easier selling viewers a fictitious White House administration than a fictitious sports news crew, he dropped “Sports Night” like a hot potato. Most everyone knows that “The West Wing” isn’t really about Washington politics; instead it’s about intelligent, articulate people who use humor to relieve the pressures that their demanding jobs entail. But few people have even heard of “Sports Night”. It’s a shame, though, because “Sports Night” may be the funniest show you never watched.There are plenty of valid criticisms of “Sports Night”. For supposedly intelligent people the characters adopt a large number of unreasonable prejudices. These are all politically correct prejudices, of course. In the world of “Sports Night” when a homeless man flicks open a switchblade he’s only cutting a sandwich to share. Aaron Sorkin certainly has trouble writing multiple character voices. Without seeing which characters recite which lines you’d be hard pressed to match characters with dialog from a script; the phrasing and delivery are largely interchangeable. And fully half of the humor of “Sports Night” comes from a predictable formula of repetition. Here’s my pastiche of a “Sports Night” dialog:A: “We need to talk.”B: “Is it about X? Because I’m tired of talking about X. We can talk about anything you want, as long as it’s not about X.”A: “OK, then.”B: “It’s not about X?”A: “It’s not about X.”B: “OK, then.”A: “It’s about X.”B: “I’ve got to tell you, if I could make your head explode using only the power of my mind, they’d never get the stain out of the carpet.””Sports Night” in its 2-year run won quite a lot of awards, but none of them were from the writing. It’s good that there’s still a lot of comic meat left after you strip away the repetition schtick, and much of that comes from the talented cast: Josh Charles (who got his start in John Waters’s “Hairspray), Peter Krause (now in “Six Feet Under”), Felicity Huffman (“Out of Order”), Joshua Malina (who followed Sorkin to “The West Wing”), Sabrina Lloyd (“Sliders”), and Robert Guillaume (“Benson”). But the most significant people on “Sports Night” weren’t the writers or actors, but rather the impressive crew behind the cameras. Here are just the award “Sports Night” won (skipping the 22 other nominations):1999 DGA Award, Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series: Thomas Schlamme1999 Emmy Award, Outstanding Multi-Camera Picture Editing for a Series: Janet Ashikaga1999 Emmy Award, Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series: Thomas Schlamme1999 Humanitas Prize, 30 Minute Category1999 Television Critics Association Awards, Outstanding Achievement in Comedy2000 DGA Award, Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series: Thomas Schlamme2000 Emmy Award, Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Series: Peter Smokler2000 Genesis Award, Television – New Series2000 PGA Golden Laurel Nova Award, Most Promising Producer in Television: Aaron Sorkin2000 TV Guide Award, Best Show You’re Not WatchingDo you remember the first episode of “ER”? This was ground-breaking television; it pulled you into the story by its technique of using moving cameras to record an action-packed scene in a single continuous piece rather than assemble lots of short cuts together. It’s not surprising that Thomas Schlamme directed several episodes of “ER” before bringing this technique to “Sports Night”. Continuous action is very expensive to shoot as it requires the sets to be contiguous, the lighting to be in place for all the places the camera will move to, and most importantly all the actors and camera and sound people have to avoid mistakes for the duration of the scene. But the payoff is a superior viewing experience. This show really delivered.I could go on about the great recurring guest cast, with people like Teri Polo, Brenda Strong, William H. Macy, and Jayne Brook. Or the great music that ends most every episode. I could tell you that you’ll be disappointed by the extras on the DVD collection (none at all). Or that Sorkin bowed to network pressure and added a laugh track for about half the first season before it became clear that the viewers were people who didn’t need a laugh track to get the jokes. But the most important thing I can tell you is that you really should check out “Sports Night”. Despite its several flaws it got many things right. “Sports Night” is good entertainment.

Simply great
One of the best series ever. Great writing. Too bad it didn’t go for more seasons.

I 1st came across Sports night on ABC1 on my freeview box a few months ago when I was on study leave for my exams. I thought it was witty, intelligent, very random and quite deep. Casey and Dan the 2 anchors are cute no matter how old they are compared to me! I was curious as to why the episodes wern’t in order, so I checked it out on the internet to find the episodes were 5,6 and 7 years old. As it was cancelled in the y2k, the show was amazing and never should have been cancelled, the acting and writing was brilliant, it had an effect on me like no other show. So when I found out there was a DVD I was very quick to order it, I dont mind about there being no special features because it doesn’t need any. The only critisisms I have is that Rebecca never should’ve messed Dan around and never went back to her husband. And Dana shouldnt have made her dating plan that didn’t work and got together with Casey for a bit! And I wish there were more episodes because I could never get enough of sports night!

I discovered Sports Night by accident on one of the digital channels whilst waiting for another show to come on. I’d recently become hooked on “The West Wing” and suddenly realised the reason I liked SN so much was that it had the same amazing quality of writing – and, on closer inspection, several of the same actors.Set behind the scenes of a late night cable sports show, SN is a study of workplace relationships. It’s a comedy (pity about the dreadful laugh track on the first few episodes), but like any of Sorkin’s stuff, it can make you laugh, cry and learn something new within any episode.The cast and crew are amazing and if you watch carefully, you’ll see Mr Sorkin reprise his trademark role of “Man in Bar” from both “A Few Good Men” and “The American President”.It’s a shame it’s never been released in a R2 format, but if you’ve got a multi region DVD player, get it. It’s definitely worth it. The Anniversary edition has additional commentaries by the cast and crew, but those are just the icing on the cake.