Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #754 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-03-10
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 6
• Running time: 910 minutes

Amazon.co.uk

Part-Lost, part-The Day After, this television drama very effectively taps into palpable post-9/11 dread. The residents of Jericho are literally in the dark when they are cut off from civilization in the wake of a nuclear blast. Has the United States been attacked? How many cities were destroyed? Was it terrorists, or something way more sinister? It is up to Johnston Green (Gerald McRaney), the town's mayor (and series bedrock), to calm the community, keep its citizens from turning on each other, and protect them from predatory outsiders. Johnston's son, Jake (Skeet Ulrich), a "screw-up," returns home just prior to the blast following a mysterious five-year absence. Jake is at odds with his estranged father, who is running for reelection, and his brother, Eric (Kenneth Mitchell), his deputy. He isn't welcomed back by his former girlfriend, Emily (Ashley Scott), who is now engaged to a man who is missing following the blast. With the fate of America in the balance, one would think that "small town problems" wouldn't amount to much in this crazy new world, but it is Jericho's human dramas that resonate most deeply.

On the most cherished TV shows, characters come to feel like family. Jericho's characters come to feel like neighbours. Dale (Erik Knudson), the orphaned teenage outcast, forms an unexpected friendship with the town's spoiled mean girl, Skylar (Candace Bailey). Robert Hawkins (Lennie James), just arrived in town, introduces himself as a former cop from St. Louis but his secret basement command centre suggests otherwise. Gray Anderson (Michael Gaston), a mayoral candidate, politicizes the disaster to undermine Johnston. Stanley (Brad Beyer), a farmer, falls in love with his condescending IRS auditor from Washington, D.C. (Alicia Coppola) and Eric plans to leave his wife, Alice (Darby Stanchfield) for bartender Mary (Clare Carey). But at the heart of Jericho's first season is Jake's hard-earned redemption in his family's (and Emily's) eyes (suddenly, he's a regular MacGyver, able to perform a tracheotomy with a juice box straw!). Star Trek has its Trekkies/-ers and Laurel and Hardy its fraternal organization, the Sons of the Desert. Jericho has its "Nuts," who mounted a monumental campaign to rescue the series after it had been cancelled. Fans posted a barrage of videos on You Tube and deluged the studio with peanuts (the significance is explained in the season finale). "What is it about this town that has you so addicted to it?" someone asks Emily at one point. Just watch a couple of episodes, and you'll also be hooked. This First Season set should rally Jericho's army and inspire new recruits. --Donald Liebenson

DVD Description
When twenty-three nuclear bombs go off across the USA, the residents of Jericho are left wondering whether their small Kansas town is all that remains.

As the impact of the crisis sets in, the town’s people pull together and roles within the new community-–some unexpected and some unwanted--become established; Jake Green (played by heart-throb Skeet Ulrich; Scream, The Craft), the prodigal son of the town’s Mayor finds himself stranded in Jericho as a result of the catastrophe. Having just experienced a tense family reunion after five years unexplained absence he finds himself reluctantly assuming a leadership role within the community from which he has run: Emily Sullivan (Ashley Scott; The Kingdom, Dark Angel), Jake's high school sweetheart who lives outside of town and innocently goes about her business unaware of the catastrophe until a chance encounter with two escaped convicts; Emily’s estranged father Jonah Prowse (James Remar; Sex & The City, Dexter), the leader of a group of survivalists who have settled just outside of Jericho, who finds himself having to flee the town when he is accused of murder. Robert Hawkins (Lennie James; 24 Hour Party People, Outlaw), a mysterious jack-of-all-trades stranger who moved to Jericho three days before the attack and who seems to know more than he’s letting on; Mayor Johnston Green (Gerald McRaney; Deadwood), a man dealing with conflicting emotions after the return of his son but who is forced into action as the town begins to riot; Bonnie Richmond (Shoshannah Stern), a pretty 17-year-old who is hearing impaired; and Bonnie's older brother Stanley (Brad Beyer), Jake's best friend from childhood and an avid car lover who works on the family farm.

The townspeople start to think that things are getting back to normal when the phone and power lines are reinstated and they receive a pre-recorded phone call from Homeland Security telling them that help is on the way. However, their hope is quickly dashed when a power surge disables all of the town’s electronics and fires break out across the town.

Compelling throughout, the first season of Jericho captivated viewers attention to such an extent that, when the network attempted to cancel the show, it was resurrected for a second season based upon sheer fan power alone. This essential post-apocalyptic drama instantly embroils the viewer into the complex character interactions that occur following the explosions and remains absorbing right through to the season’s dramatic finale.

Synopsis
A nuclear explosion plunges a group of Kansas residents into a fraught battle for survival in this post-apocalyptic serial drama. Isolated from the rest of the country in the small town of Jericho, and unsure of the cause behind the explosion, uncertainty and chaos reigns supreme. Chief among the survivors is Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich), a prodigal son who returned to Jericho after his grandfather died. But his uncanny skill with a gun and ability to perform complicated medical procedures provoke troubling questions about his shadowy past. Rifts form among the townsfolk as survival instincts take over, while others fight to maintain order among the ashes. As the series proceeds, its rich ensemble of characters come ever closer to the reasons for the strange new world they are faced with. Originally cancelled by CBS, loyal fans successfully lobbied to have the show continued for a second series. It won't take new viewers long to see what all the fuss was about...

Customer Reviews

Not Lost, but not found either...
I like Skeet Ulrich and, seduced by nice box design, I had high hopes for this series. Which weren't exactly dashed, but it didn't really deliver either.

The box is stickered-up (in the UK) with "LOST" comparisons but, frankly, other than it being survivor orientated nothing else is remotely similar. The 'mystery' somehow lacks much interest. I found that I never really cared about who had blown-up the cities and, in fact, it's pretty much revealed halfway in. It lacks the surrealism of Lost, with its weird non-sequiturs and bizarre coincidences and, most importantly, it lacks Lost's fabulously diverse, if frequently irritating, characters. It simply does not have the intensity or charge of that programme.

If I was to compare it to anything I'd say it was more like Smallville, but without the monster of the week and the special powers. It has that same homely small-town feeling, and the romances and in-family bickering are very reminiscent, with Jake's parents being a sort of real-life equivalent of Jonathan & Martha. I found that while a few characters were likeable (the IRS Mimi, Jake himself, Dale, and, best of all, Hawkins) there wasn't really much to compel you through it.

It's relatively 'realistic', for TV, but there were still little aggravations, like everyone burning upwards of 30 candles at any one time in their living rooms and none of them old stubs. Always lovely fresh new candles every time. How many candles would a small town have? With every family burning 30 a night, and an average of three days or so as a maximum burn time for a pillar candle, I reckon they should have run out in the second week. Likewise they were always b*tching about petrol (gas), but no-one ever hesitated to jump into a vehicle and dash off. And don't even start me on the tank, which they had in a barn and didn't pull out to use till the last minute, even although they were under threat of imminent invasion.

These things could have been overlooked if it had offered more intrigue but, bordering on pedestrian as it was, it only served to highlight the series' failure to engage. Good enough, but not great. And life's too short to watch something that isn't great.

The best show ever!!!
If you enjoyed anything from "Heroes" to "Lost" this is a programme you'll love just as much if not more. Once I started watching it I couldn't stop and anyone I have recommended it to have found the very same! It's got it all... thrill, romance, threat, intrigue... something for everyone. It made me laugh and cry. The acting is incredibly realistic and you won't be able to help forming attachments to each character. Just give it a go... you won't be disappointed.

Pure, unadultered (and unbelievable) schmaltz
I had high hopes for this series based on the reviews, fan-boy following the series has and the concept. Unfortunately this suffers from the usual over-production endemic to US series - the photography is colourful and bright, interiors look like they featured in a magazine, everyone is beautiful, everyone's teeth are white and hair coiffured, and no-one is remotely believable.

The first episode was well done and gripping and I thought "this is going to be good like everyone says". Sadly the drop-off from episode 1 is massive. After that point it becomes a slushy mix of melodrama (extra-marital affairs, teen romance) and episodic drama (each week the denizens of Jericho face a new challenge and overcome it - fallout, fires, food shortages, power cuts etc).

The biggest problem is the plain lack of believeability. The US is "attacked" with nuclear weapons, planes crash, birds die, fallout clouds loom. So what do people do? Go to the snug-looking bar and pretend it's an episode of Friends. And the people aren't ordinary: all the guys are "hunks"; all the women "babes" in keeping with most US TV. Like the Pamela Anderson-alike ex-girlfriend of the erstwhile hero. As if she would be in smalltown Kansas with her high-flying banking husband - what bank is he meant to be working at?

She's not the only immaculate beauty - everyone has lovely lipstick, mascara, trendy haircuts or rugged stubble-covered square chins. So after a nuclear blast and war, people will spend hours making-up before they trot down to the bar to flirt and play pool. Nuclear armageddon sounds okay to me!

Clearly reality is a concept the writers have chosen to ignore. Soon after the nuclear blast, fallout hits the town in the rain. Nevertheless the next day everyone's out standing in the puddles being glamorous with no concern for radiation. Actually radiation appears not to be a problem and obviously has no effect on anything like crops, drinking water, the air people breathe. And although there are some complaints about a lack of power - beer is cold(!), there seems to be no problem keeping the bar nicely lit for intimate encounters.

Also, Jericho must be twinned with the city in Logan's Run. No-one is allowed to live in Jericho beyond 55 (I'm guessing at the age of the shrewish shopkeeper). There are no old biddies - everyone is young, handsome and very, very clean and fresh faced. Perhaps radiation is like pro-retinol or anti-cerimides and makes everyone young looking?

The layer of treacle-y schmaltz covering the show doesn't help either. The show is almost propaganda for social togetherness and team work. I can almost hear the chants of "USA!", "USA!" in the background. Nothing can't be overcome with the town pulling together and anyone not joining the cause is clearly A Bad Person.

The most painful example to date is the potential destruction of a corn field by insects. The shrewish shopkeeper wants part of the farm in return for the pesticide. The major will only help if the farmer will split his crop with the town. Just as the farmer decides to burn the infected crop, along comes the whole town to help pick the corn and the store owner provides the pesticide for free, all to a slushy romantic soundtrack just in case we missed the fact this was a Very Poignant And Emotionally Moving Scene.

This would have been better had it been made in the UK in the late 80s or early 90s with elements of Threads and Survivors thrown in (I say early 90s as since then, UK TV has suffered the same over-production sheen of glamour as US TV). In fact, go and rent Threads and the first season of Survivors - much more challenging and realistic.