5 TV Cult Classics on DVD

By James Poniewozik

ROSWELL: COMPLETE THIRD SEASON

All alienated teens imagine that they have a great secret destiny. The fantasy is actually true for the just-plain-alien teens of Roswell, who turn out to be refugees from a crashed spacecraft escaping an interstellar war. This 1999-2002 series lasted only about as long as high school does, but the final season shows why it is missed: it cut its high emotion with humor and grounded its sometimes loopy sci-fi adventure in the Romeo-Juliet affair between space boy Max (Jason Behr) and Earth girl Liz (Shiri Appleby). Ending in a graduation--what else?--the last 18 episodes brought the saga to a satisfying, if too early, end.

UNDECLARED: THE COMPLETE SERIES

In 1999 producer Judd Apatow gave us Freaks and Geeks, an excruciatingly funny high school dramedy that died after one glorious season. In 2001 he created the more upbeat sitcom Undeclared, set at a fictional California college, and ... it died after one glorious season. Undeclared covered familiar campus-comedy ground (sex, beer, pranks) but had an intuition for the self-discovery that emerges amid finals and keg parties, and the ensemble gave the dialogue a loose, improv feel. Fleshed out with commentaries (and an unaired episode), this four-disc set is a graduate seminar in smart comedy.

BUFFALO BILL: SEASONS 1 AND 2

Dabney Coleman established himself as Hollywood's go-to smarmy jerk in such sublimely '80s comedies as Nine to Five and Tootsie. But he hit his apex of riotous unlikability in this 1983-84 sitcom about local talk-show host Bill Bittinger. Selfish, lecherous and desperate to move up the career ladder, he irritated and deceived his crew (including a young Geena Davis) with impeccable smarminess. Bill presaged HBO's Larry Sanders and The Office's David Brent, but it took TV a decade or two to catch up with him. Thankfully, now DVD has too.

THE X-FILES: ABDUCTION AND BLACK OIL

The X-Files was really two shows. One was a sci-fi series of mysteries resolved in an hour. They were often brilliant, but for many, they simply killed time between the "mythology" episodes, which laid out the series' tantalizing story line about a government-alien conspiracy. Now 20th Century Fox has had the good sense to strip out the filler and serve up the mythology with no chaser. These two themed collections unspool ongoing plot threads from Seasons 1 through 5. If you don't know what "black oil"--a nefarious goo that may be an alien life form--is, you will have an engrossing time learning. If you do, you've probably already placed your order.

FRAGGLE ROCK: COMPLETE FIRST SEASON

Jim Henson's HBO kids' show had plenty of fun--original music, painful puns and a talking trash heap--but it also took on weighty matters (courage, honesty, self-discovery) with sophistication and tenderness. It did emotional education as well as Sesame Street imparted the ABCs. And the regular dispatches of Fraggle explorer Uncle Traveling Matt from the strange realms of "outer space"--that is, the world of humans--reminded kids that people could be the most outlandish creatures of all. --By James Poniewozik