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Image credit: Miami Vice: Photofest

STILL A BLAST People who fire barbs at the Miami Vice TV series would do well to give it another shot on DVD

A friend who was reading reviews and feature stories about Michael Mann's new Miami Vice movie asked me whether the original TV show was really as mediocre as so many were saying. You know the rap against the show now — that it hasn't held up; that Don Johnson, in his sockless shoes and pastel T-shirts, was a joke; that sort of thing.

Well, I'm here to tell you, I plopped in the three-disc season 2 DVD of Miami Vice (the most recent of the show's DVD releases), and many episodes were darn good. Sure, the hair (on both men and women) was a little pouffy, but the scripts were tight, and it was fun to see, among the guest-starring actors, musicians such as Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, and Leonard Cohen. Plus there was Seinfeld's Michael Richards playing a dead-serious bad guy, and Bruce McGill (D-Day from Animal House!) emoting mightily as a gone-berserk former vice cop. So go see the new movie, but don't believe the anti-hype about the TV show.

(Got a DVD-related question for Ken? Post it here.)