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Rome, Wisconsin, wasn’t built in a day. It took four glorious seasons to construct and deconstruct the bizarro burg, home to mouthy legal eagle Douglas Wambaugh (Fyvush Finkel), the Frog Man, the Serial Bather, and the strangely normal Brock family. Eight years after being axed by CBS, David E. Kelley’s Emmy-winning series deserves another outing, on DVD.

Kelley refused to whitewash Fences during his three-year tenure as exec producer, digging into controversial issues like racially motivated busing, euthanasia, and fetal-tissue transplants. (No sacred cows allowed, only cows injected with alien DNA.) Imagine the hot-button scenes that didn’t make it on the air! Hopefully someone swept the footage off the cutting-room floor—combined with meaty commentary, that would be a fence worth mending.

Fox Home Entertainment, owner of the DVD rights, seems to agree: According to exec Steve Feldstein, the studio is mulling a 2005 release.


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Posted Aug 20, 2004 | Published in issue #779-780 Aug 20, 2004 | Order Article Reprints