Review of Coach: Series 1

Introduction

Hayden Fox (Craig T. Nelson) is the coach of the Minnesota State `Screaming Eagles` football team and is at home in his office with his best friend and assistant coach Luther (Jerry Van Dyke) and Dauber (Bill Fagerbakker) who has assumed coaching duties. Fox is a middle-aged `jock`, happy only when talking about sport and eating, Luther is a world-weary assistant and Dauber is a permanently optimistic student who has been at the school for seven years, but has yet to graduate so he has out-grown the football team and is now part of the coaching setup. Fox has everything as he likes it, coaching football during the week and spending his weekends with his girlfriend Christine (Shelley Fabares) who lives in Minneapolis where she works as a TV news reporter. This comfortable setup is complicated when his daughter Kelly (Clare Carey), who he hasn`t spent any time with for sixteen years, enrols at the university.

Video

Presented in the original 4:3 fullscreen format, this has not obviously been improved since 1989 and the picture is no better than broadcast quality.

Audio

As with the video, the soundtrack is the original English mono and there are no other language options available. This isn`t too much of an issue as the show is almost entirely dialogue dominated and has no scenes which would require surround or even stereo sound.

Features

Disc 1 has a trailer for `Playback`, a distribution company for `cult & classic` TV shows which takes less than a minute to list the titles they have available. The extras on disc 2 are the `Homewreckers` episode from season 2 and `The Great 80s TV Flashback` documentary which looks back on such TV shows as `Miami Vice`, `Magnum P.I.`, `Simon & Simon`, `Charles in Charge` and `The A-Team`.

Conclusion

`Coach` was first broadcast in 1989 and ran for nine years; I got the feeling that the 13 episodes in this season were laying the groundwork for seasons to come, establishing characters and locations rather than consistently playing for laughs. Every episode reminds you that "Coach is filmed in front of a studio audience" and the audience in question often appear unsure whether to laugh or not, as the gags do not fly thick and fast and some episodes, such as `Whose Team is it Anyway?`, go for long periods without any jokes at all.

Despite this, the show is well written and acted, particularly by Craig T, Nelson, who is better known to younger audiences (myself included) as Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible from Pixar`s 2005 hit animated movie `The Incredibles`. The characters are well drawn which allows Hayden to play off authority figures and those that date Kelly and do not fit his idea of who should be dating her. Hayden Fox is lovable despite his flaws, Kelly is a sweet girl trying to get to know her father, Christine`s attempts to understand and change Hayden are funny and the combination of the downbeat Luther and the constantly upbeat and bone-headed Dauber is the heartbeat of the show.

On the evidence of the first season, `Coach` isn`t the most accomplished sitcom ever made and I can`t think of who it would appeal to as I am unsure as to whether it was actually broadcast in Britain, yet it`s the sort of light and non-challenging TV show that you can put on and relax in front of. By the end of the season, I felt that `Coach` was hitting it`s stride and, on the evidence of the `Homewreckers` episode from season 2, I imagine that it will improve as the seasons continue over the nine-year run.