Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - The Complete Series

If you’re a grown person of a generation, then you lived through some pretty epic times for live-action Superheroes. You might have gotten to see Superman: The Movie in theaters, or at the very least got to enjoy it on VHS. One of my earliest movie-going memories was seeing Christopher Reeve in action on the big screen for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and loving every minute of it. Then there was the clunky-as-hell Superboy TV series with Gerard Christopher and John Newton - but I was a kid and loved it. I didn’t know any better - I just loved Superman!

Along comes 1995’s Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. This show hit screens when I was about 13, and I just wasn’t all the way in for it. At that age, I’d grown out of the “but it’s based on a comic book” mindset and became more critical of my entertainment. It didn’t help that I was a full-blooded fan of edgy, dark, and brooding films/comics like The Crow. A fluffy puffy Superman soap opera action adventure just wasn’t a big selling point for me. I gave it a shot here and there, catching an episode once in a while, and was usually entertained for each viewing, but I was never really a regular viewer. That was 30 years ago, and in my estimation, not much has changed for this show.

Watching the show today, I’m finding myself floating in the same boat as when I was a teenager. Parts are good, parts aren’t, overall it’s fairly entertaining. The best part of the show was the interplay between Teri Hatcher’s Lois and Dean Cain’s Clark. Hatcher delivers that plucky upstart reporter vibe with vigor, and Dean Cain does well as the baffled partner trying to keep up in a sort-of superhero version of His Girl Friday. I also loved the running gag of K Callan and Eddie Jones’ Ma and Pa Kent talking to Clark on separate phones in the same room. Lane Smith was a great Perry White with his take-no-crap folksy edge. John Shea was a decent Lex Luthor, even if he never really got to shine throughout the series. The series also had some great cameo roles, ranging from Bruce Campbell and Peter Boyle to Raquel Welch to Drew Carey and Howie Mandel, among many others. 

It should go without saying, but any Superman show, film, or cartoon is only as strong as the man in the blue tights and cape. You have to believe a man can fly. This is where Dean Caine just never sold me as Kal-El/Superman. He was a fine Clark Kent, but his Superman was pretty damn bland. It’s not the series’s limited resources or the ridiculously huge crest on his chest that does Caine in. No, it’s that his only superhero pose throughout the series is to repeatedly jam his hands in his armpits, almost like he’s a relative of Mary Katherine Gallagher. He doesn’t have swagger or gravitas as a hero. There’s no alteration in his voice or cadence to depict absolute power but utmost restraint as a hero; he just sorta shifts around, crosses his arms, and eventually sticks his fists in his pit stank. Folks might have a lot of opinions about Cain today (even more so after recent news), but in my opinion, his legacy as Superman flies and falls with those spandex armpits - even if the show itself doesn't really give him anything else to do.

As I revisited a good amount of the series, I’ll admit I had fun. Superman was my first hero, and even if I didn’t love this show as a kid, it had a soft spot in my heart. Watching through again, I still see the same faults I felt before and came away from it as an innocuously entertaining series. I can see that Teri Hatcher really was the strongest part of the series and probably the key reason it lasted through four seasons. As a whole, Lois & Clark isn't the best Superman series ever made, nor is it the worst. It’s time-passing middle ground material that doesn’t fully excite. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman flies onto 1080p Blu-ray from Warner Bros. All four seasons are delivered across 20 Region Free BD50 discs. All of the discs are frustratingly housed in one of those big, clunky EpikPak cases rather than individual cases for each season, complete with a paper slipcase. So be careful pulling those discs out of their respective trays. The discs load to static image main menus with basic navigation options along the bottom of the screen.

When it comes to ‘90s live-action superhero shows and their run on Blu-ray, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman is analogous to The Flash: The Complete Series. When it looks great, it’s an impressive offering with clean, crisp details for fashions, features, production values, and makeup. Colors are robust, letting Superman’s iconic Red, Blue, and Yellow accents shine while skin tones enjoy a healthy human hue. The show’s appearance isn’t all too dynamic; it was made for '90s-era television sets after all. So in that regard, shadows and black levels are healthy, but they’re not complicated or exotically dramatic. There’s a sense of dimension, but often scenes are quite cluttered to fill that 1.33:1 box.

Like The Flash, the 1080p presentations take a hit for visual effects shots. Pretty much any big effect of Superman flying or saving the day or doing anything "super" was finished in SD. Those effects shots haven’t been improved, so anytime something big happens, the quality noticeably shifts. Not too out of place for an action show of this vintage that was produced with the limitations of the era in mind. The film elements generally look great and are a highlight of the series. 

Each episode of the series comes home with a solid DTS-HD MA 2.0 audio mix. Dialogue is clean and clear, and gets most of the attention for every episode. Again, it’s the witty interplay between Hatcher and Cain that sells most of the fun of the series. Action beats get their time to shine for all of the explosions, whooshing flybys, heat vision, and so forth. Jay Gruska delivers an appropriately super super-theme and music for the run of the series. For all of the episodes I sampled through the series, everything sounded in order.

If there’s a small lump of Kryptonite to report, it’s that this set only offers up extra features that were hold-overs from the DVD era. Nothing new was created for this set, which is something of a shame. The best of the extras are focused almost entirely on the first season, and the pilot episode specifically. The audio commentary with Dean Cain, showrunner Deborah Jay LeVine, and episode director Robert Butler for an engaging track. The pilot is feature-length, so it’s quite the conversation detailing how they wanted to introduce each character and set up the conflicts that would follow in subsequent episodes. The extras that pop up for Season Two and Three aren’t really much to talk about, serving more as brief retrospectives than anything in-depth about any one episode, storyline, or the production. 

Season One: Disc One 

• Audio Commentary featuring Dean Cain, Deborah Joy LeVine, and Robert Butler
• From Rivals to Romance: The Making of Lois & Clark (SD 25:52)
• Pilot Presentation (SD 19:42)
• Taking Flight (SD 6:36) 

Season Two: Disc Six

• Secrets of Season Two (SD 10:16) 
• Marketing Metropolis: The Fans of Lois & Clark (SD 8:30) 

Season Three: Disc Eleven

• A History of Romance (SD 8:22) 
• The Man of Steel Trivia Challenge (SD 10:39)

If you’re going to turn the life and times of Superman into a primetime soap opera melodrama, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was probably the best we could have hoped for. The series' highest points are when Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher are allowed to play off each other as our titular characters. Three decades later, nostalgia can only run so deep in these shallow waters, but the series remains a divertingly enjoyable excursion. On Blu-ray, the series makes a successful flight to 1080p with an overall clean, detailed picture - even if most of the action bits are locked in SD. Audio is solid, and extras are somewhat informative, though nothing new has been produced for this set. If you’re a fan of the series, this is a fitting release; however, newcomers might want to try a few episodes before blind buying. Worth A Look