Hail, Taxi. It's great to finally have one of the defining sitcoms of the 1970s
available on DVD to take out for a spin. This character-driven humane
comedy from the creators of The Mary Tyler Moore Show rolled
out of the garage with a full tank of gas: a lightning-in-a-bottle
ensemble, smart, witty, and compassionate writing, and extraordinary
characters. The Sunshine Cab Company was a much grittier workplace
than the sunny WJM newsroom. Its down, but never out employees--single
mother Elaine (Marilu Henner), aspiring actor Bobby (Jeff Conaway),
hapless boxer Tony (Tony Danza), reptilian dispatcher Louis (Danny
DeVito), naive rube John (Randall Carver), and indeterminately foreign
mechanic Latka (comic iconoclast Andy Kaufman)--struggled to keep
rolling along. Judd Hirsch's salt-of-the-earth cabbie Alex Rieger
solved everyone's problems but his own. |