No Mercy for Dad - Season 1 - DVD

Movie: In New York City's Staten Island neighborhood, Sean Finnerty (Donal Logue) lives with his wife Claudia (Megyn Price) and their children together, Lily (Lynsey Bartilson), Jimmy (Griffin Frazen) and Henry (Jake Burbage). Like any family, Irish-born Sean has to deal with all sorts of nerve-racking situations, like when he catches his daughter kissing the dorky boy next door, Brad (Bret Harrison). But that's not all: his brother Eddie (Kevin Corrigan), whose middle name seems to be Chaos, and his father Walt (Richard Riehle), who is too happy to use his antiquated parenting methods on his grandchildren (Everyone needs to be able to dig a good hole), are also permanent guests at the Finnerty house. Fake IDs, heartbreak, a new haircut, a skirt that's too short when it comes to school uniform - actually, all quite normal and fairly banal family problems. But with the Finnertys, normal is an absolute foreign word and small problems often take on unexpected proportions...

No mercy for Dad initially seemed to be granted a very short lifespan. The series from the producers of hits like Behind the Moon Equals Left was conceived as a so-called mid-season replacement, meaning a replacement for a series that was prematurely cancelled or paused during the course of a TV season. After 15 episodes, there was initially to be no renewal. Only after the Finnertys changed to a new station, it went on with new episodes. In the end, the series lasted 5 seasons and a total of 91 episodes - a thoroughly respectable success.

Although No Mercy for Dad was never quite the big hit, the series, which was created by the makers of Behind the Moon Equals Left, has built up a solid fan base that can still laugh heartily at the capers of the Chaos family seven years after its end. That the series works well, however, is not so much due to its concept, which in itself isn't really new. Rather, it's the structure of the individual episodes that makes up the series' comedic potential. Because instead of telling the stories linearly, the viewer is confronted at the beginning of the episode right away with the consequences of a certain event, the beginning and course of which is only gradually pieced together through flashbacks from the point of view of the various characters.

In addition to the good laughs that result from this, the series also lives, of course, from the characters and their actors, who are still very sympathetically drawn with all their flaws. Donal Logue is very well cast as the head of the family, who secretly still dreams of being a rock star or bar owner rather than a father. Megyn Price is a perfect fit alongside Logue as the resolute Claudia, who constantly has to wash her husband's head, but who immediately mutates back into a teenager in love whenever he picks up a guitar. But mostly the best laughs belong to Kevin Corrigan, who as unorthodox Eddie with his usually not really pedagogically valuable and sometimes highly illegal solution proposals for more chaos instead of resolving it.

No mercy for Dad starts right from the beginning with its very own narrative style, but the series still needs a few episodes until it has found its rhythm and the gag density increases. Then not every gag is funny, but the series is still fun. And that's exactly why it's nice that the first season has finally been released on DVD in Germany. Fans of the series and sitcom lovers can confidently access here!

Picture + Sound: Here and there, the picture seems a little washed out and in some faster camera pans, a clear judder is noticeable. Minor artefacts aside, the picture is clean, the overall sharpness is at a good level for a ten year old TV sitcom and the colouring is also convincing, particularly in the brighter moments. The stereo sound is also decently mixed, with the very directionally mixed dialogue predominating the proceedings.

Extras: Apart from a couple of trailers and a 12-page episode guide, the DVDs unfortunately have no extras to offer, unlike the US release.

Conclusion: No Mercy for Dad is an amusing comedy series that still works well over ten years after its initial broadcast and has quite a few decent laughs to offer. While the 15 episodes of the first season are still not among the best of the 91 total episodes, this chaotic Irish-American family makes for some very funny moments, which makes No Mercy for Dad thoroughly recommended for sitcom fans

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp