  Ally McBeal: The Complete Series box set includes all 112 original episodes of Ally McBeal.
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Shock and awe: Despite fans' fears that the landmark series would be corrupted and even ruined on DVD, all 112 original episodes of Ally McBeal still have all their original music in them.
With one tiny exception no one is likely to notice trolling through the new Ally McBeal: The Complete Series box set. It is a handsomely packaged, 32-disc collection that just debuted in stores after a long and arduous process of clearing rights to use the songs in this format.
"Everything is in it with the exception of one scene," creator-producer David E. Kelley tells Sun Media by telephone from his office in the San Francisco area, where he lives with his wife, actress Michelle Pfeiffer, and their two teenaged children.
"And I don't remember the scene or the song. There is a song playing on a television -- and that song wasn't cleared so another song was put in its place. But it was not a song that informed the scene or one of the characters. So I probably would not notice myself if I saw it.
"All of the others songs we got. It's all in, which is shocking because we went from: 'We couldn't get any of it!' to 'We're got all of it!' So the Earth moved."
There is a knowing chuckle in his voice. Dry, witty and prone to colourful metaphors, Kelley is a uniquely affable fellow for a Hollywood legend. At one point, when Ally McBeal was in its prime and making pop culture history after launching in 1997, Kelley had five television series on air simultaneously: Chicago Hope, The Practice, Snoops, Ally McBeal and the ill-advised, re-edited, quick-hit version, Ally. Yet Kelley, now 53 and preparing two new TV shows he is pitching for the future, still sounds as low-key as any TV mogul could be.
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The success on securing music rights for Ally McBeal is astounding. But the process is also why it took so long for the series to come to DVD, Kelley says, answering the fans who have been pressuring 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment to get it out. "With Ally McBeal specifically, that is probably one of the more marketable ones," Kelley says of its commercial prospects, compared to other shows in his lineup, "but that was music rights that held us up. We didn't have perpetual licences for most of our music library then. People are a lot smarter now but, at the time, no one thought that far ahead. Finally those hurdles were cleared and out it comes."
The Complete Series box came out on the same day this month as a separate, six-disc Season One set. So customers can either start out slow or go for everything all at once. The Complete set has all five seasons plus a disc of bonus documentaries and a CD of Vonda Shepard's tunes.
Remember the show? Music was integral, and not just in the bar where the lawyers from the fictional Boston law firm, Cafe, Fish & Associates, would groove to Shepard or one of the guest stars, from Elton John to Barry White. There was also music in the characters heads -- and in their routines in front of mirrors in the unisex washroom. Like all of Kelley's creations, reality was in play but it was exaggerated, heightened and even taken to absurdist levels.
Without the original music, Ally McBeal would turn rancid or empty, like many of the episodes of WKRP on DVD with their generic substitute music. "It's like when you buy those ridiculous Greatest Hits and it's all been re-recorded -- it's awful!" Kelley says of the idea of stripping away the original sound from a show like Ally McBeal.
Instead, on these DVDs, it is pure Ally McBeal, the way it was always intended.
