Joseph Harder This show was one of my all time favorites and one of the best shows ever. Of course, like a number of past shows on the big three networks, it was rewarded for its excellence by cancellation. This show was a wonderful portrait of mid American life in the post world War 2 period. Not a single performance hit a false note, and the scripts captured all of the social changes and cultural trends of the time. I still remember one episode about labor-management conflict. There was a fascinating montage at the end, showing a meeting of managers and business owners in one room and of labor organizers in the other. In each room, there is just one woman present-to serve coffee. Let me speak frankly. It has been said before, but the collective intelligence of most TV programmers and executives is roughly equivalent to that of gnats. A whole TV network could be fashioned just out of brilliant, but canceled shows. The Westerner, Slatterys People,Channing, My Wotld and Welcome To it, The John Larouquette Show, Nichols, East Side West Side, the Rogues, I'll Fly Away,The Adventures of Briscoe County Junior, T.H.E. Cat, and this- and that is only the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes, I think TV is a device to make us dumb,and that whenever a good show briefly slips through the cracks, and actually tries to , God help us, provoke thought, it is rapidly canceled, unless the writers come up with a clever enough gimmick, like a mysterious Island, or a suburban Mafia family, or a father and son team of defense attorneys. Ah, there are a half million stories from the annals of network stupidity, and this was one of them.

slou61 Homefront is one of those shows that rang true from beginning to end. The casting was perfect, the writing was superb and, visually, the show was spot on. Tammy Lauren and Kyle Chandler's performances as Jeff and Ginger were wonderful. The rest of the cast, which included Wendy Phillips, Mimi Kennedy, Ken Jenkins, Hattie Winston and several other lesser known but equally talented actors, turned in performances that made you genuinely care about their characters. Why this show has never been released on VHS or DVD is "beyond my ken" as Ruth Sloan would say. Thank goodness someone was smart enough to start a petition at a site called homefrontondvd.com. Now lets hope they get a ton of signatures and that Warner Bros is smart enough to listen to them. This release is long overdue!!!!

giconceptsjw After some internet surfing, I found the "Homefront" series on DVD at ioffer.com. Before anyone gets excited, the DVD set I received was burned by an amateur from home video tapes recorded off of their TV 15 years ago. The resolution and quality are poor. The images look like you would expect old re-recorded video to look. Although the commercials were edited out, the ending credits of each episode still have voice-over announcements for the segway into the ABC news program "Nightline", complete with the top news headlines from the early 1990's. Even with the poor image quality, the shows were watch-able and the sound quality was fine.To this show's credit, the casting was nearly perfect. Everyone was believable and really looked the part. Their acting was also above average. The role of Jeff Metcalf is played particularly well by Kyle Chandler (most recently seen in the 2005 remake of King Kong). The period costumes were very authentic as were the sets, especially the 1940s kitchens with vintage appliances and décor. The direction was also creative and different for a TV show at that time. For example, conversations between characters were sometimes inter-cut with conversations about the same subject between other characters in different scenes. The dialog of the different conversations was kept fluid despite cutting back and fourth between the different characters and locations. That takes good direction and editing and they made it work in this case.As I started watching this series again I suddenly remembered why I lost interest in it 15 years ago. Despite all the ingredients for a fine show, the plots and story lines are disappointing and confusing right from the start. For one thing, the name of the show itself is totally misleading. When WWII ended in 1945, there was no more fighting so obviously there was no longer a "homefront" either. Curiously, the first episode of the show "Homefront" begins in 1945 after the war had ended. That's like shooting the first episode of "Gilligan's Island" showing the castaways being rescued. The whole premise of the show's namesake is completely lost. I still held on to hope with the possibility of the rest of the series being a flashback but no, the entire show takes place from 1946 through 1948. Additionally, this series fails miserably in any attempt to accurately portray any historical events of the late 1940's. By the third episode, it becomes obvious that this series was nothing more than a thinly veiled vehicle for an ultra left-wing political agenda. The show is set in River Run Ohio, near Toledo. However, the show's ongoing racism theme makes it look more like Jackson Mississippi than Ohio. Part of the ensemble cast are Dick Williams, Hattie Winston and Sterling Macer Jr. who portray the Davis family. Much of the series shows the Davis family being discriminated against by the evil "whites" to the point of being ridiculous and totally absurd if not laughable. The racism card has been played and over played by Hollywood now for over 40 years. We get it. We're also tired of having our noses rubbed in it on a daily basis. The subject of racism is also unpopular with viewers and it is the kiss of death for any show, as it was for "Homefront". The acting talents of Williams, Winston and Macer were wasted in their roles as the stereotypical "frightened / angry black family". The wildly exaggerated racism in this series makes it look like everyone in Ohio was a KKK member or something. The racism issue could have been addressed in this show in a single episode with a simple punch in the nose or fist-fight in which a bigot gets a well deserved thrashing, and leave it at that. Devoting a major portion of the series to the racism thing gets really old really quick and its just plain stupid.In yet another ridiculous plot line, the big boss of a local factory (Ken Jenkins) is portrayed as an Ebenezer Scrooge like character who is against pensions and raises and is unconcerned about acid dripping on his employees. The workers revolt and take over the factory in a blatant pro-communist propaganda message to the viewer.Personally, I think this series had great potential. The writers could have easily placed the timeline in 1941 – 1945 as the title suggests and shown the hardships of food and gas rationing and working 14 hour days at war factories. Of course the loss of brothers, sons and husbands fighting overseas would have also added drama. The situation was also perfect for writing in special guest stars as military or USO personnel passing through their town during training or en-route to Europe or the Pacific. The possibilities for good story lines and plots are endless. But no, the writers of Homefront (David Assael and James Grissom) completely ignored any relevant or interesting plots. Instead, they totally missed the point and strayed into a bizarre and irrelevant obsession with racism and left-wing politics. It would be unfair to the actors to condemn the entire series but the plots and situations in which they were placed are total garbage.

STEPHNJEFF "Homefront" was the BEST show EVER on TV!!!! It had humor and drama and such a good story and the cast was outstanding (especially Kyle Chandler, who will always be Jeff Metcalf to me). I followed every one of them and knew all their names years after the show ended. I love them all...they did such an excellent job. I can't say enough about Homefront and I actually mourned its ending. We did tape one of the marathons. I will always remember this show and there will never be another one like it. Shame on ABC for moving it around so much. I tried to tell people to watch it, but no one could keep up with the time slots. BIG mistake. But, we must accentuate the positive. Homefront should be a role model for the industry!!!!!