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With its pedal to the metal from the very first episodes, “Taxi” spawned numerous imitators but none that had quite the quirky charm and hilarious ensemble acting/writing that made this one of the best sitcoms in the history of television. Using “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as their template for building an ensemble based comedy, creator James Brooks, Stan Daniels and David Davis made the garage of The Sunshine Taxi Company the unlikely home-away-from-home for a nasty misognistic dispatcher named Louie (Danny DeVito), a wide eyed foreign mechanic named Latka (Andy Kaufman), a wanna-be actor (Jeff Conaway), former boxer (Tony Danza), beautiful single mom Elaine (Marilu Henner) and, most importantly, the psychologist of cab drivers Alex (Judd Hirsch). With a cast of soon-to-be stars and guest stars (including Mandy Patinkin, Tom Selleck, the late great Ruth Gordon and soon to be regular Christopher Lloyd as the confused Reverend Jim), this series had enough talent in the backseat and enough fare to make this drive around New York inviting, funny and touching. “Taxi” managed to be all three without ever becoming sappy or overbearing. This unique approach only has one other TV series anywhere near the quality of “Taxi” on TV today—“The Simpsons”. ---

Unfortunately, there’s no tip for “Taxi” fans in the form of extras. The good news is that these are the uncut episodes. This show has been trimmed for years by stations looking to pack in more commercial time. The standard packaging doesn't add much in the way of extras either as there isn't any booklet with background info. I'm hoping that the next set will have some of the older, vintage Kaufman interviews, current interviews with the cast and, perhaps, a blooper or gag reel.