A verite, docu-reality look at the hell through which three struggling thespians must march each day in the HBO series Unscripted, Los Angeles is painted as a bleakly funny, ruthlessly indifferent place where dreams are encouraged and crushed in equal measure. Starring Krista Allen, Bryan Greenberg and Jennifer Hall as essentially themselves and Frank Langella as acting coach Goddard Fulton, Unscripted is pitched as a half-hour comedy series blending improvisation and real-life incidents that is more often awkward, uncomfortable and occasionally harrowing than laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Which isn't to say that the series (lamentably cancelled by HBO not long after its inception in mid-2005) is an empty exercise; stripping away a soundtrack and employing jump cuts, hand-held cinematography and barely fictionalized situations with real celebrities, Unscripted peels back the veneer of flashbulbs and tabloids to reveal the ground work necessary to gain a toehold in modern Hollywood.

Coming on the heels of 2003's equally meta, equally daring (and equally cancelled) K Street, which fused fiction with Washington D.C. reality, Unscripted is George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh's baby; the show features no written lines of dialogue and loose plotlines based on the actors' experiences as well as Clooney and Soderbergh's. The series utilizes real Hollywood offices, real film and TV productions (including Mr. & Mrs. Smith, among others) as well as a host of A-list celebs, which lends considerable veracity to these half-hour episodes and blurs the line between fiction and reality effectively.

The 10 episodes, with directing duties split evenly between Clooney and co-producer Grant Heslov, that comprise the entire series of Unscripted are spread across two discs, with episodes one through five on disc one and episodes six through 10 on the second disc.

The Video:

Unscripted is presented here, curiously, in non-anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen. If it's presented in widescreen, why not bite the bullet, HBO? Release the DVDs with anamorphic widescreen. At any rate, since the show's filmed on high-def video, there's a clarity that's often marred by a slight softness. Flaring lights and inaccurate fleshtones are also hazards of the format, but it's inherent in the source material and not indicative of the transfer.

Offered in Dolby 2.0 stereo, Unscripted is largely a talky affair, which comes through clean, clear and distortion-free. There's overlapping and natural sound which occasionally makes deciphering what's being said tricky, but the optional English subtitles come in handy there.

Sadly, there isn't much in the way of substantial bonus material here – a dangerous trend with HBO series. They produce fantastic comedies and dramas and then unceremoniously dump them on DVD, with little or no supplemental material. Episodes previews and recaps are included for each episode, but that's it. At the very least, you'd hope for maybe a brief interview explaining the intent of the project or maybe the actors' perspective on playing themselves.

Self-reflexive and darkly humorous, Unscripted is a daring, inventive series that won't exist beyond this DVD release; HBO gave it the ax after only a few episodes, proving that not even a verite look at the industry is safe from the whims of executives. Talk about irony – this two-disc set is nevertheless highly recommended, for a rental at the very least.