The basic premise is a wager of sorts between a Jerry Garcia-esque God (voiced by James Garner) and a sensitive, yet scheming Devil (Alan Cumming, in near-perfect casting.) God feels Man has lost his way, and is ready to give up on the human race and Earth itself. But he's giving them one last chance, based on the life of one person, a human chosen by the Devil. That man is Bob (French Stewart), a surly autoworker from Detroit. The series follows his attempts to live up to God's expectations, which tend to go against his own personality, while trying to keep his family together.

It's unfortunate that the show isn't just called "God and the Devil," because they are the strongest parts of the show. Their love/hate dynamic is a lot of fun, and the performances by Garner and Cumming are as good as you would expect from two veterans. Garner's God carries the heft you would want from a deity, while expressing amazement at the little things on Earth, like Pop Tarts. Cumming's Devil vacillates between evil and mush, an insecure ball of frazzled nerves with an accent.

Bob's family is much less interesting than the embodiments of good and evil. His wife, Donna ("Roseanne"'s Laurie Metcalf), changes personality as necessary to get through a plot, while his kids Megan (Nancy Cartwright, Bart on "The Simpsons") and Andy (Kath Soucie, Phil and Lil from "Rugrats") are one-dimensional ciphers, again solely there to motivate story ideas. Megan is the awful teen daughter ever parent fears they will wind up parenting and Andy is relatively pointless.

The show wasn't really a sitcom, and not a drama. In fact, it seems like the show didn't know what it wanted to be, punching goofy jokes into episodes that were otherwise sappy. There is just not enough humor in these episodes to keep interest in storylines that are standard family show plots. There are attempts to create the kind of pop culture-reference comedy that's so popular in "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy," but they are so sparse that they don't really work. I didn't laugh once, though there were plenty of clever bits, especially during scenes set in Hell. The various tortures are creative and interesting to check out.

One of the most unique aspects of the show was the focus on theories of Heaven and Hell, as well as mythology, religion and the nature of Man. Such complex topics were sure to lose and confuse viewers, but it made for a relatively high-brow show. The animation keeps pace with that level of complexity, going for a computer-colored style, combined with "King of the Hill"-meets-"Rugrats" character designs. The use of photographs to instill textures, blurred backgrounds for depth, five-fingered humans and transitions improving on those on "Home Improvement" all show a real effort at giving the show its own look. It's easily the most successful part of the series.

The DVDs
The series' 13 episodes are collected on two DVDs (seven on the first, six on the second), packaged in a standard keepcase with a tray. The episodes are presented in airdate order (or at least intended airdate order), instead of their produced order, which is somewhat surprising, unless the creators scrambled the line-up after production. There are three commentaries on the first disc, but the majority of the extras are on Disc Two.

The main menus, which list the episode titles and a "Play All" option, are animated with clips from the show, while each episode has its own static menu, which has subtitle options (English and Spanish), commentary (if applicable) and scene selections. In a nice touch, the cursors on the menus are either halos or devil tails.

The Quality
The full-frame video for this series looks tremendous, with crisp, vivid color. There are some occasional glitches, but they seemed like problems with the animation, not the DVD. The unique look of the show demanded a proper presentation, which this set delivers. The sound, a Dolby 2.0 track, is standard TV fare, with solid separation between the music and dialogue.

The Extras
There are six commentaries by creator Matt Carlson and producer Harvey Myman included in this set, found on "In the Beginning" (with co-Executive Producers Niel Thompson and Gary Murphy and Consulting Producer David Sacks), "The Devil's Birthday" (with Thompson and Murphy), "God's Favorite," "Bob Gets Greedy" (with Thompson, Murphy and Sacks) "Bob's Father" (with Thompson, Murphy and Sacks) and "God's Girlfriend" (with Thompson, Murphy and Sacks.) On the first episode, the group is at their best, giving plenty of information about the show's development and the concepts at work in the series. They aren't the most dynamic commentators, but they get the information across. In following episodes they get trapped in watching the shows, and their comments are more about talking about what's on-screen, congratulating themselves and noticing animation goofs. Often they repeat things said earlier, making it seem like there was only so much to be said.

There's also two additional features, a making-of featurette titled "Let There Be 'God, The Devil and Bob!'," and "'God, the Devil and Bob' Revealed." "Let There Be..." is a pretty extensive, 23-minute look behind the scenes, with interviews with Carlson and some of the other crew, animatics and some still photos. Carlson goes through the episodes talking about some of them, while also touching on the bigger topics surrounding the show. It feels like a lot of the info is repeated in the commentaries, and much of the featurette is filled with clips, but it's a decent overview. Produced like sit-down celebrity interviews, "Revealed" has short bits (four minutes in all) of Q&As with the three main characters. They're cute, but no great shakes. When Fox released information about the show originally, they said 15 minutes of voice-over audition tapes and 10 minutes of digital storyboards would be included, and the interviews would be 12 minutes long. What we ended up with is much less, though "Let There Be..." was slightly longer than "advertised."

The Bottom Line
DVD has been a God-send for interesting series that have been cancelled before building an audience, and this set is no different. But an interesting premise and a good voice cast couldn't save a show that was simply not funny most of the time. These DVDs present "God, the Devil and Bob" in their best possible quality, with a disappointing selection of extras (but only thanks to information released by Fox.) If you've never seen the show, you will definitely want to rent it first, though for fans of unique cartoons, you could a lot worse than this collection. Hell, where else can you see a nun brawl?

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*The Reviewer's Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer's biases lie on the film's subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.