One Tree Hill: Season 1 [DVD] [2005]

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Product Description ------------------- The complete first season of the popular drama series which follows two estranged half-brothers living in a small North Carolina town, who live very different lives. Episodes comprise: 'Pilot', 'The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most', 'Are You True?', 'C into You', 'All That You Can't Leave Behind (aka Where I End and You Begin)', 'Every Night Is Another Story', 'Life in a Glass House', 'The Search for Something More', 'With Arms Outstretched', 'You Gotta Go There to Come Back', 'The Living Years', 'C Course in Polite Conversations', 'Hanging By A Moment', 'I Shall Believe', 'Suddenly Everything Has Changed', 'The First Cut is the Deepest', 'Spirit in the Night', 'To Wish Impossible Things', 'How Can You Be Sure?', 'What Is And What Should Never Be', 'The Leaving Song' and 'The Games That Play Us'. .co.uk Review ------------- One Tree Hill: Season 1 marks the beginning of a genuinely engrossing series that maintains, for a long while, an unusual focus on a single, powerful conflict defining the destinies of two characters. Adolescent half-brothers Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan (James Lafferty) Scott have lived parallel lives in One Tree, North Carolina. They share a common her, Dan Scott (Paul Johansson), who has disregarded the existence of Lucas, his son by a one-time flame, Karen (Moira Kelly), whom he dumped years before to accept a basketball scholarship to college. While neglecting Lucas, Dan--whose hoop dreams never materialized--has spent his time almost perversely micro-managing every one of Nathan's moves on and off the court at his old high school, where the lad is currently an arrogant superstar under gruff-but-wise coach Whitey Durham (Barry Corbin). Nathan (whose mother is separated from Dan) is a child of privilege and has been raised to disregard teamwork, compromise, or the feelings of others. He regards Lucas, a basketball sensation on neighborhood playgrounds, as t, and his own girlfriend, Peyton (Hilarie Burton), as a pretty bauble he can abuse and dismiss at will. Still, he's sympathetic; one can see glimpses of the human being struggling to emerge from under Dan's control. Meanwhile, Lucas helps Karen run her café, hangs out with platonic best friend Haley (Bethany Joy Lenz), and pines for Peyton (herself a punky misfit at heart). He also turns to surrogate dad Keith Scott (Craig Sheffer)--actually his uncle and Dan's older brother--for support, and sees himself as a perpetual and doomed outsider in One Tree. All that changes when Whitey invites Lucas to join the b-ball team that Nathan dominates, a move that challenges the status quo of multiple relationships in a small community. For about a third of its episodes, this series from creator Mark Schwahn (who wrote the hit film Coach Carter) stays true to the suspense surrounding Lucas's and Nathan's changes in fortune. Then a bit of padding follows to the end of the season; there are 22 episodes to fill out, after all. But even as various distractions (a kipping subplot, a car accident and coma for a major character) and random events creep in (Dan, rather incredibly, takes over the team from Whitey at one point, thus coaching both his sons), One Tree Hill remains highly watchable. The writing is shaped well and , while performances are consistently excellent. (It's especially good to see Sheffer, perhaps best known for A River Runs Through It, again.) --Tom Keogh, .com