Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Look! Up in the sky! It's... melodrama?

Reviewed by Randy Miller III August 7, 2025

As a comic book-reading teenager in the early 1990s, movies such as Dick Tracy and Batman Returns had me begging for a trip to the theater while small-screen fare like The Tick and Batman: The Animated Series were both appointment television. Three of these four were more or less family-friendly, which meant they were an easy sell to the parents... so with that in mind, another comic-themed show that landed hard in my weekly rotation was Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, which aired Sunday evenings on ABC from September 1993 to June 1997; coincidentally, the entirely of my time in high school. So yeah, I'm a little biased by nostalgia for a series that's rarely ranked at or near the top of Superman-related entertainment, though I can at least admit it wasn't great in the 1990s either.

"Yeah, I know, Mom, but let's be real here."

But it was good... at least for a few years, and only from the viewpoint of someone that Lois & Clark was created for. It's important to remember that, similar to the light-hearted 1966 Batman television series, this was a series aimed squarely at casual fans rather than die-hards. (My, how the tide has turned in recent decades.) And though I regularly scooped up a handful of superhero books and whatever the then-new Image Comics and Vertigo were putting out that week, Superman wasn't on my subscription list so its entry-level approach to the material didn't bother me. Simply put, it follows the early years of Clark Kent (Dean Cain) at The Daily Planet as he tries to win the favor of intrepid reporter Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) and editor Perry While (Lane Smith), struggles with his secret identity, battles villains, and checks in with parents Martha and Jonathan Kent (K Callan and Eddie Jones) back in Smallville.

Where most die-hards had a problem, of course, is with the caveat that Lois & Clark was more of a romantic drama with superhero window dressing, much in the way that the original Rocky was only kinda about boxing. The series was developed for television and occasionally written by Deborah Joy LeVine, who would later executive produce other 90s staples such as Early Edition and Dawson's Creek... during its first season, at least. That little disclaimer actually holds true for Lois & Clark as well, since LeVine and the entire original writing team were forced out for its second season by new producer Robert Singer, who was tasked with amping up action as well as the central love story. This is just one of many reasons why most Lois & Clark fans remember it as a show that produced increasingly diminishing returns as its four seasons regressed: the admittedly kinda hokey and straight-ahead atmosphere of Season One actually ended up being "the good old days", and its next three years never fully recaptured those early hints of magic.

Season Two and beyond did usher in a few welcome changes, such as the recasting of gee-whiz photographer Jimmy Olsen from Michael Landes to Justin Whalin, who was otherwise best known for his lead performance in Child's Play 3 a few years earlier, as well as the introduction of memorable new and familiar villains such as The Prankster, Metallo, The Toyman, and Tempus... not to mention the occasional return of Lex Luthor (John Shea), who was spoilered at the end of the first season but apparently came back for more. But the missing elements hurt it, from minor ones -- such as the removal of gossip columnist Catherine "Cat" Grant (Tracy Scoggins, admittedly one reason I tuned in at age 14) -- to more obvious changes like its more limited approach to character depth, near-constant tonal shifts, and a few truly bizarre later-season episode plots that wouldn't have made sense in almost any decade of television.

As Lois & Clark went further into its four-season run, that early balance between character relationships and comic book theatrics flew almost completely out the window and, eventually, the series bounced more wildly between oddball monsters-of-the-week and over-the-top melodrama... which meant that unless viewers were totally on board with both increasingly opposite sides of the coin, the second half of Lois & Clark was pretty rough road indeed. Not unwatchable, mind you: Season Three actually scored the series' highest ratings back in the way, partially due to wedding bells, yet this botched rush to the altar inevitably sucked (most of) the wind out of Lois & Clark from here through its fourth and mercifully final season. It occasionally veered into interesting directions like New Krypton and a few revelations about Superman's origin... but there's also a Lois clone made from frogs, a love child, amnesia, thawed-out Nazis, a villain literally named "The Wedding Destroyer", and a pretty big whopper of a cliffhanger to cap the series off.

Lois & Clark inarguably ended as a shell of its former self, which was balanced most evenly during its first and maybe second seasons but mostly under the guidance of original showrunner Deborah Joy LeVine (who clearly wasn't immune to criticism, especially since she reportedly fought hard against the casting of Dean Cain). Truth be told, Lois & Clark's casting is perhaps its greatest asset: Cain and Teri Hatcher have near-flawless chemistry together, John Shea is a fine Lex Luthor, Lane Smith might be my favorite version of Perry White, and K Callan and Eddie Jones are solid as Clark's parents. A few notable guest and recurring faces can also be spotted along the way such as Denise Crosby, Jonathan Frakes, Sonny Bono, Tony Curtis, Peter Boyle and Bruce Campbell (in the same episode, even!), Bronson Pinchot, Howie Mandel, Antonio Sabàto Jr., Sherman Hemsley, Delta Burke, Frank Gorshin, and Adam West.

Warts and all, the four-season, 87-episode run of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman is now available on Blu-ray as a 20-disc complete series Blu-ray collection that, as far as I know, will never be sold as separate releases. While this set does indeed have a few glaring drawbacks (more on those soon enough), it's also got a few inarguable highlights including new and greatly improved 1080p visuals as well as a fairly low price tag, although the latter is a result of questionable cost-cutting measures. Normally I'd provide a disc-by-disc breakdown of episodes at this point, but mercifully one is included in the interior print, revealing that each of its 20 discs contains anywhere from three to five episodes with a few bonus features scattered throughout. On to the technical side of things, then.

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Taken from recent masters created for streaming, these 1080p transfers of Lois & Clark leap over those ancient DVD sets in a single bound. The wide, wide majority of this content now looks much closer to its shot-on-film origins than what we saw on TV or DVD back in the day... but if there's one caveat here, it's that things don't always look so good. Similar to Babylon 5, image quality takes a pretty noticeable dip any time that special effects are involved since these (mostly brief) moments are upscaled from existing standard definition visuals. (The other option was literally starting over from scratch, which obviously wasn't happening.) This means that smack in the middle of a beautifully crisp and film-like scene, things might suddenly get blurry and/or waxy as Superman flies in from above, a Ferris Wheel is sped up drastically, or Clark inhales an entire container of Skittles. Perhaps one of the most jarring transitions happens in the very first episode when Clark visits his parents on their farm: the ultra-soft nighttime backdrop smash-cuts to them all eating dinner, which reveals such a jump in quality that it looks like a totally different show.

Brief dips also occur during certain establishing shots and perhaps even a few instances where the original negatives couldn't be located or used. Other occasional exceptions can be spotted as well, such as a quick moment between Lois and Clark in the rain from the Season Three premiere that looks extremely dark, shows slight print damage, and isn't color-corrected. Again, though, due to the series' *ahem* reliance on character drama more than superhuman exploits, these step-down moments are a lot fewer and further between than, say, Babylon 5. If there's one silver lining to this inevitable cloud, it's that fans can see just how much work went into the restoration of its filmed material -- remember, those DVD sets basically looked terrible the whole way through. Just for the record, a condensed gallery of these sore-thumb moments has been included as screenshots #37-40, right after the menu interface screen.

But as my 4.5/5 rating suggests, this is an overwhelmingly solid restoration that, for die-hard fans, will be like seeing Lois & Clark for the first time. As seen in (at least the first 36 of) these direct-from-disc screenshots, fine detail, color, textures, and overall stability are greatly improved over the old DVD presentations. Much like B5, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and countless other shows originally shot on film but edited on video, this near-total reconstruction pays incredible dividends while increasing time-capsule appeal for seasoned fans and newcomers alike. Enough can't be said about the strength of these transfers, whose only occasional road blocks include trace encoding issues like very mild posterization and macro blocking. It's less than usual for WB, though, and likely because the studio capped each dual-layered disc at 4-5 episodes. Combined with the very wise decision to maintain the series' original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, Lois & Clark inarguably flies higher than ever on Blu-ray. (And while it's obvious that grain management was used to some degree, I'd argue that leaving all the grain in would make the upscaled footage look even worse.)

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There's much less to report in the audio department (at least on the surface), as each episode's DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio mix comes through with a reliably workmanlike presentation of the character-driven drama and sporadic bursts of action. Dialogue is generally clean and clear, although I noticed more than a handful of moments across the board when light amounts of his and background noise crept in; I'm assuming this might have been present on the original recordings, as I remember the DVD sets having similar problems here and there. The original score by composer Jay Gruska sounds good too, enjoying a solid dynamic range that doesn't need to compete for attention with background effects and the like. All things considered, it's a solid presentation of source material only limited by its era.

Of course, it should be noted that a small handful of pop music cues have been altered due to music clearances and replaced with sound-alike songs, just as they were with the recent streaming versions, which means that only the older DVD sets present a truly authentic experience (though one limited to 192kps Dolby Digital). This is a bummer, even if as a casual fan I might not have even noticed some of them. I don't have a running total... but there aren't many, and a YouTuber named "Russkafin" recently uploaded a few short videos comparing three such changes here.

Optional English (SDH) subtitles are included during all 87 episodes and the bonus features listed below. In another small win for the old DVD sets, the optional French and Spanish subtitle tracks have not been carried over.

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This 20-disc set ships in an "Epic" keepcase, that chunky DVD-height packaging with multiple hinges and overlapping hubs that's prone to breakage. It's not an ideal solution for collectors, although at least Blu-ray's durable outer coating should prevent any real damage in the event of a loose disc during shipping. A matching slipcase is also included. Just like Babylon 5: The Complete Series, Super Friends! - The Complete Collection, Twin Peaks: From Z to A (the reprinted version), and many other "Complete Series" sets including the recently-released Manifest, I'm sure that die-hard fans would've gladly paid more for individual keepcases. At least this time we get an inner print with an episode list.

Bonus features are only included on three of the 20 discs, and all are recycled from the DVD season sets with a few minor or outdated items unaccounted for. This is a decent mix of material for what it is, but it's a shame that no new retrospective pieces were produced for this release. (Given Dean Cain's recent antics, maybe it's for the best.)

SEASON ONE - DISC ONE

• Audio Commentary - Dean Cain, series creator Deborah Joy LeVine, and episode director Robert Butler sit down for a DVD-era group commentary during the feature-length pilot episode. This is a lightweight but solidly enjoyable track that mixes scene-specific observations with trivial tidbits, stories from the set, and comments about the first season in general, and it's well worth watching even if you're a casual fan. A few more audio commentaries like this would've been great, but sadly this is the only one we'll ever get.

• From Rivals to Romance: The Making of Lois & Clark (25:52) - Dean Cain, Teri Hatcher, Superman comic editor Mike Carlin, and a few key crew members offer their thoughts on the series' inception, general production, characters, and the challenges of adapting Superman's rich history into a small-screen romantic drama.

• Pilot Presentation (19:42) - This familiar piece, which was first revealed at the San Diego Comic Con years ago, begins with a video introduction by series creator Deborah Joy LeVine in which she candidly talks about the pressure of meeting fan expectations while appealing to a broad audience. Clips from the pilot are included, of course, many with as-yet-unfinished special effects, which makes this a nice little piece of history.

• Taking Flight (6:36) - A short but enjoyable featurette about the show's special effects, several shown in various stages of completion, as well as brief on-set interview clips with the cast and crew.

SEASON TWO - DISC SIX

• Secrets of Season Two (10:16) - Similar to Season One's DVD-era retrospective piece, this even more brief but still enjoyable peek behind the curtain includes candid comments by several key cast and crew members including Dean Cain and Justin Whalin (AKA "the replacement Jimmy Olsen") and a few producers, but Teri Hatcher is absent this time around since she was likely working on Desperate Housewives at the time.

• Marketing Metropolis: The Fans of Lois & Clark (8:30) - Even lighter than usual, this fun little nugget celebrates some of the show's biggest fans and includes a few questions answered by Cain and company.

SEASON THREE - DISC ELEVEN

• A History of Romance (8:22) - One of the only history-minded bonus features included here, this short piece offers fans a quick summary of the romance and rivalry between Lois Lane and Clark Kent/Superman during various decades and media including the comics as well as different feature films.

• The Man of Steel Trivia Challenge (10:39) - This Dean Cain-hosted quiz, which I believe was originally on the Season 4 DVD set, won't prove to be much of a challenge unless you're totally new to the franchise.

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman aired from September 1993 to June 1997 and, despite an admirable attempt to keep parts of the show timeless, inevitably feels like a pure product of its decade. That's both a blessing and a curse in this case, but anyone with fond memories of watching it during the original run will enjoy revisiting the series on Blu-ray just as they did on DVD almost two decades ago. It's clearly a show with gradually diminishing returns as all four seasons unfold and the cliffhanger ending is a bummer, but Lois & Clark isn't without its merits and, though aimed at casual viewers rather than seasoned comic book fans, still holds a spot in the franchise's long history. Warner Bros.' new Blu-ray collection sadly doesn't have user-friendly packaging or new extras, but the rock-solid 1080p visuals and affordable price tag make this a no-brainer for established fans of the show. Firmly Recommended.