Perfect Strangers: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Perfect Strangers: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Dance of joy, etc.

Reviewed by Randy Miller III September 16, 2026

Created by Dale McRaven, Perfect Strangers was a popular American sitcom that ran for eight seasons including as part of ABC's long-running TGIF Friday night lineup, a famed institution that included other hit shows like Full House, Family Matters, Step By Step, Boy Meets World, and Mr. Belvedere, as well as more obscure fare such as Sledge Hammer! and Starman (yes, there was a TV show and yes, you can kinda own it on UHD). And while this 80s take on the Odd Couple formula has more or less managed to hold up during the last four decades, 2026 marks the very first time that Warner Bros. has brought all eight seasons together in one handy 17-disc collection. What's more is that all 150 episodes are sourced from brand-new HD masters and look terrific, which will of course raise questions about future WB-owned TGIF properties getting similar treatment in the coming months or years. And while this isn't a perfect package (no pun intended), it's at least a reasonably-priced one that looks and sounds better than ever before.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya."

Die-hard fans can jump right down to the A/V portion of this review, but newcomers and casuals alike are invited to a brief overview of the show and its characters. As that Odd Couple comparison implies, Perfect Strangers is a fish-out-of-water sitcom centered on the unlikely friendship between two men from vastly different backgrounds. Larry Appleton (Mark Linn-Baker) is a young, ambitious Midwesterner living in Chicago who works at an antique shop but has dreams of being a photojournalist and enjoying an independent life. His plans take an unexpected and permanent turn in the very first scene when his distant cousin Balki Bartokomous (Bronson Pinchot) arrives from the fictional Mediterranean island of Mypos, believing their shared family tree means he can move into Larry’s modest apartment.

Balki is enthusiastic, innocent, and unfamiliar with American customs, while Larry is practical, cautious, and often embarrassed by his cousin’s eccentric behavior and regular butchering of the English language and its endless idioms. Despite their differences -- and Larry’s frequent frustration, which is exacerbated by his own often erratic behavior -- the two gradually develop a genuine friendship as they share various living spaces and navigate the challenges of work, relationships, and everyday life in a major metropolitan city. "A few days" turns into a few weeks, and then Balki's stay is more or less indefinitely. Much of the comedy comes from Balki’s literal interpretation of American expressions, his unconventional understanding of modern life, and the cultural misunderstandings that often arise between the cousins. Larry’s attempts to teach Balki how to navigate American society usually backfire in typical sitcom fashion, creating learning opportunities that often force Larry to confront his own assumptions and shortcomings.

Larry and Balki are in basically every scene of Perfect Strangers, either together or separately, and their undeniable chemistry is clearly the glue that holds this series together. As the first several seasons progress (and later regress, but more on that soon), Perfect Strangers would expand its ensemble to include two more main characters: Jennifer Lyons (Melanie Wilson) and Mary Anne Spencer (Rebecca Arthur), two flight attendant sisters who live in the same apartment building and eventually become love interests for our often unwitting main characters. Together, these two related pairs will form an affectionate, sometimes chaotic extended household, which follows the trajectory of later seasons and their gradual spiral into more outlandish, broad comedy that sometimes works but mostly pales in comparison to the more grounded simplicity of Perfect Strangers' earlier years. What else is new in the world of sitcoms?

At its heart, Perfect Strangers is a comedy about cultural differences, family, friendship, and the ways in which two people who seem totally incompatible can often become inseparable. It's those enduring themes that likely kept fans coming back for more between 1986 and 1993, when the show ended with a pretty damn ridiculous two-part finale and a tearful curtain call for all four main cast members. In true sitcom fashion, though, it also had a number of supporting characters along for the ride like Larry's upstairs neighbor Susan Campbell (Lise Cutter) and various bosses and other authority figures such as Edwina and Donald Twinkacetti (Belita Moreno and Ernie Sabella, the latter of whom runs the antique shop) as well as Sam Gorpley (Sam Anderson), Balki's mailroom supervisor at the Chicago Chronicle where he and Larry work during the bulk of the series. A more agreeable workplace friend arrives with the sassy but endearing Harriette Winslow (Jo Marie Payton), an elevator operator whose blunt observations often highlight the absurdity of the cousins’ behavior. Payton would soon star as Harriet in the spin-off Family Matters alongside her policeman husband Carl (Reginald VelJohnson), who appears with her in the Season 4 episode "Crimebusters" (seen below).

This limited number of supporting characters and an equally small number of notable guest stars -- compared to a series like, say, Friends -- means that our two principal players do most of the heavy lifting, and that especially applies to Mark Linn-Baker and Bronson Pinchot (whose probably borderline ridiculous accent was convincing enough to a kid who had yet to see After Hours or True Romance). Their shared chemistry was the reason Perfect Strangers was fast-tracked into production after Pinchot's small but memorable art dealer role in Beverly Hills Cop, and it premiered soon after that in a primetime Tuesday-night slot before joining the massive TGIF collective in Spring 1988.

As mentioned earlier, eight seasons of Perfect Strangers -- each with varying lengths -- were produced between 1986-93, and this 17-disc Blu-ray set collects them all. The mixed number of episodes means that disc counts are all over the place, but overall it's efficiently managed even though the packaging details are a far cry from those deluxe DVD sets of yesteryear (again, more on that soon) -- instead of a full booklet with descriptions of each episode, photos, and more, we get a measly two-color inner print with a numbered list that doesn't even specify which episodes are on which discs, but they're at least implied below. Even so, those going for a full marathon viewing won't really care.

Season 1 - Disc 1 (6 episodes)

Season 2 - Discs 2-3 (11 episodes each)

Season 3 - Disc 4-5 (11 episodes each)

Season 4 - Discs 6-7 (11 episodes each)

Season 5 - Discs 8-10 (8 episodes each)

Season 6 - Discs 11-13 (8 episodes each)

Season 7 - Disc 14-16 (8 episodes each)

Season 8 - Disc 17 (6 episodes)

A complete list of episode names and descriptions can be found here.

Perfect Strangers: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Like many shows of its era, Perfect Strangers was shot on film but edited on videotape, meaning that these new HD masters required a ground-up restoration to bring it up to modern standards. The results are dramatic to say the least, as previous iterations of the show -- namely broadcast and DVD -- had the telltale appearance of low-res analog with middling fine detail, inconsistent colors, and any number of baked-in format issues. It now basically looks brand new, as these 40 direct-from-disc screenshots suggest, with an overwhelming majority of scenes and shots boasting a truly film-like appearance with varying amounts of grain and huge improvements in all those areas listed above.

As for the encoding, it's overall very good too. All 17 discs are 50 GB apiece and the number of episodes on each ranges from six (the shorter Seasons 1 and 8, which each get their own disc) to 24 (the longer Seasons 5-7, which each get three discs of eight episodes apiece). Only Seasons 2, 3, and 4 show any cause for concern: they both run for 22 episodes but are squeezed onto two discs each, yet they mostly come through unscathed since they're framed at 1.37:1 (along with everything else, which is great), have mono audio, and no extras are included. While some of the grain looks a bit chunky here and there due to slightly lower bit rate, there's nothing that falls below "passable" during those three seasons. As a whole, it's great treatment that should certainly please fans of the show.

Similar to other restorations (rebuilds?) of this type, from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, a very small number of original filmed elements could not be located (or perhaps never even existed to begin with), so in their place are upscaled SD clips including digitized videotape of varying quality. The good news is that these lower-res moments are minimal and mostly limited to a few establishing shots as well as one brief moment during the later-season opening credits, so at least 98% of this material will far exceed the expectations of die-hard fans. I'll admit some of this SD upscaling might've been handled a bit better as it shows various degrees of artifacts, but both this issue and some of the lower bit rates above don't warrant anything harsher than a half-point deduction given the overwhelming excellence of so many episodes included on this 17-disc collection.

Perfect Strangers: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The audio is comparatively a bit more consistent and likewise gets the job done very well, offering its unchallenging sitcom-grade mix in DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio 2.0 -- that's straight-up mono during the first four years, and a more comparatively full-bodied true stereo for Seasons 5-8. That said, the dialogue and live-studio laughter only carries so much weight here, aside from stray scenes of action and suspense (yes, those exist, and mostly in the later seasons) and of course the incidental music cues and borderline epic theme song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now" belted out by David Pomeranz during the opening credits. And while Balki's sign proclaiming "America or Burst" would likely elicit a much longer decision nowadays, that 90-second music video still kicks ass almost 40 years later.

One area of caution in these series-spanning TV collections is the bane of music replacement and, as far as I could tell, no substitutions have been made here. Any such changes would likely be reported in the future by more eagle-eared fans in our official forum thread, so follow along as this 17-disc set is gradually combed through.

Optional English (SDH) subtitles are included during all 150 episodes.

Perfect Strangers: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This 17-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. Just like Babylon 5: The Complete Series, Super Friends! - The Complete Collection, Twin Peaks: From Z to A (the reprinted version), and more recent "Complete Series" sets such as Manifest and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, I'm sure that die-hard fans would've gladly paid more for individual keepcases. At least we get an inner print with a complete episode list, which sadly doesn't offer disc-by-disc breakdowns so those are listed above.

As for actual bonus features, there are none... but that's not surprising given the cost of this set.

Perfect Strangers: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Perfect Strangers was a highly popular sitcom that ran for eight seasons including as part of ABC's TGIF Friday-night lineup, which means it serves as comfort food for a generation of viewers including yours truly. While I didn't catch the series in full during its original run, it was impossible not to be at least casually familiar with a show that survived due to the memorable characters undeniable chemistry between its two leads, Mark Linn-Baker and Bronson Pinchot. That chemistry has endured through the 40 years (!) that have passed between the first season and now, even if its much broader attempts at comedy -- which are all but mandatory for sitcoms in their later seasons -- have not.

Warner Bros.' new Blu-ray set should delight long-time fans of Perfect Strangers, as its ground-up restoration is not only terrific but perhaps implies future treatment to other WB-produced TGIF mainstays including Full House, Family Matters, and Step By Step. Though no extras are on board and the packaging sucks, it's still firmly Recommended to anyone who thinks that more than 60 hours of Perfect Strangers for ~$100 sounds like a good deal.