Practice Week

UK TV has never sensibly shown The Practice. I first discovered it via an Ally McBeal cross-over episode. The case began in an episode of Ally McBeal, and then continued in an episode of The Practice. In the US I believe the second half ran immediately after the first half (albeit on a different network, which was in itself unusual for a cross-over), but as The Practice didn’t show in the UK at all, we were just left hanging.

I spent a few years not knowing what had happened, until ITV seemed to pick up the second half of the second season of The Practice and show it at obscure times which changed every week (usually sometime between midnight and 2 am on a Friday or Saturday night). I don’t know whether they showed more of it than that, and I just didn’t discover it until half-way through, or whether they just showed half the season. As far as I know they never showed Season 3, or indeed any other season.

About 6 months ago BBC3 picked up Season 3 and showed it. Again, they chopped and changed the times, but I managed to catch almost every episode.

When I started playing with BitTorrent I was able to download the latter half of Season 8, but as I watching Season 3 at the time I didn’t watch any of them, just in case there were spoilers for what I was currently watching. I hoped that the BBC had picked up more than the one season, but of course, they stopped at the end of Season 3.

Then, when I was in San Francisco for Web 2.0, I managed to catch the first episode of Boston Legal, the new spin-off show from it. I was hooked straightaway, and on further investigatation I discovered that Season 8 of The Practice had pretty much changed focus half-way through to feature these new characters at this new firm (and managed it better than the entire cast change in the last, appalling, season of Ally McBeal). So when I came home I watched those last episodes of the Practice I’d downloaded – and it’s some of the best TV I’ve seen in quite some time. James Spader and William Shatner are both excellent, and raised the level by an impressive amount of what was already a really good show. But now I’m hungry for more! I can download Boston Legal every Monday, but I really want to see the first half of Season 8. And of course there still five and half other seasons I haven’t seen yet! I’ve been hoping for DVD releases, but there’s no sign of that. I’ve scoured all the torrent sites I know, but can find nothing.

Tonight, however, I’ve discovered that the new ITV3 channel is showing episode 2:4 through 2:8 one per day next Monday to Friday. They don’t seem to be showing anything more the following week, but hopefully this will be a regular thing. And at least I get to see 5 more episodes!

8 thoughts on “Practice Week

  1. Hi there

    I have never watched the Practice Season 8 but am building the torrent right now to burn to DVD for my Sister in London. I’m quite nw to this whole torrent thing so not sure how to transfer it to you AND I can’t recall which site I found it on.

    Anyway, i did a quick search and found it on two other torrent sites:

    http://www.torrentz.com/torrent_15616.html

    Get in touch and let me know how you got on and if you need me to try and let you in on my copy (78% downloaded so far)

    Best regards
    Tony in Glasgow

  2. I eventually managed to get the entirety of the Practice. ITV3 has shown all of Seasons 1 through 7 several times now, and although it has never shown S8 I managed to download it a while back.

  3. I found this site through a google search for the Practice season 8. I am a big fan of Boston Legal and I understand that Alan Shore was introduced in season eight of the Practice. I would so much like to see this season, because it seems all of Alan’s hijinks started then and there and there must also be a lot of background on him and Denny Crane. I read here that you have this show. Since somebody high up seems to have decided that the Practice will not be released and sold through the normal channels, I was wondering whether you could contact me. I would very much appreciate your advice.

  4. I would love to download Season 8 of The Practice. I would like to send it to my brother in law in Iraq. Can someone give me a few tips or ways I could do that? I’m pretty good with these things, but I can’t find the shows anywhere. Not on Limewire, or MIRC, or on a newsgroup. Thanks,
    Dave
    Dave2503@comcast.net

  5. hi! i just downloaded a torrent file of the practice season 3 and episode 14 did not have an ending. does anyone have that file or can send it to me at ang.alem@gmail.com? i’d greatly appreciate it.

    thanks

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