New DVDs include basketball coaching and quiz shows

There are plenty of reasons to watch “The White Shadow: The Complete First Season” (Fox, 15 episodes, four discs, $39.98), including that it was good.

In fact, it was one of my favorite shows in the late ‘70s, when CBS began carrying the tale of former pro basketball player Ken Reeves (Ken Howard) and his work as a coach at a poor, ethnically diverse high school.

Yes, you sometimes squirm at the idea of the white coach guiding poor African Americans, especially at a school where the top administrators are black. And the scenes of the team singing in the shower always struck me as too fake.

But Reeves was sufficiently flawed in that coach did not always know best. The show tried to tackle big issues – alcoholism, teen pregnancy, perceptions about homosexuality – and usually did so well.

You also may want to look at the show for the people involved. The late Bruce Paltrow, father of Gwyneth, was a producer, writer and director on “White Shadow.” He appears to have run a directing school on the show, with three of its actors now successful directors: Thomas Carter (“Coach Carter”), Kevin Hooks (“Lost”) and Timothy Van Patten (“The Sopranos”).

Fox, by the way, says these are the original network cuts of each episode. Still, one episode, “The Offer,” ran about five minutes shorter than the others.

More funny business: “The Kumars at No. 42” (BBC Video, six episodes, one disc, $24.98) is an oddly funny blend of sitcom and talk show, and guaranteed to make you laugh at least once.

The series involves an Indian family living in London and trying to help son Sanjeev (Sanjeev Bhaskar) with his dream of being a talk-show host. They have built him a studio in the back yard, and join in the interviews with puzzled celebrities (Minnie Driver, Richard E. Grant and others).

The jokes are sometimes inside (well, inside if you don’t watch BBC America), but the show is often endearing – and unique. Fox tried to Americanize the concept once, without success.

Fun with fine print: “Deleted Hands” (from World Poker Tour: Best of Season 3).

Not so much fun: A DVD of “Jeopardy! An Inside Look at America’s Favorite Quiz Show” (Sony, five episodes, one disc, $19.94) seems to overlook a big piece of the show’s history by promoting an extra called “21 Years of Answers & Questions.” It’s 21 if you count only the years Alex Trebek has hosted – which are the focus of this set. (The five episodes are Trebek’s first, Ken Jennings’ first loss and three from the “ultimate finals” won by Brad Rutter.) But it’s far more if you remember host Art Fleming. At least, he gets mentioned in the extras.