Skip to content
Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action paints the late presenter as the bad guy. For anyone who was around in the ’90s, The Jerry Springer Show first came to my radar with in the latter part of the decade when it had become well-known for sensationalist episodes like My Sister Slept with My 3 Husbands, and My Dream is to Pose Nude.
This is a far cry from the original ethos, as a daytime chatshow with political content, but that didn’t get the ratings. Once Springer made the change, the show was soon recommissioned for a further six seasons without a blink, and in its heyday, a compilation of clips even made for one of the first UK DVDs, Jerry Springer: Too Hot For TV!
However, while the show had a successful, long run with almost 4000 episodes, between 1991 and 2018, dark times were not far behind.
For Jerry Springer, his show partly came to an end because he was caught having a threesome with two blonde women who were guests on the show. Erm… problem? Who WOULDN’T want that to happen to them?! Jeez, what a fuss about nothing, especially compared to how Jeremy Kyle’s similar ITV show was finally brought to book since that was down to more than one participant taking their own lives!
That said, Springer’s show also inadvertently far overstepped appropriate boundaries. As funny as “I Married A Horse” – the episode which was even banned in some US states – was, the man involved, Mark Matthews, died the following year, although the lifespan of his equine wife, Pixel, is unknown.
Seriously, though, for the “Secret Mistress Confronted” episode, there were two grown women fighting over a complete waster with a mullet, called Ralf Panitz. He was then married to Eleanor, while ex-wife Nancy Campbell-Panitz also appeared. However, because Ralf was completely unhinged, the episode’s broadcast led to him murdering Nancy, the same night.
Every show comes to an end, in time, but when the producers clearly have zero respect for the guests, even trying to sidestep away from responsibility, it’s the worst look possible for them, and the handwringing from producers Toby Yoshimura, Melinda Chait Mele, and showrunner Richard Dominick, doesn’t wash. They ALL have blood on their hands.
There’s some really weird camera positioning in the interview segments. These are in a wife 2.39:1 format, and the second person on screen – Chicago media critic Robert Feder – is first seen on the right-hand side of the screen, turned to the extreme right and facing my wall, basically. What’s wrong with simply sitting forward and facing the interviewer? God, I hate this sort of pissing about in interview programmes. He manages it shortly afterwards, but the director of this must be turning up drunk each day.
Clips from the programme are in the original 4:3 format, so at least they’re not cropped.
Thanks to our friends at Netflix for the screener prior to release.
Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action! is not available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but is on Netflix from January 7th 2025.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 50 minutes per episode (2 episodes)
Release date: January 7th 2025
Studio: Netflix
Format: 2.39:1, 1.33:1
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.