Hey all,
I have just finished watching series 6 on DVD. Please can anyone tell me when the 7th series is due cos i'm living on tenderhooks here!

Well I'm not sure. I can tell you that it is airing in the US at the moment, but they're messing around with the schedule - ALOT! They've shown 7 episodes so far (number 7 was a live debate between the 2 candidates) but due to the "November Sweeps" (when the networks shuffle thier programmes about and look at ratings) there's only going to be 2 eps in Dec, 1 in Jan and they're not showing the rest until March and April (and we thought UK TV was bad for messing with shows!) so... I'm guessing but you may have to wait until next Autumn??? Would love to know if anyone else has any ideas...

Blimey - we're gonna be all caught up with them at that rate. I guess that More4 will finish showing West Wing 6 by March 06 (assuming they keep it going over the Christmas period). What's the betting on More4 launching straight into season 7 after that? We may even overlap with them in that case.

I was actually wondering what they would do on More4 after WW6 finishes anyway - it has a pretty good slot, and evidently viewing figures are pretty good too. I wonder whether they will repeat earlier seasons, or hand it over to another flagship US show?

I'm not sure what I think about the live debate in season 7 that you describe - one of the pleasures of the West Wing is that, to a degree, it is fantasy politics, but with a twist of reality thrown in. Does the live debate bring it too close to real politics? I haven't seen it, so don't know whether this is the case or not.

You raise some interesting issues.

Firstly, in some senses we're actually ahead of the States - they have yet to release season 5 on DVD - due out in December!!! However, they do get extras on the region 1 DVDs that we don't get...

As for the live debate, for sites I've been on, I get the impression that they did the show twice - once for the east coast and once for the west coast because of the time differences... I'm not sure how much these versions differed from each other, though or how much was script and how much was ad-libbed.

I do know that the issues raised are the ones that a real issues - protecting the border between the Us and Mexico, renewable sources of energy, taxes and medicare.

The show has also set up campaign websites for Vinick and Santos which are available from a link provided on the show's official site. It includes issues and biographies and basically treats this whole thing as if it's real.

There's even a poll there to gauge popular opinion.

I think it's quite cool really. What would be great is if the shows viewers got to choose the next President... there's power to the people!!!

Thanks u lot, guess i'm gonna have to find something else to take my mind off it!

You're welcome! If you are really desperate there is a site - my-serendipity.net or something to that effect, which has clips from the season 7 episodes that you can watch, but you may feel this spoils things so I'll leave it to you.