Every Tuesday, new DVDs come out; while most of them are feature films, there's always at least one or two TV shows that get released. Week after week I (and many other people) hope to find these shows sitting on the "New Release" shelf and are time and time again disappointed. It can be frustrating, even infuriating that you can't get these shows, but hopefully in due time they will eventually be released.
Here's to hoping the simple act of blogging and posting lists will make a difference (you know, because online petitions are always successful too).
What TV shows aren't available on DVD? This list will give you that answer.
http://www.ranker.com/list/10-tv-shows-not-available-on-dvd-but-should-be/saintmort,
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
If you were a child of 90's TV you knew 2 simple things: (1) Friday Night was TGIF & (2) Saturday was SNICK. Now there are countless classic SNICK shows that should be on DVD but aren't (All That, Roundhouse, Kablam, Alex Mack) but the most confusing one is Are you Afraid of the Dark?
The show is sorta/kinda available on DVD. Seasons 1-5 were only released in Canada; while in America we can only get seasons 6 and 7. I don't really understand how or why this happened, but it did.
The show was a kid-friendly version of Tales from the Crypt and could post a fair number of up and comers first TV appearances (including Ryan Gosling, Neve Campbell, Eddie Kaye Thomas & Jay Baruchel) not to mention some of the most terrifying TV episodes my young mind could handle at the time. I remember specifically being terrified by the episode in which a kid steals the nose off a clown dummy in the funhouse and is haunted by the clown stalking his house.
Boy Meets World
Boy Meets World was one of the more popular TGIF shows. For 7 years we grew up side by side with Corey Matthews and his friends and family. The show had a short life on DVD on 2004 when the first three seasons were released. When the sales didn't match Disney's expectations they stopped releasing them all together.
What Disney didn't understand (but Boy Meets World fans did) was that the show never really picked up steam till roughly Season 4 when the characters became Juniors in High School. This gave us memorable moments like the "Scream" parody; Chickens being loose in the hallway; "Underpants".
There is a light at the end of the tunnel on this particular pick. In 2008 Lionsgate picked up the rights to the show. September 7th, 2010 they will be re-releasing the first 3 seasons on DVD again, let's hope this time they continue through and give us seasons 4-7.
Even Stevens
Before Shia LaBeouf was a household name, he played Louis Stevens in the incredibly under-appreciated Disney original series "Even Stevens".
Even Stevens followed the lives of the Stevens family, specifically the brainy oldest sister Ren and the prank-full and scheming brother Louis. Episodes were always fun and ridiculous such as the episode where Louis pledges to stay in bed for 48 hours to raise money for a local charity or when he attempts to eat the worlds biggest burger to get his picture on the wall at the restaurant.
After 3 years and TV movie as a series finale the show has all but vanished from television, not even reappearing in the form of reruns. The show has developed a cult following but yet no sign of a DVD release on the horizon.
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Releasing a Talk show on DVD doesn't seem like an idea that would immediately make sense, but Late Night with Conan O'Brien was not your regular talk show. Conan filled his hour with bizarre characters, memorable sketches and arguably the best interviews in the business. You can purchase the Conan's 10 year anniversary and the Best of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on DVD but that's the extent of his life on Home Video.
Conan never had the ratings of carson or letterman or leno, but he did have a stronger fanbase than any of them combined. Conan's popularity only sky-rocketed after he was wrongly removed as the host of the Tonight Show. It all ended on a bad note between NBC and Conan. This could be the biggest reason that we may never see a DVD release of this talk show's 16 year run.
Samurai Pizza Cats
Samurai Pizza Cats was without a doubt one of the strangest animes ever put on the "weekday-after-school" TV programming schedule. While it only lasted a year, us kids lucky enough to have caught episodes of Samurai Pizza Cats' brief run will be sure to remember the strange theme song and the even strange plot-lines with titles like "The Nuclear Potato" and "Gender Bender Butterflies".
The show followed Pizza Shop owning cats "Speedy Cerviche", "Polly Esther" and "Guido Anchovy" as they battled various villians while trying to take down Seymour "Big" Cheese.
What made this show most enjoyable was the character "The Narrator" who was an unseen voice that interacted with characters and constantly pointed out plot holes and cliches filed with witty and sarcastic humor.
For a while episodes were appearing on amazon.com for sale but with no company taking claim for it, it's believed to be a bootleg.
The Wonder Years
This is pretty much the top of everyone's list of TV Shows that should be on DVD, but with good reason. The show speaks to a generation of kids who grew up watching it on TV or Nick At Nite Reruns.
The show stars Fred Savage as Kevin Arnold (while Daniel Stern provided grown-up Kevin's voice over) as he goes through his childhood in Cleveland, Ohio circa 1968 as he struggles with his friendships, relationships and 60's culture.
The show hasn't been released on DVD mostly due to licensing reasons. The closest we've come to it has been in 1998 when Anchor Bay released four episodes on VHS. Hopefully if people stress a desire for this to be on DVD, our prayers will finally be answered (consider me helping the cause now officially).
Viva Variety
Right off the coat-tails of MTV's The State; Members of the comedy troupe immediately put together this unique show that acted as both a mock variety show and a legit variety show at the exact same time.
Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney (of Reno 911 fame) star as Mr. Laupin and the former Mrs. Laupin, a recently divorced couple who run a weekly variety show. Our host is Johnny Blue Jeans, our self proclaimed Cool-Ass Pal portrayed by Michael Ian Black.
Each week we'd see a musical performance, some comedy pieces as well as fake product placements and games like "Plant or Animal" where audiences members would listen a 5-second long audio clip and have to decide if it was an animal or Robert Plant singing.
Let's hope that the release of The State on DVD will mean that Viva Variety isn't much further behind.
Batman
It sounds like I'm joking when I say this, but Adam West is my favorite Batman. Something about his campy and ridiculous delivery will always entertain me over the last four guys who have just attempted deep raspy voices to be the Dark Knight.
Strictly from an entertainment aspect the 60's Batman is an incredible camp masterpiece. While the movie is on DVD (and best believe I own and adore my copy of it) the TV show has never really gotten much of a life on Home Video.
There are multiple theories for this ranging from Warner Brothers Vs. Fox disputes or DC Comics not being a fan of the show. Either way, the 3 season cult classics chances of a life on DVD seems highly unlikely.
Strangely enough however, things that would be "Special Features" on such a DVD have been released on "Holy Batmania" a double disc DVD featuring a documentary and rare footage like screen tests.
Get a Life
Get A Life is a show that upon first view you think "Dear God, this is the worst sitcom I've ever seen", but by second view (hopefully) you realize that's the whole point. The short lived (just 2 seasons totally 35 episodes) show was written by Adam Resnick (Late Night with David Letterman), Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show), Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich) and star Chris Elliott.
To say this show was bizarre would be the ultimate understatement. In 35 episodes, we watched Chris Elliott's character die 12 times (including run over by car, crushed under giant boulder and exploding).
Storywise we followed Chris Peterson (Elliott) a simple minded 30-year old newspaper delivery boy who lives with is parents. His only friend is Larry who unlike Chris has grown up. Larry's wife hates Chris so much he's constantly trying to kill him.
The show had 8 episodes released on VHS and these same 8 episodes were also released on DVD. Sony has never announced if they'll release a complete series on DVD; however Chris Elliott has mentioned in interviews that it's in the works but is held up in legalities. Let's hope we see those DVDs sooner than later!
Pretty Much Every Non-Reality Show on 90's MTV
Back in the 90's MTV was the greatest channel of all time; while they're finally releasing some of their properties onto DVD (Daria and The State most recently) there still a ton of shows that people are waiting for. There are only petitions for such shows as 2ge+her, The Idiot Box & Sifl & Olly. But furthermore There's other classics getting ignored like The Tom Green Show, AL-TV, Undressed, The Head & Cartoon Sushi.
The reasons behind MOST of these delays tend to be that the original episodes have used so many copyrighten songs that were popular at the time that each episode needs to gone through one at a time and have the audio switched out.
Despite it all, I will continue hoping and praying I can get rid of my bootleg of "The Head" in favor of a proper DVD and the eventual release of a Sifl & Olly or 2ge+her DVD release.