[Bianculli here: I'm leaving this up for another day, because the responses have been so wonderful. Even if you've posted your own wish list, check back to read everyone else's comments. He & She! Frank's Place! The Trials of O'Brien!
Holy good taste, Batman!
Oh, yeah -- and Batman,
too!...]
Diane Werts' recent column -- a great-news post about the just-announced forthcoming full-series release of Fox's Ally McBeal on DVD -- ended with her prodding for the releases of other not-yet-available series, like ABC's brilliant 1988-93 The Wonder Years. I'm taking her ball and advancing it a little, by giving my own list of TV shows I'd love to see released on DVD -- then asking for yours...
Yes, I'd love to see a full-set Wonder Years, too, so start there. But here are six other series that absolutely, positively deserve full-set releases, and are significant enough in terms of TV history to warrant the honor.
ST. ELSEWHERE, 1982-88, NBC. 20th Century Fox released Season One of this brilliant, groundbreaking medical drama three years ago, then stopped there. Huge mistake, because the show got better, bolder and more audacious in every successive season. Terence Knox as a doctor turned rapist? David Morse as a doctor turned rape victim while taken hostage as a visiting physician in prison? (For series writer-producer Tom Fontana, it was a short step to his subsequent Oz. Denzel Washington? Howie Mandel? That infamous ending? C'mon... I adored this show. And every edgy cable series of the past 10 years owes a major debt to this program, period.
THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW, 1992-1998, HBO. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released a no-frills Season One collection in 2002, very early in the TV-shows-on-DVD game, and an outstanding Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show set, with lots of frills, in 2007. But still no complete-series run -- and this show, almost as much as Seinfeld, holds up so well to repeated viewings, and is so distinct in its comic tone, it should be available as a complete-series set. Garry Shandling, Rip Torn, Jeffrey Tambor -- if HBO had video rights to this, instead of Sony, it would have given Larry Sanders the royal treatment long, long ago.
THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF MOLLY DODD, 1987-88, NBC, 1989-91, Lifetime. If you're tracing the history of working single women in TV history, Blair Brown's Molly Dodd is one of the most significant, and charming, figures. (The lineage goes something like this: Our Miss Brooks in the 50s, That Girl in the 60s, Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 70s, Molly Dodd in the 80s, Ally McBeal in the 90s and 30 Rock today.) Jay Tarses wrote this fabulous comedy -- no laugh track, major New York sensibility -- with a great supporting cast that included a then-unknown David Strathairn. No episodes have ever been released on DVD -- a major TV crime.
THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM MACHINE, 1971-72, PBS. This anything-goes, liberally biased anthology arts and documentary series was a variety show in the truest sense. Andy Rooney, before moving to 60 Minutes, did reports for this one-season PBS showcase. So did Marshall Efron, whose lecture on the topic "Is There Sex After Death?" was, in its entirety, one word ("No"). Chevy Chase was one of the mime "singers" who contorted their faces to the sound of music, and short films were provided by, among others, Albert Brooks. It's never, ever been on home video, not even a single episode. So where is it?
THE BOLD ONES: THE SENATOR, 1970-71, NBC. Two years after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, Hal Holbrook starred as Sen. Hays Stowe in this one-season rotating drama in the umbrella series The Bold Ones. Only eight movie-length episodes were made, so it would be a perfectly manageable DVD boxed set. I remember this series as having more heart and guts than any series on the air at the time -- but my memories are fading, because this series hasn't been seen since, or repeated anywhere, much less released on home video. Yet Holbrook was magnificent as an idealistic young senator, so now's the time. Yes we can.
THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS, 1963, 1964-65, NBC. This was the short-lived, amazingly daring U.S. offshoot of the British satirical hit -- and David Frost, who hosted it in England, eventually held court on the American version as well. Henry Fonda presided over the 1963 special, which led to a brief but brilliant run: Nancy Ames singing about the week's current events, Tom Lehrer providing topical songs like "Pollution," Buck Henry and Alan Alda providing pointed comedy, puppeteer Burt Tillstrom using nothing but his two hands to enact a touching drama about the history of the Berlin Wall. And how about this: At a time when cigarette ads were still pervasive on TV, TW3 showed X-ray images of diseased lungs while singing, from "Smoke gets in Your Eyes," the lyric "Something here inside cannot be denied." This NEEDS to be on DVD.
Those are some of my missing favorites, my TV Holy Grails. What are some of yours?