The Month in Home Media is a monthly column highlighting short-lived or rare television series, specials, miniseries or made-for-TV movies released on DVD or Blu-ray during the previous month, as well as recent additions to streaming services like Warner Archive Instant. The releases discussed in this column are encoded for Region 1 use in the United States and Canada. The Month in Home Media is published on the first Thursday of each month.
Every Tuesday from March 2009 to December 2012, I wrote about new DVD (and later Blu-ray) releases related to classic television, with an emphasis on short-live shows. I stopped writing those posts at the start of this year because they were actually a lot of work to put together each week and there wasn’t a lot of short-lived or rare shows being released. I was writing primarily about more popular, big-name shows coming to DVD. The posts also weren’t very popular with readers.
I’ve decided to revive the concept on a monthly basis but this time to better fit the mission of Television Obscurities, I’ll be focusing exclusively on short-lived, rare or obscure television.
My plan is for the most part only to discuss television series that ran for one season or less and, as was the case with the DVD Tuesday posts, the emphasis will be on pre-1980 television.
So, at the start of each month, I’ll write about television series, specials, miniseries or made-for-TV movies released on DVD or Blu-ray during the previous month. I also plan to cover recent additions to streaming services like Warner Archive Instant, Netflix or Hulu. While putting together this first column, I learned it isn’t always easy to determine when new streaming content has been added to any of these sites. But I’ll do my best.
There were only a handful of Alpha Video releases in September plus a few shows added to Warner Archive Instant and Hulu.
DVD/Blu-ray Releases
Tuesday, September 24th
Television Cavalcade Collection (DVD, Alpha Video)
Four half-hour episodes of Cavalcade of America dating from 1956 and 1957 starring the likes of Lew Ayres, Hugh Beaumont and Oscar Homolka. Manufacture-on-demand.
Frontier Doctor, Volume 8 (DVD, Alpha Video)
Four more episodes of this half-hour syndicated Western that originally aired from 1958-1959. Manufacture-on-demand.
Golden Years of Television (DVD, Alpha Video)
Two half-hour episodes of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Presents from 1955 and 1956 as well as two half-hour episodes of Congrad Nagel Theater from 1953. Manufacture-on-demand.
DVD/Blu-ray News
Space Rangers, which ran for six episodes on CBS in 1993, will be released on DVD on October 15th (TVShowsOnDVD.com).
Sony will be releasing a pair of two-part episodes of Salvage 1 through its manufacture-on-demand service, Sony Pictures Choice Collection. The two-part episode “Golden Orbit” (originally aired on March 12th and 19th, 1979) from the show’s first season will be released on November 5th while the two-part “Hard Water” (originally aired on November 4th and 11th, 1979) from the show’s abortive second season will be out on December 3rd (TVShowsOnDVD.com / TVShowsOnDVD.com).
CBS will release “Perry Como’s Christmas Special” (originally aired on December 17th, 1974) on November 5th. Como’s guests for the broadcast were featuring The Carpenters, Peggy Flemming and Rich Little (TVShowsOnDVD.com).
Streaming
Warner Archive Instant has added the first and only season of Bronk to its list of offerings. The hour-long detective series starred Jack Palance and aired on CBS from 1975-1976. It is listed in two parts: Bronk: Season 1 (Eps 1-13) and Bronk: Season 2 (Eps 14-25).
Also recently added to Warner Archive Instant are both seasons of The Practice, a CBS sitcom that ran from January 1976 to January 1977 and starred Danny Thomas as a gruff doctor. Season 1 includes 14 episodes while Season 2 has 13, the final four of which never aired during the show’s original network run.
Hulu has 21 episodes of Date with the Angels available for free. A total of 33 episodes of the black and white sitcom starring Betty White were broadcast over the course of two seasons from May 1957 to January 1958.
Also newly available through Hulu is “Jerks of All Trades,” the 1949 unsold pilot starring the Three Stooges.
Hit the comments with any news about upcoming DVD/Blu-ray releases or additions to streaming services.
