TV on DVD - July 5, 2005

Very thin list this week, including one which can't be bought in Canada or at Amazon. On the other hand I am enjoying the dog days of summer although if my online Poker playing gets any worse I may have to shop for a new mouse - I seem to get too smart for my own good and slamming the mouse on the desk is not good for it. Next entry will probably be for the debut of Big Brother on Thursday.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Best Of Spike (Best Buy Exclusive)
- There's them that like Spike and them that don't. He grows on you I guess, but then so does foot fungus (you now know which camp I fall into). It doesn't really matter to me, since you can only get this DVD through Best Buy, and a check of the Best Buy Canada website indicates that you can't get it at Best Buy's Canadian stores. To be fair the Spike episodes are frequently entertaining, but there's still something disturbing about the character.

Fantastic Four - The Complete Animated Series
- We all know why this is being released now. This release of the 1994 Fantastic Four animated series from the Marvel Action Hour is clearly an effort to cash in on the release of the new movie. I never watched this although I'm sure that the show was seen on some station in this market. If the art on the TV.com site is any indicator at all, this animated version had none of the power or dynamism of the original Jack Kirby version of the characters. Of course I'm not one to judge - I've always preferred DC.

Monk: Season 3
- Monk is available in most of Canada on the digital cable channel Canadian Learning Television (I know it's a pretty odd choice, but CLT is a fairly odd station - apparently Monk is included as part of Communications Studies 358 at Athabasca University in their Telecourse service). I saw the first season of Monk when ABC showed the series the summer after it debuted. I enjoyed it at the time and was rather disappointed that ABC didn't showing subsequent seasons. I was even more surprised when I learned that ABC had originally ordered the show. They pulled out when Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld) decided that he didn't want to play Adrian Monk. I'm not sure what the bigger mistake was - ABC pulling out when Richards did or ABC wanting Richards to play Monk in the first place. I haven't seen the subsequent seasons, mainly because I haven't made an effort to. Season three is the final season with the marvellous Bitty Schram as Monk's assistant Sharona and introduces Traylor Howard as Natalie, her replacement.

Roughnecks: Starship Troopers - Complete Campaigns
- Okay, this one is a total surprise to me. I didn't know it existed and don't know why it exists. Apparently it did show up on Teletoon here in Canada but quite frankly although I enjoyed the Heinlein novel when I was younger, I grew out of it. I hated the movie (except for Dina Meyer's nudes scenes of course) and can't see how you could translate that into a series aimed at kids or even young adults although I gather it is closer to the novel than the movie, and the animation is supposed to be excellent.

Tour of Duty: Complete Third Season
- Tour of Duty is a show that I never watched, largely because the subject matter doesn't interest me. As a series it was never as successful (or supported by CBS) as the other Vietnam series of about the same period, ABC's China Beach. By the third and final season the show was starting to hit the skids, as shown by the decision to add an aging Lee Majors to the cast. I can't help but wondering though whether fifteen or twenty years after the fact we'll be watching movies and TV series about the Iraq War.