Peter Young Writes For You

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This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 22nd March 2011.

Have you ever wandered around the entertainment section of your local department store and seen how many TV shows are now available to buy on DVD? Surely there can’t be a demand for all of them? For every classic series such as Twin Peaks there’s a Golden Girls Season 5. Why buy the excellent Firefly box set when you can buy the craptastic JAG or The Anna Nicole Show? There must be someone buying this stuff.

With that in mind, there are still many notable shows that have yet to find a release on DVD.

“Holy chicken sticks Batman, we’re not on DVD yet!” That’s right, the campy Batman series from the sixties is still yet to be released. Starring the super serious Adam West as the titular superhero and millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, alongside Bert Ward as his youthful sidekick Robin a.k.a. Dick Grayson, there are apparently very complicated rights issues between US networks Fox and ABC, Greenway Productions and DC Comics preventing the Caped Crusader from making his way to DVD.  Why can’t there be disputes keeping Acropolis Now off the shelves?

The eighties series about the sixties, The Wonder Years, is also stuck in DVD purgatory. Starring cuddly Fred Savage as tweener Kevin Arnold and Danica McKellar as his love interest Winnie Cooper, the six seasons of this popular dramedy utilised many popular songs from the late sixties and early seventies. This is where the problem lies. With the licences for the songs limited to television broadcast only, each tune requires a new licence and royalty to be negotiated for DVD release.

Secret Valley was an Australian TV series broadcast on the ABC in 1984. Starring siblings Beth, Miles and Simone Buchanan, the show revolved around a holiday camp for kids. Strangely devoid of adult supervision, the camp was regularly terrorised by bully Spider McGlurk and his gang. It was a G-rated Lord of the Flies without a pig’s head. From memory, each episode ended with a flour bomb fight (take notes kids, bullies are best dispatched with flour, not body slams). The show was shot at the now defunct Smokey Dawson’s ranch in Terry Hills, NSW and the even more defunct El Caballo Blanco Spanish horse theme park in Catherine Field, NSW.

A spin off from Secret Valley, Professor Poopsnagle’s Steam Zeppelin was produced in 1986 and starred Justine Clark. Broadcast on Channel Ten, the story followed a group of kids from Secret Valley who build a flying red bus (as you do) to search for the missing six golden salamanders which when combined will produce a solution to air pollution. Apparently this show is still very popular in the UK, but then again, so is Benny Hill.

Both of these classic Australian children’s shows are not available on DVD. To be fair, equally daggy but awesome kids’ shows Pugwall and Pugwall’s Summer can be found on DVD.

D.A.A.S. Kapital was a sitcom of sorts written and starring the Doug Anthony All Stars. Running for two seasons on the ABC, the show featured Tim Ferguson, Richard Fidler and Paul McDermott as custodians of the world’s most treasured artworks stored aboard a submerged submarine that is owned by the Shitsu Tonka Corporation, a company that now owns the world. Despite a recent DVD release of Doug Anthony All Stars material compiled from the also MIA comedy series The Big Gig, this cult series is nowhere to be found.

If there is supposedly a demand for all twelve seasons of Murder, She Wrote (if Jessica Fletcher arrives in your town, leave because someone’s going to die), five seasons of Ally McBeal and one (but feels like twenty) season of Cops L.A.C., then there must be a market for my picks. And while you’re at it, why not also release China Beach, L.A. Law, Jim Henson’s Dinosaurs (not the mama) and Hangin’ with Mr Cooper? Write to your local member today.