In an age where so much is now available on streaming, on DVD, or on older formats… Which movies or TV shows have you sought out and not been able to find?
Honey I Shrunk The Kids the TV series. I do not know why it’s not on Disney+. I used to watch it every week, but had to abandon it when I moved to live in Australia, where it wasn’t being broadcast, and I have never seen the rest of the episodes.
“Who Is Killing The Great Chefs Of Europe?”.
I do assume the OP means ‘legitimate’ streaming or other releases, since quite a few shows can be seen (often at very LQ) on mainstream (or less) sites, but of all the ones I miss, it would be the crime/dark fantasy Brimstone TV series.
Northern Exposure, Chicago Hope, and L.A. Law for TV series. There’s also the original Neon Genesis Evangelion that had Fly me to the Moon playing during the credits. As far as I can tell, music rights issues are the main culprit.
ETA. I’d bet that music rights issues are to blame for the vast majority of “missing” movies of TV shows for those made since around 1980 or so.
ETA 2. Canceled entertainers or offensive plot lines are more likely to blame if individual episodes are missing. The Mario Batali episodes of Iron Chef, for example, are unavailable.
It’s a big issue for a lot of series, yes. Some at least have still managed to get a DVD release but with all the music subbed out - for example, a few years back (god, make that 10 years back SMH) I got my wife the Complete Daria set on DVD, which by the Amazon blurb had 99% of the original music removed / subbed out - no surprise as it very much showed it’s MTV origins.
The Repair Shop
The odd Kanopy streaming service, often provided by your library for limited use, does stream Northern Exposure. If you have a library card, decent chance this would be free.
Big Thumbs.
I saw it once on SelecTV night owl theater back in the 70’s. Can’t find a copy of it anywhere.
Third Watch, St. Elsewhere, movies: Hawks (with Timothy Dalton and Anthony Edwards).
The Magicians (2007) I’m a big fan of Peep Show and so have wanted to see this David Mitchel and Robert Webb movie for some time. Apparently not available anywhere for love or money. Even if I did manage to track down a dvd version I am sure it wouldn’t work in North American machines.
Looks like Northern Exposure and the first 3 seasons of L.A. Law are readily available on DVD (at least here in the U.S.).
I missed that DVDs counted. I bought my wife the first 4 seasons about 4-5 years ago.
Justwatch.com says all ten seasons are on Discovery Plus.
St. Elsewhere is available on Hulu.
I’d like to see some old sitcoms: Get Smart, Newhart, Mork and Mindy, My Sister Sam.
mmm
ETA: Looks like Get Smart is on Amazon Prime and AppleTV. I’ll have to investigate further.
These 3 play on several over the air stations too.
I’m recording Get Smart off of Decades. I’ve seen Newhart on more than one channel that shows old sitcoms including Decades.
Sorry, I’m not sure Newhart is showing, The Bob Newhart show is however.
Homicide: Life on the Street was an excellent series that aired on NBC in the 1990s. It is not available for streaming anywhere that I can find. A very expensive DVD set was released many years ago, but by accounts I’ve read, the quality is very poor and doesn’t include the episodes done in conjunction with Law & Order, which leaves some story lines just hanging without conclusion.
When Court TV ran the series, I taped most of them on VHS, but you can imagine how grainy those look, and with all the commercials, even if I had a VHS deck I could play them on.
This was such a highly-acclaimed (though admittedly low-rated) series that I can’t understand why it is still not available for streaming, with all these marginal services that are on Roku running old series.
I suspect that this thread is going to become one where a poster mentions a show and then several others jump in stating where the show can be found. So this would be a good question – where to look before posting?
For me: The 1986-1988 TV series “Crime Story”. Theme song “My Little Runaway” by Del Shannon.
For awhile there, finding The Detectorists in U.S. format was impossible. Then they became available, but at $30-$40 per season and limited availability. Now they’re at about $20. Yeah, I know you can stream it, but I needed the DVDs for my RV.
Just informational, but Multi-Standard Blu Ray players are available at reasonably low prices in the US. Much of our DVD collection is from Great Britain and all are playable on the LG player we have. Buying DVDs from overseas greatly expands availabilty of shows,