I haven’t done one of these Canadian TV-on-DVD entries for a while, purely since there hasn’t been much movement on that front.  I also grew disinterested with the “new box art for Season 1 of Flying Pig-Dog Hour!” entries on TVShowsonDVD.com.

In fact, TVShowsonDVD.com hasn’t been making with the truly interesting news as of late.  Sure, The Dana Carvey Show and American Gladiators, we all want that.  Was the world clamoring for more Brothers & Sisters and California Dreams, though?  Sheesh, give me Automan and Manimal.  I want to see Simon MacCorkindale fail to act, damn it!

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The complete Zeroman series out on DVD June 2, 2009 via kaBOOM!/Peace Arch.  I honestly never expected this to come out on DVD, although Teletoon shows frequently merit series sets.  Then again, Zeroman isn’t exactly Delilah and Julius or Cybersix.  Nothing could be Cybersix.

Zeroman isn’t the worst thing Leslie Nielsen’s ever done.  Liocracy, Dracula: Dead and Loving It and 2001: A Space Travesty are all worse than Zeroman, although that’s damning Zeroman with faint praise.  At this point, Leslie Nielsen should retire the deadpan humour he used to be so good at with Airplane! and The Naked Gun.

Ron MacLean and Don Cherry have recurring roles on Zeroman, as do Ryan Reynolds and Kevin McDonald.  Did I mention Zeroman was shit?  At least the show’s animation was surprisingly decent.

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Corner Gas‘ sixth season set will come six weeks after the show’s series finale airs.  The June 9, 2009 release will have the retrospective behind-the-scenes filler It’s Been a Gas and “footage of the final read-through,” at least according to CTV press bumf.  Not a bad deal, especially since CTV is pimping Corner Gas‘ final episode out.  It’s Canada’s greatest-ever mainstream comedy series.  Canada will fall apart when Corner Gas ends, right?  Won’t it?

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Corner Gas II, also known as Little Mosque on the Prairie, will see its second and third season sets come out in the fall of 2009 through Morningstar Entertainment.  The information comes from CBC Shop, so let’s just vouchsafe that the discs will come out.  After all, if The Collector can come out on DVD…

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In a related segue, The Collector‘s second season set comes out May 26, 2009 through Morningstar Entertainment.  I’m rather surprised The Collector sold well enough to merit a second-season DVD set.  It just goes to show you how people like certain Canadian programs, but CityTV aired The Collector.  Murdoch Mysteries and Less Than Kind fans know CityTV is where Canadian shows go to die.

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Acorn Media releases Murdoch Mysteries‘ first-season set on June 16, 2009.  There are many hardcore Murdoch Mysteries fans out there, so I have a feeling this will sell well.  Why is it that an American company can cherry-pick shows like this and gain a reputation for quality releases?  If Acorn Media snaps up Less Than Kind, I’m going to lose my shit.

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Blood Ties “Season 1″ out June 2, 2009, while “Season 2″ might come out September 2009.  The reason I quote the seasons is that the show aired worldwide as a 22-episode season.  Lifetime split Blood Ties in two seasons for U.S. consumption.  Eagle Vision is releasing this since, you know, strong fanbase.

Yeah, another Canadian show’s home entertainment rights snapped up by an American company.  If nothing else, Peter Mohan stands to make serious bank off the DVD releases.  Vampires are trendy these days, so he might as well profit from the trend.

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Critical Mass Entertainment and Anchor Bay Canada released another Hilarious House of Frightenstein DVD set on March 31, 2009.  It’s an Igor-centric compilation, for those Fishka Rais fans.  It’s hard to fault Anchor Bay for putting the Frightenstein comps out, since they come out with some regularity.

If Critical Mass gains DVD rights to Maniac Mansion, John Hemphill fans are going to have an epileptic seizure.  Watch, I’ve now set in motion events that are going to culminate in Maniac Mansion season sets, at least in my mind.  After all, I am Turner Edison.  You think “Cameron Archer” is a real person?  Bullshit!

Life With Derek first-season DVD set.  When I contacted Zoltan Varadi of KOCH Canada about updating my contact information and availability of the Terminal City box set, I was sent a press release concerning this show.  I haven’t seen Life With Derek so I have no comments good or bad about this release, but there are far worse shows being given box sets.

The Blu-Ray box sets of The Tudors‘ first two seasons have been delayed until November 25.  This doesn’t affect the DVD version of the second-season box set, which is still coming out on Remembrance Day.  The American DVD release of The Tudors will have other Showtime hits tacked onto the set, just in case you’ve been living in a garbage bag and don’t know what Dexter is.

ReGenesis first-season DVD set.  I never watched this show, but it has its fans and it’s good to see this come out.  Koch and VSC tend to grab the choice titles, and I have a feeling this will sell well.

TVShowsOnDVD.com links to the frightenstein.com boards concerning a new Hilarious House of Frightenstein box set.  This is being put out by CRiTiCAL MASS Entertainment and Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada.  Wait, is it Starz Home Entertainment Canada now?  Whatever, at least it’s a Canadian release.

As a special bonus, David Lambert of TVShowsOnDVD.com thanks someone whose name sounds very familiar to me:

Our thanks to reader Sean Palmerston for tipping us off about this

Sean Palmerston?  The writer for Exclaim! and Unrestrained!?  Alright, he’s a Hamilton boy and Hilarious House of Frightenstein was shown on CHCH back when it had a soul, so the connection isn’t that far off.  I never thought I’d see Sean Palmerston’s name referenced at TVShowsOnDVD.com.  He’s branching out.

Bruce Kirkland puts over a few Canadian TV-on-DVD sets, including Corner Gas, Durham County and Terminal City.  I don’t see how Corner Gas is “out-of-mainstream” since that show is the most successful Canadian sitcom since Trailer Park Boys, but whatever.  Duckman and Robot Chicken are recommended, so Kirkland has some semblance of taste.

Class of the Titans Season One, Volume One?!  The show has its fans, but why split the season like that?  This isn’t like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe where each season has at least 65 episodes, so I don’t understand the strategy.

I think Class of the Titans is a fairly silly series – descendants of Greek heroes fight mythological monsters controlled by some higher power.  Replace the hero spawn with teens who can turn into dinosaurs.  Swap “mythological monsters” with “mutated animals.”  Replace “higher power” with “shapeshifting velociraptor.”  There, you have DinoSquad.  People have been abusing the basic building blocks of adventure cartoons since forever.

A 6teen set.  I actually like this show, although I’m not crazy about it since I’m not part of its target audience.  The characters on 6teen have personalities beyond their initial stereotypes and talk like actual people some of the time.  6teen‘s not perfect – very few shows have correctly depicted the lives of teenagers, and the characters on 6teen are all mallrats.  The show’s more fun than Class of the Titans, but that goes without saying.

Here’s a set I missed for the first Canadian TV-on-DVD post.  It concerns Durham County, a show that appeared on The Movie Network in 2007 before being given a run on Global earlier this year.  I should really check that show out one of these days.  It sounds good.

Funny how Anchor Bay’s Canadian division is putting this out.  I wasn’t even aware Anchor Bay had a Canadian division.  I’m out of the loop.

Various recent Canadian children’s shows have DVDs out – Di-Gata Defenders, Ruby Gloom, Grossology and Jane and the Dragon.  I’m not crazy about any of these releases, although I can’t comment on Grossology and Ruby Gloom since I haven’t watched those shows.

Di-Gata Defenders, though?  It’s like Digimon meets Avatar with anything that made those two shows watchable bled dry.  That show needed the lead characters to transform into dragons.  They could have fought evil Internet viruses controlled by an evil Steve Wozniak!

My word, I think I just described the plot of Code Monkeys!

This isn’t specifically related to TV-on-DVD news, but io9.com has an article up asking whether The Starlost was the worst science fiction program ever made.  The complete series DVD set came out September 30 through VCI.  The show aired on CTV during the 1973-74 season and is one of Harlan Ellison’s ill-fated excursions into television.

Amazon.com has this at $45, which sounds exorbitant.  Wait a year, I’m sure The Starlost will be at least half off by then.

I’ve been reviewing some TV-on-DVD releases for “my sister’s site at http://www.currentmoviereviews.net/,” as I’ve been saying to publicists for far too long.  It would be nice if the reviews I have written for her would be on the site, but I have written them and they might be reworked for sweetposer.com soon, just to prove to people that I’m not continuing to blow smoke out my ass.  Also: that I actually post reviews here.

Canadian TV-on-DVD releases tend to be overlooked.  I remember first noticing that John Callahan’s Quads! had a season box set when I was doing Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart two years ago.  Granted, it’s John Callahan’s Quads! and the audience for sketchily drawn, poorly-animated cartoons about disabled assholes isn’t that big.  Canadian TV-on-DVD titles are far more likely to hit the bargain bins or be heavily discounted than American fare in this country, in my opinion.  When I look in discount stores like Giant Tiger and Liquidation World, I’ve seen titles like Atomic Betty and Jimmy Macdonald’s Canada there.  Is it because Canadian titles are almost always shit or are the wrong titles being released?

Maybe Canadian TV-on-DVD is just a weakly tapped market.  I’m amazed there isn’t a Four on the Floor box set, since there are Frantics fans out there.  I can see a market for The Tommy Hunter Show, and there are even hardcore fans of The Vacant Lot.  CODCO has yet to see a release.  There’s a lot of good stuff left untouched.  Even the titles that are out on DVD seem to suffer from poor marketing.  I didn’t know the first two seasons of This Hour Has 22 Minutes – make no mistake, that show was great in its early years – were even out on DVD until I received an e-mail from CBCShop.ca selling the first two seasons for $19.99 each.  Did CBC broadcast commercials for the box sets last year?  It’s not like I’ve gone out of my way to watch the Gavin Crawford/Geri Hall/Mark Critch era of the show, since I only watch shows I find funny.

All I have to say is, I’m glad there’s a TVShowsonDVD.com, otherwise my knowledge of home entertainment-related Canadiana would be even smaller than it is now.

Announcement for the complete series set of My Pet Monster.  Global used to air this show for years on end, since Nelvana produced it and the show counted as Canadian content.  I’m sure there are fans of this show, but this is the sort of title I wish would not be released on DVD.  kaBOOM!’s releasing a couple of these industrials lately – this and Tales from the Cryptkeeper.  Meanwhile, other Nelvana titles like Eek! the Cat and Beetlejuice lack proper DVD releases – the 20th anniversary Beetlejuice DVD has three episodes from its spinoff cartoon, which is inadequate.  Those two titles need more of a DVD release than a show based on a fad toy that was constantly rerun on Saturday afternoons for at least ten years.  I have memories of My Pet Monster that I wish would erode faster.  I want to forget about Mr. Hinkle and his dog Princess.

Review of Friday the 13th: The Series.

Corner Gas Season 5.  This is one of the rare Canadian series that’s marketed properly, given decent season releases and has television commercials advertising it.  I’ve never liked this show, but it has its fans and it’s being sold the right way.

Grantray-Lawrence titles Spider-Man and The Marvel Superheroes in grab-bag DVD sets.  I question the legality of these releases – I’m sure Disney owns the rights to the 1967 Spider-Man series and it put the entire three-season run out on DVD a few years ago, so I’m not sure what’s going on here.

Both seasons of The Tudors out on Blu-Ray November 11.  The second season of The Tudors is coming out in standard DVD format on the same day as the Blu-Ray releases, at least in Canada.

The Border‘s first season and Robson Arms’ third season on DVD.  Video Service Corp. seems to be the company that best exploits the Canadian TV-on-DVD market.

Mutant X and BeastMaster complete-run DVD sets cancelled.  This is due to ADV Films losing the home video rights to Tribune Entertainment’s shows, and aside from Farscape this isn’t much of a loss.  I always felt releasing these shows was a lousy way to wean the company off anime and manga.  I know the anime market is not nearly what it was a few years ago, but ADV could have done a better job of diversifying.

Also coming out in November and December: Fraggle Rock complete series (November 4), Super Dave Super Stunt Spectacular Volume One (November 25)