Digital Digest: More of The FBI from Warner Archive; Diagnosis Murder and The Mod Squad Complete Series Releases

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Digital Digest: More of The FBI from Warner Archive; Diagnosis Murder and The Mod Squad Complete Series Releases

Welcome to Digital Digest! As we mentioned last week, we're working on revamping this weekly feature into something new, and we hope to have that very soon! In the meantime, we're back with our abridged version of Digital Digest with all of your news, a preview of Tuesday's releases, and our Follow Me feature. Let's get going!

DIGITAL NEWS

Warner Archive seems to be one of our few sources of "good news" on the classic TV front lately, typically delivering the news on the date that the product ships... and this week, the "good news" from them came in the form of a new release of the series The FBI. On Tuesday, Warner Archive released The FBI - The Complete Sixth Season as an online exclusive. As has become a typical practice for the studio, of course, the MOD product has been released in a "limited" pressed DVD edition, so these are not DVD-R copies of this release. We hope to have a review of this release soon as part of our regular reviews.

Canadian studio VEI has been bringing us some great complete series releases in the past few years of abandoned series, and for the past year, they've been talking about releases of Diagnosis Murder and The Mod Squad. Of course, VEI has also never really been able to give much in terms of a firm release date on anything (likely due to being a smaller studio that has to deal with a lot of outside production), but this week, they finally announced that both of these releases will be ready to ship next week! On Tuesday, fans will see Diagnosis Murder - The Complete Series and The Mod Squad - The Complete Series. Both releases are also available to order on amazon.com, however the releases purchased on there are not expected to ship for another month, and come at a much higher price.

Speaking of earlier releases, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is coming to DVD in December, as we all know. But Shout! Factory is letting fans get those DVDs a month earlier if they order them directly from the Shout! Factory website. Expected to ship on or before November 5, you can get in on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman - The Complete Series a month before everybody else does.

UPCOMING WEEK PREVIEW

Tuesday (October 22) is a light release date, with a trio of "best of" releases from MPI. The releases include The Doris Day Show - Best of Collection, Family Affair - Best of Collection, and The Mothers-in-Law - Best of Collection. Also, as we previously mentioned, VEI will begin shipping Diagnosis Murder - The Complete Series and The Mod Squad - The Complete Series on Tuesday.

FOLLOW ME

Who to Follow: Patricia Heaton (Twitter), "Actress, Wife and Mother to four incredible boys..."
Claim to Fame: Patricia Heaton started out as a stage actress and slowly evolved into television when she picked up a role on thirtysomething, where she appeared for six episodes. She followed up with roles in three very short-lived sitcoms, with stars including Linda Lavin and Delta Burke, but her big break came in 1996 when she was cast as Debra Barone in Everybody Loves Raymond. After that, she went on to the (mostly panned) Fox sitcom Back to You in 2007, but her fortunes increased once again when she was cast in the starring role on the ABC series The Middle, a role that she has comfortable held since 2009. While she is no stranger to controversy on Twitter
Pick of the Tweets: "I love that you can watch TV while you iron (yesterday it was Jane Eyre) and not feel like a couch potato." (July 16, 2013)

That's all for this week. Until next time, keep it digital!