Canadian TV Shows on DVD (1 Viewer)

younger1968 · May 20, 2012

CBC in Canada has done a very poor job with releasing shows from its vault. There are many classic tv series in Canada that have not seen much action on the dvd front by CBC. CBC had their funding cut due to government cuts back and you would think they would look at the dvd option as part of additional revenue streams. However, that appears to be not the case. I would love to see the following on dvd:
1. Beachcombers (19 years)
2. King of Kensington (one season released)
3. Street Legal
4. Danger Bay
5. Edison Twins
I am sure there are more, but the above were my favorite CBC shows.

Jeff Ulmer · May 20, 2012

Jackson Davies will be releasing a book to coincide with the 40th anniversary of The Beachcombers, and there is some talk of a best of DVD, but come on - this show was the icon of Canadian television for almost two decades, and while the later seasons probably don't hold as much interest for people, there is probably a decade's worth of shows that people would buy if they had the chance. I wish someone like Shout! could license the shoe before the elements are no longer useable.
Edited to mention that the book is co-authored by Marc Strange who co-created the series. He passed away 05/20/2012.
You can join Friends of the Beachcombers on Facebook.

younger1968 · May 20, 2012

Jeff Ulmer said:
Jackson Davies will be releasing a book to coincide with the 40th anniversary of The Beachcombers, and there is some talk of a best of DVD, but come on - this show was the icon of Canadian television for almost two decades, and while the later seasons probably don't hold as much interest for people, there is probably a decade's worth of shows that people would buy if they had the chance. I wish someone like Shout! could license the shoe before the elements are no longer useable.

Jeff,
Thanks for your posting!
I am Canadian and beachcombers is a show, especially early on was amazing. Yes, the show near its end change with the plots revolving more around the kids. The show could be released and make a killing as their is huge fan based. The other show Danger Bay would also do well on dvd, especially as it relates more to the environment, which are the same issues today. There are other shows like street legal (LA law) the canadian version or Edison Twins that taught lessons. However, it appears that CBC has no clue how to manage its vault!

shoeshineboy · Jun 17, 2020

Dusting off this old thread... i'd love it if CBC put out Wojek...

jcroy · Jun 17, 2020

Nowadays I assume anything current/recent original fare on canadian prime time networks, will never be released on dvd (or bluray). Though if lucky, it might be released in europe (such as Motive).

fdabbott · Jun 17, 2020

I would like to see Frontier released from Discovery Channel.

AndyMcKinney · Jun 22, 2020

John Davies (who was a cast member on Beachcombers) has said that he's been on a tour of the CBC Archive and that they've been digitally converting the episodes, but they still seem uninterested in exploiting them commercially.

I wonder if part of the problem of the CBC not issuing stuff has to be with them being a public broadcaster, and maybe they just don't see themselves as being in the 'money making' business?

Also, particular to Canada, I've noticed that not a lot of Canadian TV is getting released these days anyway, unless it's something that's also popular in America. Yes, there's Corner Gas, but that was back when DVD was more relevant (and prior to streaming). I've noticed there are no DVDs for Corner Gas Animated. Also, other relatively popular Canadian shows, like Coroner have not seen any sort of home media release. The new stuff just goes out on the CBC Gem streaming app after broadcast. It seems little thought is given to DVD up north (let alone blu-ray).

jcroy · Jun 22, 2020

Only show still being released on dvd is Letterkenny.

jcroy · Jun 22, 2020

Only reason I can think of why that's the case, is that it is not broadcast on the networks. It is on a streaming service Crave, and later on some comedy basic cable channels.

jcroy · Jun 22, 2020

AndyMcKinney said:
John Davies (who was a cast member on Beachcombers) has said that he's been on a tour of the CBC Archive and that they've been digitally converting the episodes, but they still seem uninterested in exploiting them commercially.

I wonder if part of the problem of the CBC not issuing stuff has to be with them being a public broadcaster, and maybe they just don't see themselves as being in the 'money making' business?

Also, particular to Canada, I've noticed that not a lot of Canadian TV is getting released these days anyway, unless it's something that's also popular in America. Yes, there's Corner Gas, but that was back when DVD was more relevant (and prior to streaming). I've noticed there are no DVDs for Corner Gas Animated. Also, other relatively popular Canadian shows, like Coroner have not seen any sort of home media release. The new stuff just goes out on the CBC Gem streaming app after broadcast. It seems little thought is given to DVD up north (let alone blu-ray).

Some of these older shows are also showing up officially on an "Encore+" channel on youtube.

Encore +

Stream your favourite classic Canadian films and TV shows for free. Encore+ features hundreds of iconic and award-winning titles, restored, digitized and you...

www.youtube.com

AndyMcKinney · Jun 22, 2020

jcroy said:
Some of these older shows are also showing up officially on an "Encore+" channel on youtube.

Encore +

Stream your favourite classic Canadian films and TV shows for free. Encore+ features hundreds of iconic and award-winning titles, restored, digitized and you...

www.youtube.com

Yes, was aware of that. On Roobarb's forum, there's a thread discussing Beachcombers and the fact that someone is uploading 1970s episodes (from 16mm prints) to YouTube. Hope those stay up long enough for fans to enjoy them.

jayembee · Jun 22, 2020

It's weird that Canadian shows seem to be getting life on Blu-ray in Germany. The German releases I have are:

The Bridge (the 2010 CTV show)
Call Me Fitz (Season 1 only, unfortunately)
Cardinal (first two seasons, so far; third is out, but I can't get it shipped from Amazon DE)
King (both seasons)
ReGenesis (complete series)
Strange Empire
Travelers (first two seasons; UK release)

I've also got in my Amazon DE wishlist the three seasons of the French Canadian series 19-2)

There are also a few things released here in the US, partly because they were co-productions, like Continuum, Orphan Black, and Lost Girl. Although Slings & Arrows was purely Canadian. I'd like to get the Kevin Sullivan Anne of Green Gables release, but it's widescreen only, and quite frankly, I've yet to see anything from Sullivan Productions, even on DVD, that didn't look worse than TV broadcasts.

It's rather strange that Da Vinci's Inquest only got one season on DVD in Canada, and three in the US. I've got those, plus the two seasons of Intelligence, but I'd really love to see the rest of Da Vinci, and Chris Haddock's more recent (2016) series The Romeo Section.

jcroy · Jun 22, 2020

jayembee said:
It's rather strange that Da Vinci's Inquest only got one season on DVD in Canada, and three in the US.

IIRC, there was a season 2 set released in ntsc. I'll have to take a look again, but iirc it was distributed by Alliance Atlantis. (It was in a dump bin at a "zellers" outlet).

AndyMcKinney · Jun 23, 2020

jayembee said:
Call Me Fitz (Season 1 only, unfortunately)

Yeah, it's the same in the Netherlands, too. Only the first season. Maybe HD masters weren't offered to anyone for the rest (or none were requested).

The even weirder thing about Fitz is that besides Season 1 being the only season to get a blu-ray release, the final, fourth season didn't get any release on physical media at all.

jcroy · Jun 23, 2020

jayembee said:
There are also a few things released here in the US, partly because they were co-productions, like Continuum, Orphan Black, and Lost Girl.

(More generally).

I never quite understood why so much scifi stuff is filmed in canada. Though I suspect it might date back to the days when stuff like X-Files, the revived Outer Limits, and Stargate SG1 were shot in vancouver, bc.

Before that time, vancouver bc was largely a backwater for filming stuff. IIRC, it was stuff like the original MacGyver and Stephen J Cannell shows like 21 Jump Street, Wiseguy, Commish, etc ...

AndyMcKinney · Jun 23, 2020

I think the reason is partly the same as it's always been, that shooting in Canada is generally less-expensive than in places like Los Angeles, partly because of tax credits, and also because the US dollar is stronger than the Canadian one.

We've been shooting up-north for so long now, that the film and TV industry there is like a well-oiled machine. It's not like they're taking a big risk by, say, going to Kentucky to film something. They know they'll get just-as-professional results in Canada, at a reduced cost.

jcroy · Jun 24, 2020

AndyMcKinney said:
Yeah, it's the same in the Netherlands, too. Only the first season. Maybe HD masters weren't offered to anyone for the rest (or none were requested).

(More generally).

Even worse is when the dvd versions of current/recent shows still have the 3:2 pulldown telecine left in. (All originally shot with modern hd/4k digital cameras). Criminal Minds was done this way for its entire run.

AndyMcKinney said:
The even weirder thing about Fitz is that besides Season 1 being the only season to get a blu-ray release, the final, fourth season didn't get any release on physical media at all.

I would have thought the same thing around 5+ years ago. Nowadays in hindsight, this is not surprising at all anymore. As a recent example, the abc show "How To Get Away With Murder" did not have any dvd releases after season 2. (It recently ended after six seasons).

jcroy · Jun 24, 2020

AndyMcKinney said:
Yes, was aware of that. On Roobarb's forum, there's a thread discussing Beachcombers and the fact that someone is uploading 1970s episodes (from 16mm prints) to YouTube. Hope those stay up long enough for fans to enjoy them.

I was hoping the entire run of Wayne & Shuster eventually shows up. Back in the day, it was on all the time on a cbc channel which could be received just over the border. (Further away, channels like cbc were non-existent ota).

AndyMcKinney · Jun 24, 2020

jcroy said:
(More generally).

Even worse is when the dvd versions of current/recent shows still have the 3:2 pulldown telecine left in. (All originally shot with modern hd/4k digital cameras). Criminal Minds was done this way for its entire run.

I still think VSC should go back and re-release season 3 of Corner Gas to correct the non-anamorphic widescreen presentation of those episodes (so, you have to watch it with black bars on all 4 sides, or zoom the image to fit the screen).

I went to the trouble to import the OOP Australian PAL format set of season 3 just to get an anamorphic presentation. imagine my surprise that although the episodes on that are anamorphic as they should be, all of the on-screen text (such as actor names on the opening sequence, or the writer/director credits on the beginnings of the episodes) are all missing! Only thing I can figure is that maybe there wasn't a "finished" anamorphic master available, so they had to go back to the original, unfinished elements, and no-one bothered to put all those captions back on? It's all well and good, except for episodes where there might've been an on-screen caption during the episode that's important to story. Bizarrely, I think there's actually one episode on that set (maybe the Christmas one) where the actors' names are included in the opening sequence).

Sorry for taking things off on a weird tangent!

jcroy · Jun 24, 2020

AndyMcKinney said:
I still think VSC should go back and re-release season 3 of Corner Gas to correct the non-anamorphic widescreen presentation of those episodes (so, you have to watch it with black bars on all 4 sides, or zoom the image to fit the screen).

I went to the trouble to import the OOP Australian PAL format set of season 3 just to get an anamorphic presentation. imagine my surprise that although the episodes on that are anamorphic as they should be, all of the on-screen text (such as actor names on the opening sequence, or the writer/director credits on the beginnings of the episodes) are all missing! Only thing I can figure is that maybe there wasn't a "finished" anamorphic master available, so they had to go back to the original, unfinished elements, and no-one bothered to put all those captions back on? It's all well and good, except for episodes where there might've been an on-screen caption during the episode that's important to story. Bizarrely, I think there's actually one episode on that set (maybe the Christmas one) where the actors' names are included in the opening sequence).

Sorry for taking things off on a weird tangent!

(On another tangent, but related).

If Corner Gas were to be re-released, lets hope somebody else does it and not VSC.

VSC consistently had the worst quality control for their dvd discs.

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