China Beach & HBO's Dream On
 

2 series that I would love to see come out, but haven't heard anything on any plans for release.

Does anyone know of any plans for these shows?

2 totally different genres, but were always good watches.

I haven't heard anything about either series, but in the future, if you're asking a question about a series, please use the ? key in the subject heading.

I would LOVE to see China Beach on DVD. One of my three Holy Grail TV drama (the others being St. Elsewhere and Once and Again which, sadly, may never see a Season 2 release).

Music clearance hell for China Beach my friends. Every episode had some kind of Motown song, not to mention the title credits.

St. Elsewhere should be less of a problem, especially the earlier seasons. They did use songs later on like when they parodied ZZ Top's Legs video.

You'd think music clearance would've been addressed during the series' run and not now...

It was - for TV. Back then, they didn't think of clearing the rights to release the series on video, let alone DVD! Now, most shows probably clear the music for TV and DVD simultaneously, but not 5 years ago, let alone how long ago China Beach was on.

"Dream On" seems to have disappeared off the planet. None of HBO's themed channels (including the Comedy one) have carried this in the last several years to my knowledge.

It was a quirky show, but entertainingly so. I probably wouldn't buy it, but I would love to see it rerun sometime.

Perhaps there are video rights issues with the large number of vintage clips they used?

Dream On would be great...as would China Beach...but i want Tour of Duty!

Sadly, it's probably because it's more than five years old (most satellite programmers seem to think people only want to watch "newer" reruns).

I don't think so in this case, especially since Columbia House was able to secure VHS rights a few years back to make it part of their re-TV collection, though it's now deleted.

Part of the reason this series was produced was the production company had all these old TV shows that they couldn't sell in syndication, but were just sitting in a vault and wanted to find a way to utilize this footage, I think mainly to protect the copyrights.

Anyway, Dream On's producers said they could get the material into a show and that's where the idea of Martin's thoughts being old TV clips came from. I think there was a per-episode "quota" for clips to keep the studio happy.

By the way, I just hopped on the web to try to find that article about the reason behind the clips. I couldn't find it, but I did find an interview with Chris Demetral (who played Martin's son, Jeremy) that was done earlier this year that seems to imply the show actually is being prepped for a DVD release. I quote:

DEMETRAL: Right... you know, a lot of people have talked about a reunion for that (Dream On), and we're putting the show on DVD. I'd love to do that, I think that'd be really cool.

The complete interview is at http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/385/385017p1.html

That IS good news for Dream On fans! Hope it won't be too long in the making.

As for China Beach, it sounds like more than than consumer demand, unfortunately.