This is kind of a weird question I just thought of. What's the highest season number that's be released on DVD where it's consecutive, meaning all of the seasons before it were released? In other words, Law & Order season 14 wouldn't count since 6-13 haven't been released. The one I would guess off-hand would be The Simpsons, currently up to season 9. Are there any that have hit double-digits?

I know a few others that are at 9 or have an announced date (X-Files, Stargate, Frasier, South Park), but none that I can think of that have announced #10 yet.

friends has 10 seasons doesn't it? biggest one i can think of

M*A*S*H has released all 11 seasons.

Frasier 1-9 and 11

My best guess:

Dark Shadows will very soon win the prize, if not for number of seasons (seven), then certainly for sheer volume -- or for total number of episodes. That number is 1225. Probably around Christmas time of this year, all 1225 of them will be out. That is when they finish releasing the first 250 episodes. (Note that 40 episodes are released every other month; episodes 250 through episode 1250 are already out. Amazon carries those, for example. So are episodes 1 through 80. These must still be ordered direct from the distributor. So we only have about 170 episodes remaining not yet released, which means another eight or ten months will complete the entire package.

-Bruce

Stargate SG-1 has 9 seasons out on DVD (the 10th and final season will eventually be released later this year).

Hawaii Five-0,

I WISH! , chances are the sales will slow down at some point and will never see all the seasons released.

M.A.S.H. is the highest one currently rite now.
next to the simpsons.

chances are there will be 2 simpsons seasons released this year and it will tie with M.A.S.H then beat it in 08.

Mash @ #11, Friends @ #10, X-Files @ #9, Simpsons @ #9, and probably more I can't think of...

All 9 seasons of Little House on the Prairie are available also

South park and the Simpsons should hit the #10 mark sometime this year.

Star Trek?

So far:

11 seasons - M*A*S*H
10 seasons - Friends, Frasier
9 seasons - X-Files, Little House, South Park*, Simpsons*, Stargate*
8 seasons - Cheers, Everybody Loves Raymond

Simpsons, South Park, Frasier and Cheers can eventually tie or surpass M*A*S*H.

*10th seasons on the way

Simpsons should be the one to break the 11 season mark. The past few years have been pretty consistent, a season every August and December. So they'll tie M*A*S*H in 07, and surpass it in 2008. Seeing as they're on season 18 right now and still a cash cow for Fox, I don't think that any other series will be passing them by once they are on top.

The only series that would probably have a chance is Law & Order (currently wrapping up season 17), but for some reason they're extremely slow in releasing sets and will probably never get the entire series out.

Can anyone think of any other shows currently getting the DVD treatment that have the potential to hit season 10? Law & Order SVU is on season 8 but once again, the L&O franchise doesn't seem to come out on DVD with any regularity.

Considering TNT & USA should be renamed the Law & Order networks, the company is probably still making enough $$$ off those networks showing it that they'll hold off putting out the DVDs quickly. I'm not sure how many times they air it but it seems whenever I go past those channels, some version of Law & Order is on.

I was thinking that also, but then I got to thinking that The Simpsons is in pretty heavy syndication as well and that's not stopping them from being released on DVD.

IIRC, the regular L&O is on TNT only, and the other two are on USA.

A Touch of Frost is up to season 12 (or series 12, if you prefer), although four of those "series" are just a single special episode in one or two parts. All were released consecutively.

There's no criteria set by the OP, so I guess for now A Touch of Frost is the winner.

Seasons 12 and 13 had 1 episode each

Seasons 1, 7, 8, 9 and 10 had 3 episodes each

Seasons 2, 3, 5, 6 and 11 had 4 episodes each

And someone got really froggy and daring with season 4 and made it a whole FIVE episodes. I'll bet that guy got fired.

So 13 seasons of that show equal 2 seasons of a standard TV series in America. Can someone explain to me why BBC shows are so short?

A Touch of Frost is ITV, not BBC.

As for why UK series are shorter than U.S. seasons (which isn't universally true -- for example, soap operas are a constant fixture on the schedule just as they are in the U.S.), a big part of it is the different writing culture that exists in UK television -- UK shows typically have a very small writing staff (often just one person) who stay with the series from the beginning to end and write all the episodes themselves, reducing the total output. In the U.S. model you have a big writing staff and stories are solicited from outside writers, who may pen one or two episodes and never work on the show again. The result is that television writers in the UK are a brand unto themselves (John Sullivan, Roy Clarke, David Croft/Jeremy Lloyd), whereas in the U.S. it's all about the "creators" and "producers," who often have little to no involvement with the scripts.

Shorter seasons also allow the network to take more risks -- I don't think there's a network on earth that would commission 22 episodes of The Young Ones, but six episodes doesn't represent a huge financial risk, doesn't tie up a time slot for an extended period of time, and still gives the show enough time to prove itself. Of course there are plenty of U.S. shows that have lasted six episodes or less, but that's more a function of American television's ratings obssession (where a show needs to be a hit out of the gate or risk premature cancellation), which exists in the UK but isn't as extreme. Note that the six-episode figure applies mainly to comedies (dramas are usually commissioned for 13 episodes at a time) and isn't a hard-and-fast rule (eight-episode seasons are common for established shows, Spitting Image was mostly twelve episodes per series, and Last of the Summer Wine even had a couple of 13-episode series).

Interesting, thanks for the info. So does this mean that there are less reruns on UK television, with them just hopping to the newest season of some other show?

You make a great point on the risk factor. Young Ones definitely would not get a full season commitment, neither would something like Black Books, a dear favorite of mine.

We can only speculate at this point of course, but assuming everything aligns perfectly (granted, a very unlikely scenario), Saturday Night Live will eventually blow everyone else out of the water at (who knows?) 35 or more seasons.

Of course, at one season per year, we will all be long dead before the last season makes it out to DVD (or DVD-HD, or Blu-Ray, or Microchip Brain Implant, or whatever home entertainment medium is the current fad in the year 2042).

Geez. I hope I don't die before I'm sixty.

I would be surprised if each and every season of SNL comes out, at least so long as Lorne Michaels is around.