VERONICA's Last Stand!! MASADA!! BAA BAA!! Herc's Season-Box DVD Vault!!

I am – Hercules!! It’s a holiday week, and a slow one for new releases. It’s telling, though, that during a “slow” week we still get 10 new TV releases new to DVD.

Stephen Cannell, who created “The Rockford Files,” and would eventually go on to “Tenspeed and Brownshoe,” “Greatest American Hero” and “The A-Team,” created in 1976 two short-lived period series. One was “City of Angels,” inspired by the 1974 success of “Chinatown,” which followed a Depression-era Los Angeles private detective named Jake. The other was “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” a World War II series about extremely adept misfit Marine air unit in the Pacific theatre starring “The Wild Wild West’s” Robert Conrad. One wonders what inspired Cannell and NBC to mount the “Black Sheep,” which lasted only 37 episodes; it hit the network grid two years after Nixon’s resignation (and four months after the release of “All The President’s Men”), when the nation wasn’t in a particularly patriotic mood. It was also carried what was, for the 1970s, a fairly old fashioned vibe; it was the sort of two-fisted war vehicle John Wayne would have felt comfortable driving, more akin to Cannell’s early work with Jack Webb than to the more sophisticated “The Rockford Files” Cannell launched two years before “Baa Baa.” The new set contains the latter 12 of the first season’s 24 hours, three of which - “Trouble At Fort Apache,” “Devil in The Slot,” and the season finale “The Fastest Gun” (a “Devil” sequel that brought back English-speaking enemy ace Harachi) carry teleplays credited to Cannell himself. The mocking but honorable Harachi, incidentally, was assayed by Byron Chung, who went on to embody Jin Kwon’s imperious boss and father-in-law on “Lost.”

TV-on-DVD Calendar
Last Week Bozo The Clown Vol. 1 Casper: Best Of Vol. 1 Casper: Best Of Vol. 2 Gomer Pyle USMC 2.x Hannah Montana Vol. 3 Miami Vice 5.x Monk 5.x Monk 5.x/Psych 1.x Combo My Little Pony: The Pony Puppy Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Vol. 11 The New Adventures of Batman: The Complete Animated Series The New Adventures of Superman: The Complete Animated Series The New Statesman: The Complete Series Psych 1.x Reno 911! 4.x Uncensored Spenser: Ceremony Spenser: Pale Kings & Princes Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series Wild Chronicles 1.x Collection
This Week

Baa Baa Black Sheep 1.x Vol. 2