Vulture; Photos: Everett Collection (Richard Cartwright/CBS, NBC, MGM Television)
When Andre Braugher died unexpectedly at the end of 2023, everyone was reminded that one of his best works, and one of the best shows in TV history, Homicide: Life on the Street, wasn’t available to watch in his honor. The sad truth is that a lot of the best television of the 1980s and ’90s is simply disappearing into the gap between physical media and digital. Of course, viewers of a certain age will shout that TV used to regularly disappear after it aired, but this feels different for two reasons. One, television seasons used to be released regularly on DVD or other physical media that’s simply not being produced anymore. Two, the digital revolution promised near-perfect access, and the archives just aren’t being maintained in a manner that reflects the breadth and true depth of the form. Shows will occasionally be pulled out of this TV limbo, like Moonlighting (Hulu) and Northern Exposure (Prime) last year, so we will endeavor to keep this list updated, and maybe it will put enough pressure on the companies that control the rights to these shows to do what they should and simply make them available.
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Note: Some shows are in a sort of weird purgatory between media blackout and availability, like The Drew Carey Show, whose first season (of eight!) can be bought on iTunes, but not the other seasons; or Soap, which has individual episodes available on Sling of all places. Three’s Company isn’t on a sub service, but a few seasons are floating in places like Pluto. The great Richard Lewis and Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle Anything But Love is currently MIA but apparently also pops up on services like Sling and DirectTV. These shows may qualify for this list in the future, but right now they’re barely and sporadically available. That’s more than these 11 shows.
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Ed (2000-2004)
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Vulture has already unpacked this case of the disappearing dramedy, a show that was a modest success at the start of the century that not only has never been on streaming, but has never been released on DVD! Tom Cavanagh starred as the title character, a guy who moves back to Stuckeyville, Ohio, to reboot his life and maybe even finally connect with his high-school crush, played by future Modern Family star Julie Bowen. It’s so weird that Ed is almost completely erased from history other than a rare cable showing, not just because it was kind of a big hit in its first season — 16 million people watched the premiere, which is an impossible number for network TV now— but because this one feels like it could easily get that Suits-esque bump from a Netflix drop, missing for so long that it’s become nostalgia and awash in the kind of escapist optimism everyone’s looking for in these dark days.
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What is taking so long? Co-creator Rob Burnett told our own Jen Chaney back in 2016 that even he didn’t know why Ed had disappeared, theorizing that it could be the music rights or the common problem of dual ownership, given it was produced by NBC-Universal and Paramount — it’s upsetting to think Ed is a victim of faulty dual custody between potential homes at Peaco*ck and Paramount+. Take turns! You do it with other shows!
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Can I buy the DVDs? Nope. There are some fan-made bootlegs out there, but this one never even got a physical-media treatment when waves of them were crowding the Best Buy shelves in the 2000s. Poor Ed.
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Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999)
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An amazing cast that included Andre Braugher, Richard Belzer, Yaphet Kotto, Melissa Leo, and many more, on a cop show that was based on a book by The Wire creator David Simon, if this was a ranked list of the most egregious sins of unstreamable TV shows, this series would probably take the top spot. Running for seven seasons and 122 episodes on NBC, Homicide unpacked the personal and professional lives of the Baltimore Police Department in a manner that made it one of the most critically acclaimed shows of its era. How acclaimed? It was the first drama ever to win three Peabody Awards; it won the TCA Award for Drama three years in a row; and it has regularly been included on lists of the best shows of all time. When Braugher died in 2023, it became even more shameful that his performance, one of the best in the history of the form, couldn’t be revisited in his honor.
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What is taking so long? Even Barry Levinson is stumped by this one. The Oscar-winning executive producer of the show told the New York Times last year, “For the last four years, I’ve tried to get an answer for why we’re not on streaming. No one, I mean no one, has been able to give me an answer. There’s money to be made. You can’t figure out how to handle whatever rights issues that may come up? You’re talking over 120-some episodes. And somehow no one can figure out how to handle the rights? That doesn’t make sense!” We agree! Someone call the cops and get to the bottom of this one.
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Can I buy the DVDs? Actually, yes. Amazon has the complete series DVD that was released by Shout Factory in 2020 listed for about $110 MSRP, but it’s regularly discounted. Worth every penny.
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Millennium (1996-1999)
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When The X-Files was at the peak of its fame, Fox agreed to a new show from its creator, Chris Carter. The incredible Lance Henriksen stars as an ex-FBI agent named Frank Black, an investigator with the ability to see into the minds of criminals. So far ahead of its time, Millennium started strong but faded quickly over its three seasons, to the point that it had to be given a backdoor series-finale crossover episode on The X-Files to give the story some closure. Millennium was a defiantly weird show at a time when that wasn’t really allowed on network TV, and Henriksen was just phenomenal in it. It should have run for a decade. And it should be available on streaming services. Frank Black should investigate. (No, not the one from the Pixies.)
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What is taking so long? No one knows. Repeats aired on FX and Chiller in the 2000s, but it’s pretty much disappeared. It can’t be because of music rights — Frank wasn’t bopping to pop tunes. It’s not because of ownership — the show was produced in-house by Fox after the success of The X-Files, which is widely available, and even returned for a reboot season … which one would think would be a perfect time to resurrect the fan base for this one. But no. It almost feels personal.
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Can I buy the DVDs? There’s an all-region complete-series Blu-ray release from China that goes for about $40, while the U.S. DVD season sets go for more like $50 to $60 per season.
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Murphy Brown (1988-1998)
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Journalism truly is dead when one of the most successful shows about the profession can’t be found anywhere. Let us get this straight: Murphy Brown had enough of a fan base to convince CBS to produce a revival in 2018 but not to figure out the rights to the first ten seasons and 247 episodes so that fans could catch up first? Make it make sense. Murphy Brown was a critical and commercial smash for most of the ’90s, ranking in the top ten for four seasons in a row (1990-1994) and winning an amazing 18 Emmy Awards over its run. It was named the best comedy on television twice, and star Candice Bergen won Outstanding Lead Actress FIVE TIMES. Yes, much of Murphy Brown would probably be dated in our divided era — which is one of the reasons the reboot didn’t work — but Bergen is a legend, the show was formative for network-TV comedy, and it’s possibly the most awarded program to really just have disappeared into history.
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What is taking so long? This one is probably the music. They used enough songs that they don’t have the rights to use again on streaming. You see, when shows would use a song in a single broadcast or even for syndication, the music rights would not extend in perpetuity on yet-to-be-invented platforms like Netflix or even DVD. It’s what held up Moonlighting for so long. They figured that one out. Someone should do the same here.
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Can I buy the DVDs? Not really. Only the first season was ever released on DVD, and you can get that for about $10 or less on eBay, but the rest of the show is just gone.
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Once and Again (1999-2002)
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Far more of a critical darling than a commercial one — the show never placed higher than No. 50 in the ratings despite winning an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress — Once and Again might have been the most underrated drama of its era. Created by Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, it featured the same depth of character as their thirtysomething (more on this show later), brought to life in nuanced performances from Sela Ward and Billy Campbell as people trying to write the second chapters of their lives. Ward plays an average soccer mom who has been recently separated when she meets Campbell’s single father. With a young Evan Rachel Wood in a role that brought queer representation to network TV in a way that hadn’t happened before, this show built a strong fan base that couldn’t keep it on the air but would certainly be attracted to it on a service like Hulu. Wood’s performance is still so beloved that it leads to fan clips all the time. You would think that would be enough to bring this show back in some form.
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What is taking so long? It’s probably ownership. Buena Vista (the home-entertainment branch of Disney at the time) released the first season on DVD in 2002, and it took three more years and a petition to get year two out. It never bothered with the third season, and the company’s license to the program reportedly expired in 2007. When asked about the lack of streaming, Zwick told Variety in 2020, “It’s a mystery, and a vexing one.”
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Can I buy the DVDs? The first two seasons are not hard to get on eBay for about $10 to $15 a season.
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Police Squad! (1982)
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One of the funniest shows to ever air on television, Police Squad! was the brainchild of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker, the trio who were already on comedy’s Mount Rushmore after the success of Airplane! However, audiences and ABC just didn’t care. This spoof of cop shows aired for only four episodes before ABC pulled the plug (two more produced episodes would appear in brief syndication and on DVD), but it was given a second life in 1988 when the show was adapted into a little movie called The Naked Gun, which was such a hit that it produced two sequels. A funny bit of trivia about the cancellation is that ABC’s president at the time basically insisted that the show was too complicated for viewers in the early ’80s, saying, “The viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it.” Gasp! Leslie Nielsen’s performance in those films and this show is a master class in physical comedy and nailing a punch line. All six episodes of Police Squad! are funnier than nearly anything on TV in 2024, and you can’t watch them anywhere.
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What is taking so long? Hard to say, but it could just be that no one cares. Most companies don’t like to promote their failures, and canceling Police Squad was undeniably a dumb move, so ABC/Disney is unlikely to want to resurrect the kind of sound bites like in the article linked above. It’s also one of those weird deals where it was produced by Paramount, which may still have some say in the ownership. So nobody is fighting for it enough to solve this case.
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Can I buy the DVDs? Out of print, but on eBay for about $10 for the whole series. That’s roughly a penny a laugh.
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SCTV (1976-1984)
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It’s infuriating that we can’t just sit and zone out to multiple episodes of this breakthrough Canadian gem, a show that gifted the world with so much comic talent. From the late ’70s to the mid-’80s, SCTV, or Second City Television, introduced the world to John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, and more. Basically meant to replicate the joy of flipping through network-TV channels and a lot of public access in the middle of the night, SCTV shaped comedy in the ’80s, clearly influencing both film and television. It moved to NBC in 1981, even winning an Emmy for writing. And we wouldn’t have Bob and Doug McKenzie without it. It is simply baffling that there isn’t an entire SCTV section on some streaming service right now for your comedy enjoyment.
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What is taking so long? Those damn ownership rights are probably to blame. It is also a show that, like Saturday Night Live, was hard to edit into syndicated form. Apparently, there was a syndicated package of reedited half-hour versions of the 90-minute shows, some of which aired on Comedy Central in the ’90s, and that’s when distribution rights ended up with a Canadian company called WIC Entertainment before shifting to Fireworks Entertainment and CanWest. None of these has a section on Netflix. And then there’s that little thing called music rights, which reportedly led to edited music and missing sketches on the Shout Factory DVDs. Dave Thomas once said, “We were true guerrilla TV in that when we wanted background music, we just lifted it from wherever we wanted. Consequently, today, to release the shows on home video, it would cost millions to clear the music.” Let’s start a GoFundMe, eh?
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Can I buy the DVDs? Yes, but it’s not easy. There are specials and “volumes” that just collected various episodes, but any sort of order that streaming would provide is absent. Those volumes run about $20 apiece on eBay.
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Shōgun (1980)
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The peak of the network TV miniseries era of the 1970s and ’80s was defined by two programs —RootsandShogun. Interest in the latter was resparked in early 2024 with FX on Hulu’s excellent new limited series, but those eager to contrast and compare the two adaptations of James Clavell’s best-selling epic will have trouble finding the original. Broadcast on five consecutive nights — the old-fashioned version of binge-viewing —Shōgunstarred Richard Chamberlain as John Blackthorne, the Englishman who lands in feudal Japan and changes history. The new version has reduced the problem of the original’s limited POV, but the first version is still worth seeing not only for Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune as Lord Toranaga, but because it’s TV history. At its peak, 28.7 million people watched the third episode ofShogun, making it the highest-rated show in NBC’s history to that point. Almost a third of televisions in the country were watchingShōgun! It’s ludicrous that the industry has essentially buried one of its most successful ventures, even if it is a little dated now.
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What is taking so long?There’s no clear answer here, andwe’ve tried to find one! It appears NBC doesn’t own the rights anymore, and they have reverted to the production company, Paramount. According to our reporting, it is available to be licensed in the U.S., but it’s just gathering dust.
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Can I buy the DVDs?The series was released on DVD in 2003 and Blu-ray in 2014. It’s readily available (as of this writing) on sites like Amazon for around $40.
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Soul Food (2000-2004)
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There is no Empire or Power without Soul Food, a show that proved that dramas about Black lives could sustain a loyal audience at a time when there were hardly any on television. An extension of the hit 1997 film, this Showtime series starred Boris Kodjoe, Rockmund Dunbar, Nicole Ari Parker, and Vanessa Estelle Williams in a slice-of-life drama set in Chicago. Given its existence on pay cable where issues like sexuality, drug use, and domestic abuse could be crafted without network censors, it was allowed to tell stories of modern Black life in a way that hadn’t really been seen on TV before, winning three consecutive NAACP Image Awards. And then it disappeared. BET aired reruns in the ’00s, and they’ve popped up on TV One and Aspire, but never on streaming. Paramount dropped the first-season DVD right after the end of the show and eventually got around to the other four. However, there’s something a bit tricky about those remaining seasons that likely answers …
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What is taking so long? The DVDS of the second through fourth seasons reportedly have edited episodes due to music-licensing issues. A common holdup in streaming, it’s likely the reason that Soul Food has never really gotten the modern attention it deserves.
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Can I buy the DVDs? Yep. Amazon currently carries a two-season pack for $22, while a complete series set is available on eBay from various sellers hoping for $30 to $50 for it.
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Tales From the Crypt (1989-1996)
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We’re all waiting for the day that the Cryptkeeper’s great anthology series is available to … scream! (Only people who saw the pun-heavy show back in its prime find that funny. You’re welcome.) One of the early staples on HBO in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Tales From the Crypt was based on the wildly influential 1950s comic-book series of the same name, even pulling stories directly from the source. Introduced by an unforgettable host (voiced by John Kassir), a number of phenomenal directors like Richard Donner, Walter Hill, and Robert Zemeckis were able to spin twisted tales in a way that the R-rated freedom of HBO allowed. Two films followed in 1995’s Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood — both of which are available for rental or purchase on most VOD services — and there was even a Saturday-morning cartoon (which, too, is much easier to find streaming). Featuring a who’s who that includes everyone from Brad Pitt to one of Tim Curry’s most unforgettable performances, Tales From the Crypt deserves to rise again.
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What is taking so long? This one appears to be another issue of unclear rights issues, possibly related to the different creative entities like the original comic publishers and the people who made the show, although it could also just be because David Zaslav has been too busy canceling things to make a call. In all seriousness, when a reboot at TNT fell apart, then-president Kevin Reilly told Deadline, “That one got really caught up in a complete legal mess, unfortunately, with a very complicated underlying rights structure.” Whatever that means.
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Can I buy the DVDs? It’s out of print, but Ebay has used box sets of all seven seasons that sell for around $30.
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thirtysomething (1987-1991)
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If this list was ranked, this drama would probably fight with Homicide for the most egregious oversight. Thirtysomething was one of the most acclaimed shows on television when it aired, winning 13 Emmys, including one for Best Drama on TV.At a time when TV drama was so dependent on archetypes (usually the cop, medical, or legal drama), Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz’s character study was so far ahead of its time, a program that realized ordinary people could make for extraordinary television. Inspired by films like The Big Chill,this study of baby boomers was smart, funny, and grounded in ways that television still often struggles to be. However, it promptly vanished after its run for nearly two decades, as music rights were ironed out for the DVDs. Somehow, they did that but didn’t include a streaming package, so it has still never been available on a subscription service. More than most shows on this list, it has active campaigns to resurrect it, with stars Mel Harris and Peter Horton pushing for a streaming release and even advocating for a reboot as recently as last year. The creators even wrote a script for a reboot in 2020, but ABC passed, likely a victim of the pandemic.
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What is taking so long? It’s been laid at the feet of the classic “rights” excuse at times, but Harris said in a thread recently that there were “no ownership questions. Amazon Studios just has to want to do it!” Horton affirmed that MGM/Amazon can make this happen if they get deluged with requests. “Swamp them with messages, then swamp some more!” Go get to work.
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Can I buy the DVDs? Yes, but they ain’t cheap. Amazon carries individual season sets for about $30 to $40 apiece.
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