The bestseller of the week is The Inauguration of Barack Obama on CNN ($14.95, or $9.99 on Amazon). Relive that glorious, now remote moment when America had hope!

My own favorite pick of the week is Tales from the Darkside: The First Season ($36.98), sort of a missing link between The Twilight Zone andThe X-Files, though slighter than either. George Romero of Creepshow fame produced, and Stephen King contributed a few episodes. The show's style apes his: introduce an ordinary if not banal situation then give it a creepy tweak, sometimes with an O. Henry switcheroo flavor. One episode is sort of like The Sixth Sense: a very youthful Christian Slater is dead, and his grandpa won't believe it. Now Christian is not very youthful, and trying to convince us his career's not dead.

I'm told a later Darkside episode is a send-up of I Love Lucy, which got me interested in the new release Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie ($19.98), daughter Lucie Arnaz's more-frank-than-you'd-expect documentary on her parents' doomed marriage. It uses actual home movies of TV's first family.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Mystery of the Easter Chipmunk ($16.99) lacks the subversive appeal of the old Ross Bagdasarian shows, but if you or your kids have got to have a sped-up voice cartoon, Alvin rules. But what your kids would probably rather watch is Friday the 13th the Series: The Second Season ($49.99). At least it's less gory than the movies. Or maybe you should offer to screen Nature of Sex ($19.98), which they'll think is a cable show on channel 999 but is actually an excellent Discovery Channel documentary with stuff they should know. A better way to learn anatomy than watching bodies dismembered on Friday the 13th.

Melrose Place: The Fifth Season: Vol. 1 ($39.98) is good cheesy fun, with episodes that also sound like a cable show on channel 999, like "Great Sexpectations" and "Screams from a Marriage." Another sexy-sounding show isn't really: Darwin's Secret Notebooks ($19.98) contain no lewd revelations, just intellectual ones by a divinity student who renounced the ministry for a life of atheistic freethinking that transformed the planet by describing it accurately. I'm not sure it's in this National Geographic special, but here's my favorite passage from Darwin's secret notebooks: "The Devil under form of baboon is our Grandfather." So true, as Melrose Place goes to show.

Simon & Simon: Season Two ($49.99) is a pretty good '80s detective show about two brothers sleuthing out baddies in San Diego. It's from Shout! Factory, an invaluable retailer of forgotten historical treasures. Speaking of forgotten treasures, if Mickey Rourke's comeback from the dead to Oscar hopefulness has you jonesing for wrestling, check out WWE: Royal Rumble 2009 ($24.95).

And if CSI doesn't crank out enough shows to keep you satisfied, try checking out the real thing on Discovery Channel's The New Detectives: Case Studies in Forensic Science: Seasons 1 & 2 ($34.98). Sixteen cases, more criminals than you can throw the book at.

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us