The bestseller of the week is Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder ($29.99), wherein Matt Groening's interstellar crew descend on the New Mars Vegas, pizza delivery boy Fry joins the Legion of Mad Fellows, and eco-feminists rise up against the empire. Groening dearly hoped to turn Futurama into a big thing, even a physical theme park. That seems remote, but as a cult, it's a hit ($18.98).

If you liked Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect, you may or may not like her in the crime miniseries Painted Lady ($24.99). Detective Chief Inspector Tennison may have had a few problems, but Maggie Sheridan, Mirren's Painted Lady role, is practically all problems, a '60s rock singer who loves pot, noisy tunes, and shagging handsome young men. Her sex scenes are rather randy by TV standards. When she's rockin' and a rollin', she can't hear the murder of her best friend next door. So she hunts down the killers, who stole a priceless painting from her pal. To do so, she impersonates a rich Polish aristocrat and plunges into the high art/lowdown crime world. Mirren coproduced the show, and it's a bit indulgent -- you won't wish you could buy the soundtrack of her singing '60s pastiche. But it's good complicated fun, and Mirren is addictively watchable.

Walter White is out of luck. He's 50, broke, a high-school chemistry teacher whose family has medical problems -- plus, he doesn't want to tell them he's just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. So he has a much better reason than Weeds' star to go into the drug biz. In Breaking Bad: The Complete First Season ($29.95), Walter (Bryan Cranston of Malcolm in the Middle) brews up a better brand of meth, and quickly gets in over his head. Though it's not quite up to Weeds standards, it's an addictive product worth giving a try. The show, that is.

David Spade found one of his best characters to channel his bratty, brash persona in Dennis Finch, the office prankster of fashion rag Blush magazine inJust Shoot Me: The Complete Third Season ($39.95). Laura San Giacomo is good as a fashion editor, too. This season has been held back for an inexplicable half decade, but better late than never. For history buffs, it's never too late for Make Room for Daddy: Season 6, Vol. 1 ($9.95), Danny Thomas' once-mighty family sitcom. Viewers made even more room for it when it added Angela Cartwright as a daughter for Danny. It vaulted her to nubile fame as the champagne-craving von Trapp teen in The Sound of Music and the flustered teen in Lost in Space (which teen ain't?).

ER star Julianna Margulies isn't half bad as a defense attorney in Canterbury's Law: The Complete Series ($29.95). And if Mickey Rourke's loss to Sean Penn has got you on the ropes emotionally, give yourself a steroids-free boost with WWE: Royal Rumble ($24.95). I'm rooting for Jack Swagger. But I still think Sean won the Oscar smackdown fair and square.

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us