Phoenix DVD Blog

I didn’t grow up glued to the television. Most of the time we were outside, doing whatever kids did before screens followed you everywhere. TV filled the gaps rather than defining the day. When it rained, though, plans changed quickly, and whatever happened to be on usually stayed on. Because of that, my memories of a lot of 1980s TV are a little hazy. I didn’t follow every series religiously, and I almost certainly watched many of them on second or even third runs. In Ireland, shows often arrived well after their original US broadcasts, and episodes weren’t always shown in sequence. RTÉ seemed to buy what was popular rather than what was current, and as viewers we just went along with it.

There’s a quiet trend happening right now. In truth, it has probably been happening for several years. People are looking at their shelves. Boxes. Cabinets. Spare room stacks. Rows of DVDs and Blu-rays that once meant something, now taking up valuable real estate. And they’re asking: “Do I really need these anymore?” Streaming is easy. Instant. Clean. No clutter. Your TV has apps. Your phone has apps. Everything is “available”. Until it isn’t.

The Shows You Watched Without Planning To Some of the most influential TV shows I grew up with weren’t weekend events at all. They were weekday fixtures, the kind of programmes that just appeared on the screen after school or early in the evening. You didn’t plan around them. You didn’t record them. You simply watched because they were on, and because they were endlessly rewatchable. If Saturday mornings felt like an event, something I explored in Saturday Morning TV – When Entertainment Was Simple (and Worth Owning on Disc) , weekday television was different. It was routine. Reliable. Almost background noise at times, until suddenly a theme tune would pull you in. These shows didn’t rely on long-running story arcs or cliffhangers. They were designed to drop you straight into the action, tell a complete story, and reset everything by the end of the hour. That made them perfect weekday television, and perfect for young viewers. Some of them also overlapped with the sci-fi influences I l...

In the early to mid-1980s, television in Ireland was a very different thing. We had two channels , no remote control wars, no on-demand, and absolutely no expectation that TV would bend to us. You watched what was on, or you watched nothing. Saturday mornings were special though. RTÉ’s Anything Goes became a kind of unofficial ritual, a block of colourful, slightly chaotic programming that felt designed to wake you up gently after the school week. What mattered wasn’t whether the shows were new, or even from the same decade. What mattered was that they were entertaining, familiar, and fun. Most of what aired were repeats of American shows from the 1960s, although I don’t think I was even aware of that at the time. Nor would I have noticed if episodes were shown out of order, or if there was meant to be a longer narrative running through the series. That simply wasn’t how television worked for us then, and it didn’t matter. Why Classic TV Was Built to Stand Alone A lot of classic ...

There are great TV shows. There are cultural moments. And then there are series that redefine what television can be. Over the past two decades, long-form storytelling has reached cinematic levels of ambition, production quality and emotional impact. While streaming makes everything instantly accessible, there is still something different about owning the complete series of a truly exceptional show on Blu-ray. The three series below are not ranked. I wouldn’t even attempt to rank them. Each represents the peak of its genre. Each is complete. And each is absolutely worth owning in physical form. In truth, I could have added a few more show box sets to this post but I'll leave it at these three for now. Game of Thrones Original Run: 2011–2019 Seasons: 8 Genre: Fantasy / Political Drama Based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, Game of Thrones became one of the most ambitious television productions ever made. What began as a grounded political struggle between...

I was born just two years before Star Wars landed in cinemas and quietly changed everything. I didn’t see it in a theatre at the time for obvious reasons, but its impact filtered down fast, onto television, into toy shops, and straight into school playgrounds. Suddenly, space wasn’t just a backdrop for low-budget sci-fi anymore. It was epic, serious, and full of possibility. Toys, lunchboxes, annuals, and posters started appearing everywhere. Spaceships weren’t just something you watched on TV, they were something you played with, talked about in school, and carried around in your head long after the episode ended. Even if you hadn’t seen the films properly yet, you knew this world mattered.

Some of my earliest memories of going to the cinema aren’t really about the films at all. They’re about the anticipation . As a child, getting to the cinema in Killorglin or Tralee with my cousins felt like a proper event. It wasn’t something you did casually. It was a treat. We queued for junk food at the front counter, impatiently watching the person ahead of us debate popcorn sizes, all the while worrying we might miss the start, even though we were nearly always 30 minutes too early. Once we had our snacks, modest for the time, a drink, popcorn, and a small packet of chocolate sweets, there was the scramble for decent seats (at the back, of course). Then came that familiar ten-minute wait as the auditorium slowly filled.  Then the lights dimmed, the cigarette burn edit marks crackled and fizzled on screen, the cartoon started, and you knew you were locked in for the next couple of hours. There was no pause button. No kettle-boiling tea breaks. No exit. You were there to wat...