Miniskirts and Major Smirks

You haven’t forgotten what’s significant about today, have you? Yep, that’s right: The Mod Squad: Season 1, Volume 1 is being released in DVD format. If it’s been too long since you hung out with Pete Cochran, Julie Barnes, and Linc Hayes, now’s your opportunity to get reacquainted, man. (The second half of Season 1 will be released in early March of next year.)

One other classic-TV news item worth mentioning: The Web site TV Shows on DVD reports that the premiere season of Burt Reynolds’ B.L. Stryker, a 1989-1990 series in which he played a burned-out, smirking former New Orleans police detective turned Palm Beach, Florida, private eye, will be available in stores come February 26, 2008. Only 12 two-hour episodes of B.L. Stryker were produced, as part of the very-short-lived ABC Monday Mystery Movie “wheel series.” (It rotated originally with Gideon Oliver, loosely based on Aaron Elkins’ Oliver books and starring Lou Gossett Jr. as an anthropology professor given to digging up more than old bones; and a revival of Peter Falk’s Columbo.)

Five episodes of Stryker will be offered in this first set, part of the “TV Guide Presents” series, which has already brought us the first and second seasons of George Peppard’s Banacek.