Drop Dead Diva: The Complete Series On DVD Toplines Mill Creek Entertainment First Wave Of June 04 DVD And Blu-ray Priced-To-Own Product Offerings

Sunday night at nine o’clock … the death hour for TV series, especially those relegated to down-the-dial cable channels.   Add to that a no-name star, whose previous on-screen credits included a bit part (“woman in park”) in What Women Want in 2000 and an appearance on a Law & Order: Trial by Jury episode five years later.

How is that combination a winner?   20^th Century-Fox even passed on the proposed series after reading the script for the pilot episode.   But a funny thing — make that, a VERY funny thing — happened in mid-July of 2009 on the Lifetime Channel, a star was born and a comedy series that had been passed on found an audience and became a hit!

Of course, for fans in the know, the series that became a six-season sitcom wonder on the Lifetime Channel was Drop Dead Diva and the then unknown Brooke Elliott became a star.

Mill Creek Entertainment announced this past week that its first wave of June 2019 price-to-collect DVD and Blu-ray product offerings will be top-lined by the 12-disc DVD collection of Drop Dead Diva: The Complete Series.

The set-up for the success of the series, and the reason why fans will be lining up on June 4 to grab their keepsake collections of Drop Dead Diva: The Complete Series, is the show’s delightful play on the Heaven Can Wait theme.   Two people die, sadly, one of which is Deborah "Deb" Dobkins (Brooke D'Orsay), a shallow, but gorgeous model, who arrives at the gates of heaven and is told that by “Fred,” the gatekeeper (played by Ben Feldman — Mad Men, Silicon Valley) that she cannot pass because she is neither good nor bad, but something of a zero.

No problem, Deb just smacks the “return” button before Fred can stop her and is zapped into the body of the recently deceased second person, Jane Bingum, played by none other than Brooke Elliott.   Deb is horrified, Jane is not, repeat NOT, supermodel material, but she is a whip-smart attorney.

To complicate things a little further, she — Deb that is, now in Jane’s body (with all of the smarts that comes with it) — discovers that her former fiancé, Grayson (Jackson Hurst — The Mist) is a colleague of Jane and is working at the same law firm.   Yikes!  

Throw in the now “guardian angel” Fred — a punishment of sorts for letting someone mess with the order of things — who has been sent to earth to keep Deb/Jane from spilling the beans and you have all the makings of a comedy series with “staying” power.

Comedian Margaret Cho provides plenty of comedy relief as the secretary sidekick at the law firm and the show is packed with a load of guest stars.

Mark it down, June 4, all 78 episodes of Drop Dead Diva: The Complete Series on DVD!

Not done yet!   Mill Creek Entertainment has added four new Blu-ray releases to its popular priced-to-collect line of Retro VHS films on Blu-ray … this time from the 1990s!  All four films in this June 4 Retro VHS blitz are making their Blu-ray debuts and all four are priced at just $14.98 each (and that’s before discounts at retail).

So what’s in the mix?   For starters, how about director Hark Tsui’s 1997 action comedy, Double Team, which features Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman working together — and odd pair if there ever was one — to stop a ruthless killer by the name of Stavros (played by Mickey Rourke).

Joining Double Team in the Blu-ray Retro VHS packaging hit parade are Excess Baggage (1997, teaming Alicia Silverstone with Benicio Del Toro and Christopher Walken), Jury Duty (1995, Pauly Shore, Tia Carrere and Stanley Tucci in the jury trial that never ends) and Dana Carvey leads the good life — in someone else’s home — in the 1990 comedy, Opportunity Knocks.