TV releases dominate this week with the release of the final season of the gritty, musically-infused New Orleans drama Treme, the current season of the PBS hit Downton Abbey, and the complete animated saga Danny Phantom, while the movies provide us with Ron Howard’s better-than-average racing drama Rush, the animated kids movie sequel Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, the Borat-influenced Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, and the sight of Benedict Cumberbatch rockin’ the stringy white locks of Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate.
 
TV on DVD
 
There are relatively few releases in this category this week, but they are choice led by Treme: The Complete 4th Season (HBO, $39.98, BD $49.99) the award-winning drama written by David Simon and Eric Overmyer (the creators of The Wire), and set in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina.  Few American TV series get indigenous music right, but Treme, which is set in what is arguably the most musical city in the U.S., really does.  The complete series is also available in a deluxe Blu-ray set, Treme: The Complete Series (HBO, $134.99).
 
Treme won the critical plaudits, but the bigger winner in terms of amassing an even bigger audience of upscale viewers is the ITV series Downton Abbey, which has literally been “killing it” on Sunday nights on PBS with an audience of over 8.2 million.  Downton Abbey: Season 4 (PBS, 510 min., $49.99, BD $54.99).  Written by Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey is a carefully-crafted upstairs/downstairs melodrama.  The most expensive TV production in the history of the U.K., Downton is worth purchasing in Blu-ray, and those who buy the series right away can see the final 4 episodes of this season before they actually air on PBS.
 
But for animation fans the buy of the week just might be Danny Phantom: The Complete Series (Shout Factory, 1170 min., $29.93), which includes 52 episodes of the supernatural/action animated series created by Butch Hartman for Nickelodeon, where it ran from 2004 to 2007.
 
Many younger viewers will be interesting the Legends of Chima: Season 1, Part 1 (Warner Bros. 220 min., $19.97), which includes the first ten episodes of the animated TV series based on the Lego Legends of Chima line of toys.  The series premiered on The Cartoon Network last January and has posted solid ratings, especially with the young male demographic.
 
Others will be interested in Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain: The Complete Series (Warner Bros., 220 min., $19.97), which contains all 13 episodes of the series produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment that aired on the WB in 1998.  This series marked the last collaboration between Spielberg and Warner Bros. Animation.
 
This week’s vintage TV series include the orginal Charlie’s Angels: Season 1 (Mill Creek, 1181 min., $9.98), and a DVD-R release of the 1960s medical series, Dr. Kildare: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros., 1000 min., $49.95).
 
The high quality of this week’s releases extends to the imports from the U.K. with lower profiles than Downton Abbey as well.  The Agatha Christie Hour: The Complete Collection (Acorn Media, 517 min., $59.99), which includes 10 beautifully-mounted adaptations of classic short stories by Dame Agatha.  The Art Deco furnishings alone are worth the price of admission here, but the stories are clever and the acting in the anthology, by the likes of John Nettles (Midsummer Murders), Amanda Redman (New Tricks), Ralph Bates (Poldark), and Rupert Everett (My Best Friend’s Wedding), is uniformly first-rate.
 
Mystery fans should check out Vera: Set 3 (Acorn Media, 369 min., $59.99), which stars two-time Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn as Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope, who deals with cases of murder, blackmail, and kidnapping in rural Northeast England.  This set includes four feature-length mysteries inspired by the bestselling novels of Ann Cleeves.
 
Theatrical Movies
 
This week’s highest-grossing release is Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (Sony, “PG,” 95 min., $30.99, BD $40.99), a middle-of-the-pack animated feature that was modestly successful ($118 million).  Some adults may be put off by the tremendous “waste” of cartoon food that quite naturally is predominantly the kind of junk food that kinds love, but kids do enjoy this franchise and the gooey, sticky humor that goes with it.
 
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Paramount, “R,” $29.98, BD $39.99) represents a sort of departure from the usual “Jackass” formula as Johnny Knoxville plays a dirty old man/bumbling senior citizen role for all its worth in a series of “Borat” style hidden camera encounters.  The humor is definitely crude and for adults only, but if your sensitivities aren’t too refined you are going to find yourself laughing at some of this movie’s outrageous bits.
 
The best bet for genre movie fans this week could be Rush (Universal, “R,” 246 min., $29.98, BD $34.98), Ron Howard’s film of the legendary 1970s rivalry between English Formula 1 driver James Hunt and his methodical Austrian rival Niki Lauda.  Written by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen), Rush, though it is overly long, is a well-conceived drama that relies on character as well as action.
 
Those who enjoy geriatric, bucket list comedies might want to check out Last Vegas (Sony, “PG-13,” 105 min., $30.99, BD $39.99), a road trip comedy for aging boomers starring Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Kline.  The quartet decide to forsake the quiet life of retirement for one last bachelor party fling in Vegas with predictable consequences in this often affable, but totally predictable comedy.
 
Benedict Cumberbatch is just about the hottest actor around, but even he can’t quite save The Fifth Estate (Disney, “R,” 128 min., $29.99, BD $36.99), a docudrama about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange based on a book written by one of Assange’s estranged lieutenants.  Net libertarians won’t like this film, nor will those who believe that Assange, Edward Snowden, and other “leakers” should be put in jail.  In fact nobody much liked this film, which earned only a 38% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and just $3.2 million in theaters.
 
Anime
 
This week’s top anime offering is Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan—Demon Capital Set 1 (Viz Media, “17+,” 300 min., $54.97), which contains the first half of the second 26-episode anime series produced by Studio Deen in 2011 and based on the Shonen Jump manga by Hiroshi Shiibashi.  The second season of Nura was simulcast (24 hr. delay) on Hulu back in 2011 and has also appeared on Viz Media’s Neon Alley online Network.
 
Also new this week is the Maria-Holic Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “14+,” 300 min., $59.95, BD $69.99), a 12-episode comedy anime produced by Shaft in 2009 and based on the seinen manga series by Minari Endo.
 
Fans of cyberpunk anime can rejoice now that Serial Experiments Lain Complete Collection (Funimation, 325 min., BD/DVD Combo $39.98) is available in a reasonably-priced Blu-ray edition.  Lain is a challenging avant garde anime that pushed more than a few narrative boundaries back in 1998 with its twisted cyberpunk narrative, and it is still good watch today, especially with hi-def picture and sound.

Tom Flinn

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the editiorial staff of ICv2.com.