2015 is off to a strong start on the home entertainment front with the release of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, one of the best films of 2014, along with geek-friendly TV series like the pirate saga Black Sails, the animated black comedy Archer, Lena Dunham’s high profile series Girls, and what is surely the most underrated action series on cable, the gritty crime drama Banshee.

TV on DVD

2015 is off to a great start, at least for geeks who love intriguing small screen genre projects.  Case in point, the Starz pirate saga Black Sails: The Complete First Season (Anchor Bay, 400 min., $49.98, BD $59.98), which collects all eight first season episodes of the pirate series set on New Providence island (the Bahamas) about 20 years before the events in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.  After an initial flirtation with the usual cable liberties (breasts, gore, etc.), Black Sails manages to tell a complicated story featuring a number of characters based on historical figures while at the same time portraying the daily life of pirates with more verisimilitude than time-pressed big screen pirate films.

Then there is the bawdy, satirical (and very adult) animated spy series Archer: Season 5 (Fox, $29.98, BD $39.98).  This sort of black comedy is not for everyone, but for those who do enjoy it, there’s not nearly enough similar material available on American TV—and certainly not in animated form, as animation in this country is generally only lavished on the very young.

The hippest release this week is Lena Dunham’s Girls: The Complete 3rd Season (HBO, 360 min., $39.98, BD $49.99), continues Dunham’s slice-of-life chronicle of the lives a group of twenty-somethings who are trying carve out careers (and lives) in the Big Apple.  This “Sex in the City for the Millennial Generation” remains one of the most compelling shows on television because of its commitment to present realistic, unvarnished views of characters who are portrayed as completely as any of their peers in the world of cable TV.  In Season 3 central characters Hannah and Adam navigate the tricky waters of a “committed relationship,” and the friendships between the “girls” undergo a number of significant changes.

Those who are interested in a gay version of Girls or Sex in the City should check out Looking: The Complete First Season (HBO, $39.99, BD $49.99), a comedy-drama set in San Francisco created by Michael Lannan, and not surprisingly peopled by a very handsome cast.

One of the best, but strangely unheralded, series on cable TV is the Cinemax action drama Banshee.  Banshee: Season 2 (HBO, $39.99, BD $49.99), continues the wonderfully strange saga of ex-con Lucas Hood, who assumes the identity of a sheriff in a rural county in Pennsylvania that has more than its fair share of malefactors.  Executive Producer Alan Ball (True Blood) is just one of the reasons that this taut and wonderfully complicated saga is truly one of the best (and certainly the most underrated) series on Cable.

Also due out on Tuesday is Glee: The Complete Fifth Season (Fox, $39.98), which collects the latest outpouring of musical extravaganzas produced by one of the most professional high school ensembles of all time.

Just in time for the upcoming SpongeBob SquarePants movie is the SpongeBob SquarePants: The Pilot, The Mini-Movie & The Square Shorts (Nickelodeon, 96 min., $9.98), a great collection of SpongeBob toons, both old and new—at a very good price.

Classic TV series due this week include an inopportune release of The Cosby Show: Seasons 5 & 6 (Mill Creek, $14.98), which appears at what is certainly the low point in Cosby’s long TV career, the 1980s Fox sitcom Married With Children: Seasons 7 & 8 (Mill Creek, $14.98), and Party of Five: Season 2 (Mill Creek, $14.98).

The only UK releases this week are Midsomer Murders Series 12 (Acorn Media, 650 min., $49.99), which includes 7 feature-length murder mysteries starring the incomparable John Nettles as the incomparable DCI Tom Barnaby, the affable detective who solves bizarre crimes in the fictional, but extremely picturesque, Midsomer county.  These particular mysteries have all been previously released, but in this series they are presented for the first time (in the U.S.) in their original UK broadcast order.  Midsomer Murders Series 13 (Acorn Media, 720 min., $49.99) includes 8 previously-released Midsomer episodes, which are now presented in their original broadcast order.

Theatrical Movies
The top release in this category this week is one of 2014’s best films, Boyhood (Paramount, “R,” 164 min., $29.99, $39.99), Richard Linklater’s amazing coming-of-age drama that was shot over a 12-year period following the growth of a boy (played throughout by Ellar Coltrane) and his older sister (Lorelei Linklater).  Linklater won the “Best Director” award at the Berlin Film Festival for this movie, and it is easy to see why—this is not just cinema verite, but a well-thought-out narrative that is superbly acted by a cast that features Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as the kids’ parents.

The highest-grossing theatrical film due on disk this week is No Good Deed (Sony, “PG-13,” 84 min., $30.99, BD $35.99), a tense home-invasion thriller enlivened by strong performances by Taraji P. Henson, and Idris Elba.

One of this week’s most interesting releases is the James Brown biopic, Get on Up (Universal, “PG-13,” 278 min., $29.98, BD $34.98), which features an electric performance by Chadwick Boseman as the “Godfather of Soul.”  Yes, the film doesn’t present much of Brown’s politically activist side, and, in its own way, it is almost as “sanitized” in its view of its complicated protagonist as those Hollywood musical biopics of yesteryear like The Glen Miller Story, but it remains a lot of fun for those who lived through and loved the “soul music era” in which James Brown was, without any doubt, one of the most important and influential figures.

Of course no week would be complete without the release of few really bad films and the first week of 2015 is no exception.  Atlas Shrugged: Part III-Who Is John Galt (Fox,”PG-13,” 99 min., $19.98, BD $24.98), is the final installment in the hapless film trilogy adapting Ayn Rand’s turgid, overblown, and (apparently) endless exercise in philosophical agit-prop.  Even with Rand’s Objectivism getting new political life thanks to the championing of it by rising Republican Party stars Paul Ryan and “Rand” Paul, this turkey of a movie couldn’t even earn a million dollars in theaters—and it was so bad it received no positive reviews at all on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Only slightly better with a 2% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes was Left Behind (Entertainment One, “PG-13,” 110 min., $29.98, BD $34.98), a “Rapture” saga starring Nicholas Cage that doesn’t even work on the “camp” level of a Sharknado or Snakes on a Plane.  God help us if Nick Cage’s filmography is an allegory of the progress of civilization.

Anime
For many this week’s top anime release will be Fairy Tail: Collection 3 (Funimation, 600 min., BD/DVD Combo $54.98), which presents episodes 49-72 of the long-running anime series produced by Satelight and based on the popular manga by Hiro Mashima (published here by Kodansha).  The Fairy Tail anime, which debuted in 2009 looks great in high definition—and the three sets released in HD so far by Funimation look great—the only problem is that they don’t come out quickly enough.

New to North America this week is the Dog & Scissors Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 300 min., $59.98, BD $69.98), a 12-episode supernatural comedy produced by Gonzo in 2013 and based on a series of light novels written by Shunsuke Sarai about a teenage bookworm, who is shot during a robbery and reincarnated as a dachshund.  Dog & Scissors was simulcast on Crunchyroll as was Non Non Biyori.  The Non Non Biyori Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 300 min., $49.98, BD $59.98) collects a 12-episode 2013 anime produced by Silver Link and based on the seinen manga series written by Atto and published here by Seven Seas.   This slice-of-life comedy about a girl who transfers from Tokyo to rural school in a village that lacks many of the conveniences of modern life has been a hit in Japan where a second season was ordered and is in production (so this “Complete Collection” won’t be).

New on Blu-ray is The Qwaser of Stigmata Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 600 min., BD $99.98), which includes all 24 episodes of the 2010 series that was first released here on DVD in 2012 and 2013.

One of Hayao Miyazaki’s most enjoyable films, Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro (Discotek Media, $24.95) is available once again—and any Miyazaki fan who has never seen the classic 1979 film is in for a real treat.

--Tom Flinn

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