What the hell happened to Bachelors Walk?

RTE does not have a great history with comedy. It’s not entirely their fault, in fairness, in that the best comedy involves risk taking and only then does a tiny proportion of it get enough commercial traction to be successful. US and British television, the two main sources of competition to RTE, have spent millions on failed comedy shows, millions that RTE just never could afford to waste on experimentation. Instead, we have tended to end up with more middle of the road (“A brown envelope? What are you? A politician?”) type stuff.

Despite all that, RTE did have one fabulous success with the comedy-drama Bachelors Walk, which came onto our screens in Oct 2001, ran for three years and a Christmas Special, and was excellent. It was funny, it boasted genuine comedy talent in the likes of Don Wycherley, Simon Delaney, Marcella Plunkett and Keith McErlean, and most of all, Dublin looked bright and breezy and cool and a city that looked like it was worth being proud of. This was also helped by the jazzy soundtrack.

Yet RTE have failed to release the complete series on DVD? They did release the first series, which is now quite hard to get (Although I have it), but never followed through. Rumour has it that there was a problem about music releases, which I struggle to believe because surely most TV series are planned with possible DVD release in mind as a revenue stream, especially a show as popular as this was?

Anyone know what happened? Given the dark times we live in, it really would do us no harm to see that wonderful Tiger Dublin again, if only on DVD. And I’m sure RTE could do with the few quid.