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I've started watching Duckman from the beginning again last night. Duckman - full title 'Private Dick, Family Man' - was released in 1994 and ran for four seasons before being cancelled. The star of the show, Eric Tiberius Duckman, voiced by Jason Alexander (George from Seinfeld), is a rude, obnoxious, unsuccessful loud mouth duck detective who's trying to give up smoking. It never got the mass popularity of The Simpsons and, later on, South Park but it had its own loyal following.

Duckman was released the year that I left home. For me it brings back memories of sitting up late into the night in my own flat at college watching a sophisticated adult cartoon and feeling really grown up. Re-watching it now I still appreciate the humour of it. It's not laugh-out-loud funny but there is plenty of dry wit in it.

In the end I think it was the late night slot that killed it. It cost something like $600,000 per episode to make and there just weren't enough people up so late to watch it for it to make enough money.

An unusual thing about Duckman was that since it was cancelled it has never been officially released on DVD. Boxed sets of any popular or cult TV series you can think of are available except for Duckman. This is not for lack of demand. There are petitions on the internet with thousands of signatures calling for its release and judging by the amount of clips available on YouTube and the comments underneath them, there is a large market ready to snap up the box sets.

I don't know the reason why it hasn't been released to date. I've heard speculation that it's tied up in the Frank Zappa family trust since Frank wrote the theme song and a fair portion of the music from season one but I really don't know.

Whatever the reason for the delay it seems that the problems have been sorted out. Ken Ross (DVD Executive VP and General Manager) from CBS announced in a statement in January that Duckman would be released on DVD sometime this year. No date has been finalised.

I already have all 70 episodes anyway but I'll be interested to see what kind of extras are included in the DVD set when it comes out.

Learn more about this author, Sean McGoldrick.
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