Ever notice how great things often happen when you're not trying quite so hard? Sports Night is one of those great things. Aaron Sorkin wasn't trying to wow us with social import (like on The West Wing) or culture commentary (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). He was just scripting sparkling dialogue for sparkling actors like Peter Krause (Dirty Sexy Money) and Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives). He was just showing authentic human behavior on a small scale in tight confines.

He was just creating an all-time gem.

Before there was Anna Torv kicking ass on Fringe, before Jennifer Garner was taking names on Alias, before Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess, even before The Bionic Woman and The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. , there was Honey West -- TV's original woman warrior.

It made this long-time Mary Tyler Moore Show fan deliriously happy to see that the power of Oprah has been used for good. The powers that be over at 20th Century Fox have finally seen fit to appease the masses and release the final three seasons of the show on DVD. The first four sets became quickly available, but the final three had been stalled with no date in sight. But thanks to Oprah and her hour-long MTM lovefest this pat spring (in which she transformed her stage into WJM's newsroom and Mary's apartment and talked to the entire cast), the studio has taken notice and will put the last three sets on their DVD calendar (though an official date has yet to be set).

Blame Canada. That Oscar-nominated South Park ditty is easy to invoke when our northern neighbors export such ho-hum tube fare as this week's new CBS police crisis pick-up Flashpoint or SOAPnet's current trashfest MVP: He Shoots, She Scores. But we have to see the value of imports when the hockey-lovers deliver sublime treats like Due South and Slings & Arrows.

So maybe you skip Flashpoint -- although it does star northern boy Enrico Colantoni, forever beloved as the who's-your-daddy of Veronica Mars (and as the sweetly deluded alien in 1999's classic Star Trek send-up Galaxy Quest) -- and instead enjoy some DVDs of the great white north's greater gifts.

We have a bit of a perverse streak here at Brilliant But Cancelled. So when we think of Father's Day, we don't think of earnest Ward Cleaver, or nice Mike Brady, or even Homer Simpson. We think of Ken Titus.

Yes, the drink-this-beer-kid, pull-your-pants-down-in-public, tough-lovin' carouser of the Titus sitcom.

OK, so Army Wives may not be the most representative military show for us to salute this Memorial Day (which is probably why this soap-o-rama does so well on Lifetime, where it starts a new season June 8). We'll have to suggest the underseen Iraq war drama Over There, which went 13 episodes and out on FX three summers back. (It's out on DVD from Fox Home Entertainment.)

How rare is it to find a show that still feels fresh 40 years later while retaining the relevance of the very different era it premiered in? I Spy is one of those blow-you-away treats, proving in this week's release of remastered DVD season sets to be just as fun, frank and cool as it was in its groundbreaking 1965-68 NBC run.

Don't take my word for it. Check out the DVD sets for all three timeless seasons at a bargain list price of $20 each (widely discounted), for as many as 28 episodes! Not sure? Watch an online episode or two at Hulu.

Oops. Sometimes a network cancels a great show, then actually has second thoughts about it. Long before Jericho, that was the fate of Alien Nation. Which just happens to be another resonant character-driven drama of ordinary folks, faced with cataclysmic social upheaval, forced to find the inner strength to step up and take action to do what's right. Do we sense a pattern here?

If so, maybe Jericho fans should hope to see some kick-butt TV-movies continue the story. That's what took shape when Fox canceled its 1989-90 Alien Nation series after a single season's Monday night run. But Jericho fans might have a bit of a wait. It took Fox seven years to broadcast the five follow-up Alien Nation TV-movies, which finally out on DVD in wide release this week (after several months as a Best Buy exclusive).

The April 15 release from Fox Home Entertainment does do right by the fan fave, loading up its three discs with making-of featurettes, recent cast reminiscences, storyboards, and commentary from showrunner Kenneth Johnson on all five films: Dark Horizon (1994), Body and Soul (1995), Millennium (1996), The Enemy Within (1996), and The Udara Legacy (1997) -- and that's way more extras than FHE provided on its 2006 Alien Nation complete-series DVD.

That's probably because fans snapped up the earlier set, proving they were hungry for more, more, more. And for good reason. Alien Nation was one of those rare series, like M*A*S*H, where the TV series is arguably better than its big-screen progenitor.

That 1988 Alien Nation theatrical film, with James Caan as a hardboiled human cop and Mandy Patinkin as his new space-alien partner, was a gritty action flick with a single story to solve. The subsequent Fox TV series had time to unravel the nuance of the intriguing culture-clash background the movie had pretty much glossed over. Since the story was created by Rockne S. O'Bannon -- later beloved of smart-TV fans for his Farscape tapestry -- there was plenty of meat to munch.

The alien cop's Newcomer race, recently crashlanded near L.A., had been slaves on their own world, so American sanctuary opened up vistas they'd never dreamed possible. Yet the 250,000 Newcomers also ran up against fresh kinds of prejudice while trying to assimilate into human society. Their "strange" ways made many of their human neighbors feel invaded, resentful or otherwise threatened by what was derisively called "slag" culture.

TV's Alien Nation could be read as blatant allegory -- racism is bad; see? -- but producer Johnson's stories went far beyond the film's one-note bigotry in exploring the Newcomers' reactions to the society they were joining, and vice versa. Childraising, criminal behavior, politics, corporate intrigue, drug use, disease, gender roles, religious beliefs, psychological problems -- all were fodder for scripts that took the issues seriously while presenting them with a humorous touch and emotional authenticity that made the show not some "alien" tale but a compassionate character study. And, yes, an eye-opening mirror on "human" behavior.

Who knew men could be pregnant? The Newcomer cop, George Francisco (played by Eric Pierpoint), had to share gestation with his wife (Michele Scarabelli), making for both rich comedy and sharp gender commentary. Human cop Matt Sikes (Gary Graham) found himself falling in love with a Newcomer woman (Terri Treas), which created all kinds of interspecies sex questions. The aliens could get drunk on sour milk, and they chose their new human names with a degree of irony. George was originally "Sam" Francisco, and the police squad's simple-minded janitor called himself Albert Einstein.

Alien Nation had fun with the foibles, while never forgetting that its police work, human-Newcomer integration and continuing threats from the alien slaves' Overseers were serious business. The scripts came from top-notch writers like Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider (who penned everything from Northern Exposure to The Sopranos), and Steven Long Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle (The Pretender, Tin Man) -- all of whom would refine and extend that basic fish-out-of-water story foundation in their future work.

Too bad Fox couldn't see what it had back in 1990, when the still-fledgling network was programming just three nights a week (Saturday-Monday) and its only other drama exponents were an aging 21 Jump Street and spin-off Becker. By that fall, Fox had expanded to five nights a week with mostly forgettable sitcoms (Good Grief was aptly titled) and, oh yes, a little throwaway teen soap called Beverly Hills, 90210. The youth movement was on.

Fox never completely gave up on sci-fi-tinged character drama, but the network didn't learn to treat them any better, either. New legions of fans for the likes of John Doe, M.A.N.T.I.S. and Firefly would likewise be disappointed by executives' lack of faith in what they had and bad scheduling in presenting it. The survival of The X-Files was a minor miracle.

Another one was Fox 'fessing up to its mistake by ordering and airing those five Alien Nation TV-movies we see on DVD this week. Some can also be seen upcoming on cable. Alien Nation: Millennium runs Wednesday, April 16 at 10:30 AM on Cinemax. Alien Nation: Body and Soul runs Tuesday, April 22 at 8:45 AM on @Max. And 1988's Caan-Patinkin big screen original unreels Sunday, April 20 at 4:25 AM on HBO Zone. (All three of these plus Alien Nation: Dark Horizon also air throughout May on the HBO and Cinemax digital channels.)

He gets to sound British. He gets to play comedy. He gets to be naked. He even gets to be nice.

But Hugh Laurie only got to make six episodes of Fortysomething -- the 2003 British hour dramedy now on DVD from Acorn Media (list price $40). Apparently, the adult show's ratings on Britain's ITV weren't so hot. Besides, Laurie soon became otherwise engaged, starring in some American TV pilot about a misanthropic New Jersey doctor.

And of course House, which launched on Fox in 2004, is a pretty fine fate to fall into.

Laurie is pretty fine in Fortysomething, too, showcasing a frantic, farcical side light years removed from his unruffled American medical curmudgeon. He's again a doctor, but this time an average suburban general practitioner, with a silky smart wife (played by Anna Chancellor of MI-5 and Suburban Shootout) and three randy/rotten sons whose busy sex lives in the same house remind him he isn't getting any.

At least he thinks he isn't. Laurie's Paul Slippery suddenly can't remember when he last had sex. He can't remember what his wife does for a living. Or whether she's a lesbian. He isn't sure which of his three sons the new live-in girl is sleeping with. But he's pretty sure his sleazebag medical partner is chasing his wife. And he knows his mushrooming midlife crisis enables him to hear the thoughts of those around him as they mock, pity and otherwise disparage his poor insecure soul.

It's enough to make a bloke blither, and Laurie revs up to high gear in short order. Slippery's entire life spins out of control, careening from workplace frenzy to homelife chaos. He's soon doing Dutch accents on his cell phone, falling into rivers, having doors smashed in his face, dressing in Islamic women's garb, and strolling naked down the street. (Nice buns, Hugh!) Dozens of refrigerators, boxes of sex toys, and legions of blow-up trollop dolls arrive to clutter his garden and fascinate the neighbors.

Fortysomething may be a little too determined to keep the farce pedal to the metal, contriving odd twists through the most peculiar conniptions. But its panic-mode pacing is certainly never dull or predictable. Credit/blame goes to both scripter Nigel Williams (HBO's Elizabeth I), adapting his own comic novel, and Laurie, who playfully directed the series' first three episodes in a TV return to his comedy roots. His former A Bit of Fry and Laurie sketch partner Stephen Fry guests in the second episode as an intensely irritated fishmonger.

Viewers who know Laurie only through House should be particularly amused to hear his British lilt, to see him move so fleetly (Slippery, true to his name, is in constant motion), to savor the actor's snappy comic timing, and to discover what an utterly amiable nature his award-winning Fox misanthropy conceals.

Watch a Fortysomething preview here. Full episodes of House are free to see at Hulu.com.

Other new TV DVD releases worth a look:
Suburban Shootout (Acorn, list price $25) -- Fortysomething co-star Chancellor plays a devious gang leader in this black comedy of British housewives desperate to run a small town that would be sleepy if it weren't for their gun battles, drug dealing and extortion (seen Stateside on Oxygen); 8 half-hour episodes on a single disc. (Clips at Oxygen video site.)

John From Cincinnati (HBO Video, $60) -- David Milch's HBO series about a California surf clan invaded by a cryptically spiritual stranger; 10 episodes on 3 discs. (Series resumes digital cable repeats May 28 on HBO Zone.)

Day Break (BCI, $40) -- Taye Diggs' shortlived 2006 "groundhog day" thriller includes 7 hours ABC never aired; 13 episodes on 4 discs. (Series is currently repeating on cable's TV One channel.)

TAGS: fortysomething, house, hugh laurie