BREAKING NEWS: UK Flashpoint DVD Boxset Details!

Special thanks to one of our readers (and huge Flashpoint fan in Britain) Yvonne for sharing some pictures of the just-released Flashpoint DVD boxset. We really love the cover! The back reads "Flashpoint is a high stakes police drama about a team of elite cops. A SWAT team highly trained in psychology, specialising in the use of state of the art weaponry, sniper rifles, snake cameras, and robotics along with expert negotiating tactics. Their task - to talk down or take down, terrorists, hostage takers, and bomb-makers, delving deeply into the minds of the human beings at the centre of explosive situations." We are so pleased to see the logos of CTV, CBS Paramount, the Canadian Television Fund, and the Canadian Government featured below the credits! Sadly, there are no extras included on the boxset. We know CTV and CBS both produced behind-the-scenes promotional videos when the series began , and CTV's eTalk followed the cast and crew on many journeys, from shooting segments behind-the-scenes, to following them on photoshoots and award shows. We hope, that if there is a North American DVD release, that they will be included, or perhaps other extras of any kind (maybe a chat with the writers and producers about why each song was picked to play at the end of an episode). Nonetheless, for those of you dying to know what the boxset looks like, we have pictures featured below from Yvonne (click to enlarge)! She tells us that the first season ended last Thursday (stopping at the 13th episode), on a cliffhanger. We remember your pain all too well when we saw that episode for the first time!

Flashpoint Ratings: Friday April 3rd, 2008

Hey Moonies - did anyone catch tonight's episode? Compared to last week's ("Aisle 13"), I thought it returned back to its old glory. I wasn't a fan of last week's episode, and it will probably top my list of worst episodes of Flashpoint - of which there is only one more on that list, "Backwards Day". I wasn't entirely convinced by Kristin Booth's performance. Tonight's episode, "The Perfect Family" had one of the saddest twists in the entire series, and in another twist, Donna (the team's newest member) chickens out when she is told to shoot. Not spoiling anymore, west coasters please watch this when it airs! Tonight's Dollhouse was the first good episode of the series' entire run so far. Perhaps because this episode's writer is the only writer so far to have written two episodes (every episode has had a different writer). There are only 3 episodes left, and two others which were made and will probably never come to air. It's our opinion, along with many other critics that the show will be canceled, and Flashpoint will likely be given a green light for another season. Variety is also calling that the show will survive another season since it is a co-production and cheaper for the network.

Last week's ratings weren't stellar, but they were still great enough to earn the top spot in its timeslot, and helped CBS win the night in the US, even though there were no winners since no show last week cracked a 2.0/6 rating with the 18-49 demo. The show scored 8.64 million viewers, and a 1.8/6. In Canada, the show was the 12th most watched show of the week, scoring 1.346 million viewers. Flashpoint was also a good luck charm for CTV's premiere of Spectacle: Elvis Costello With... which scored 861,000 viewers. Season 2 is expected to film throughout the summer until August 4th. Click here to read a fan's experience on the set, and among other spoilers, it appears a future episode will deal with high school bullying.

Flashpoint News Roundup - April 2009!

In the last few days, a few news stories have popped up - some highs, some lows, and another set of DVDs?!

Flashpoint DVD Boxset to Hit Oz!

Soon after we post a story reminding our readers in Britain the show is going to be released on DVD within weeks, we learn of an Australian release! A boxset will be released in Australia two days after the boxset is released in Britain (April 16th). We’re actually surprised to read this since we have read elsewhere that the ratings for the show in Australia haven’t been phenomenal (perhaps due to some fault on the Nine Network’s end for lack of promotion, airing of episodes out of order, and sporadic scheduling). The ratings in New Zealand are better, and we are hoping to hear soon that they will pick up the second season. We even found what we think is a fan-made bumper sticker for the show in NZ! This release has a different cover than the British one, and features the slogan used on Alchemy TV’s Sales Flyer. We like the British cover better - it’s a lot more elusive with it’s blue shadows. The boxset is a little more pricier than the British version, and it looks like this one is going to have episodes only over 4 discs without any extras. If any of our Australian or New Zealander readers manage to get a copy of this, we’d love to hear what you think of the release!

CBS Cuts Funding

The economic crisis is hitting everything and anything, and we’re getting a little tired. We on staff really hope this is fixed up soon. Canadian TV Broadcaster CBC dealt the Canadian and US TV industry a major blow last week when they announced major layoffs, reduced episodes of hit series, and the cancellation of their broadcasts of reruns of The Simpsons, as well as Martha Stewart’s talk show. CTV, Flashpoint’s parent broadcaster in Canada, has not announced any major national cuts, but has announced cuts for regional stations. CBS on the other hand, has asked all shows being renewed (unsure if Flashpoint is one of them as of this writing) to reduce their budgets for next year, and this may mean smaller writing staffs. Flashpoint has quite a writing staff, and from what we have read before, their work is always collaborative. We believe each writer on that show brings something unique to the table, and the show won’t be the same without them. It’s rumored that the show costs anywhere between 1.6-2 million dollars an episode to make, and since this is a co-production, we don’t know how the balance of the funds work on the show, and how funding would be affected from CBS’s end. This news is a little unsettling, and we can only hope that those in power around the world can come up with a solution to this crisis.

Other News Shots:

☽ Flashpoint along with other cop procedurals such as CSI and Law & Order has kept CBS at the top of the ratings for Primetime Drama. Two new shows are going to make an attempt to steal CBS' thunder, The Unusuals on ABC in the US and Global in Canada, and Southland on NBC in the US and CTV in Canada (not that CTV really needs to worry since it is host to Flashpoint).

☽ Hugh Dillon's official website has a lot of cool promotional videos posted in the media section, as does his other website.