Quirke (Gabriel Byrne) -- Another UK series released in Germany and not the UK

[McCrutchy]

Originally Posted by Buzz201

Some of those examples are unfair, Arrow charge a lot for their blu-ray releases, and they only come down in price during clearances, if BBCW charged those kinds of prices shit would hit the fan and the papers would accuse them of blatant profiteering for content people "have already paid for", where as BBCW's price points are more reasonable.

Acorn only released Broadchurch several months after the DVD release, as demand had been proven, much to the annoyance of some on this forum, despite the fact the series was a sleeper hit, and by the time Acorn realised this it was probably too late to do anything...

One would also note, Sherlock, Mrs. Brown's Boys and Broadchurch all achieve very high ratings for their respective networks, The Fall got high ratings for it's respective networks. Quirke did alright, similar viewership figures to The Fall, but as a miniseries perhaps alright wasn't good enough...

I wouldn't say it's unfair necessarily. BBC releases often seem to approach £20 or more initially, which is usually right around what Arrow charge for a similar amount of programming. The difference is that Arrow's releases stay expensive for much longer, and BBC releases tend to drop significantly in price and stay inexpensive afterwards. That's about what one would expect when comparing releases from small labels, with those from one of the nation's largest.

The Broadchurch release is rather telling, though. I remember how many people were upset, because they had bought the DVD assuming there would be no Blu-ray. After all, Acorn releases popular series like the seventh series of Foyle's War on DVD-only in the UK.

And matters of ratings don't explain why a series like Luther or Happy Valley go unreleased on Blu-ray, and why a series like Top Gear only gets specials released (though perhaps there is an unrelated reason for that). In general, it seems like most adult-oriented content (not that Top Gear is adult-oriented) is skipped over, because the BBC must think that Blu-ray is only for hip, young series, like In the Flesh.