Okay, this had to be the one, didn’t it? I mean, come on–two consecutive good reviews in a row? For Tyler Perry titles? Surely this is the one! This is the one where, if it were a used car, the wheels fly off and the undercarriage starts throwing sparks and the radio starts screaming insults at me. It’s Meet The Browns Season Three, and the folks at Lions Gate sent out a copy for me to review. Time to see if the Broken Clock Principle swings both ways!

Once again, Meet The Browns takes us back out to Brown Meadows and the various Browns–and not so Browns–that have come to make up the highly unconventional Brown family. And there’s plenty of change going on at the Brown house, in pretty much every sense of the term. A lot of things are going on out there; people are leaving, some new ones are arriving, and the ones who stick around are somewhat different than they were.

And indeed, this is the series where things start going wrong. See, Tyler Perry makes the horrendous mistake of making Meet The Browns a bit more like House of Payne. In a surprisingly large number of instances, events that are clearly not at all funny are thrown in–someone gets assaulted, the Browns’ quasi-adopted daughter (who will later become adopted) is on birth control and likely sleeping around, and then there’s the worst of the lot where the younger Browns actually threaten their quasi-adopted daughter with a RETURN TO FOSTER CARE if she doesn’t improve her attitude.  They threaten to, essentially, THROW THEIR OWN KID AWAY if she doesn’t do as she’s told. That’s not funny. That’s disturbing.

But then, then Meet The Browns manages to recover by going back to its true strength, the thoroughly irrepressible antics of David Mann, surprisingly top-notch comic actor. Mann throws himself into his comedy, throwing up both the comedy of dialogue (the man commits more Spoonerisms than possibly even Spooner himself) and some great physical comedy on the side. The man is excellent, and he’s backed up by some surprisingly good writing.

And after a few false starts, you’ll find much of the rest of Meet The Browns surprisingly palatable. A little too much Tyler Perry drama gets into this for my tastes, but there’s still plenty of fine Meet The Browns comedy. I’m hopeful that future seasons of Meet The Browns will understand what works and what doesn’t, but this one is starting to show some cracks.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Meet The Browns Season Three a seven out of ten–a little too much Tyler Perry drama gets infused in this one, but a good chunk of the earlier-season laughs still manages to slip through and provide a good time.

Admittedly, while we see a whole lot of television box sets out here, one thing we don’t see is box sets for cop shows from the eighties. Especially cop shows from the eighties with a little edge of humor. And that’s just what we’re going to get today with Sledge Hammer! The Complete Series, a copy of which Image Entertainment sent out for us to review.

Sledge Hammer! The Complete Series follows the cop by the same name, Sledge Hammer. And while Sledge’s way of life might have been appropriate for 1950–very law and order, a little misogynistic, quit smoking, drink your milk, that kind of thing–he’s also got some significant mental problems. He talks to his gun. He also sleeps with it. And showers with it. He has a rocket launcher in the trunk of his car. There’s a bumper sticker on the back of his car that reads “I Heart Violence”. And this guy is going to be set loose on the criminals of his city, with his newfound partner–a tough, smart lady with a surprisingly vicious spin kick who takes to Hammer right away–to protect the citizenry from the criminal element.

Heaven help the criminal element.

If you haven’t already seen this–which was a surprisingly popular show back in the eighties when it was on (about the only reason it went under was because it was up against big names like Miami Vice and Dallas)–then you’ll need to picture Frank Drebin from The Naked Gun / Police Squad, and make him a barely-restrained homicidal lunatic. Now you have a good idea of what we’re looking at here, and you can already imagine the possibilities. We have the Dirty Harry Excelsior model, the Smart And Tough Lady Cop, and of course, the Bellowing Captain. All the major archetypes are in place, and ratcheted clear up to eleven. The results are surprisingly fun and jammed full of laughs.

Yes indeed, laughs. I spent a lot of time laughing at Sledge Hammer; not only the jokes, either, but the sheer wild over the top antics in the plotlines (one episode features a reporter who goes on a ridealong with Sledge, and ends up with two broken arms which spend the rest of the episode in a pair of casts) that got, and kept, my attention.I spent a lot of time laughing at Sledge Hammer, and it’s not every day I get to laugh uproariously at television. This is one of those grand times.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives Sledge Hammer! The Complete Series a full ten out of ten. It’s a riot, and a sweet shot of history to boot. If you missed this one back in the eighties, then prepare to get a massive shot of comic cop glee to make your day.

Sometimes you look at something and you can’t imagine how anybody could enjoy it. Sometimes you’re convinced that something is going to be a total waste of time and perfectly good effort before you even give it a proper chance. And that’s exactly what I got with The PJs Season One, a copy of which the folks at Lions Gate sent on for me to review.

The PJs Season One takes us out to the Hilton-Jacobs housing project in the middle of scenic downtown Detroit (or so Amazon tells me–I don’t remember hearing mention of Detroit in the series, at least not here. Hit the comments section and tell me what episode it was in if you caught it.). And if you’ve been to Detroit lately you know how ironic it is to call downtown scenic. While it’s not quite as bad as The PJs portrayed it (or wasn’t back in 1999 when the series first emerged; it’s gotten somewhat worse since then), it still makes a good backdrop for the series. The Hilton-Jacobs project is something of an urban death trap, made worse by the apathy and semicompetence of building superintendent Thurgood “Super” Stubbs. His wife Muriel attempts to keep him on the straight and narrow with her longsuffering good nature, but finds her efforts often derailed by the preposterous cast of characters around her, such as irascible curmudgeon at-large and former thirties grifter Mrs. Avery, obese family the Hudsons (mother and father Hudson can’t actually leave their apartment due to their girth, and son Juicy seems well on his way to joining them), a Haitian vodouisant named Mambo Garcelle (more often simply called “Haiti Lady”) and more besides.

It surprised me how often I laughed at the various bizarre situations and events here. The residents of the Hilton-Jacobs found themselves in some strange positions, yet nothing that was out of the realm of at least believability. One episode, for instance, revolved around a penthouse apartment in the building that was nicer, and much larger, than the others. The residents each vied for the apartment themselves, but eventually found a different, and better, solution to their dilemma. They started a rooftop garden, a neighborhood watch, and attempted to save a ruined movie theater in the neighborhood, but at most every turn, something outlandish happened during their efforts and most of what happened was negated and often never discussed again in the grandest sitcom style.

Oh, and the whole thing’s filmed in Claymation. That just makes things even more surreal.

The end result is a surprisingly comic excursion that deals a few good chuckles, but not a whole lot of big laughs. I’m still laughing over the joke: “What’s behind every strong black man? Don King taking 90 percent.” That’s a quote, by the way–save your flames for the people who wrote it.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the reasonably funny experience that is The PJs Season One a seven out of ten. It’s got some good laughs, and though some may be offended (see the above example), many more may find some chuckles out of it. Some may even get both.

The scariest things are, I have always believed, the things that are the most plausible. Being chased through the woods by an undead juggernaut that you’re already well acquainted with is profoundly unlikely. But getting lost in the woods, or attacked by cougars, or pinned under a rock, those are all distinct possibilities. And those are the exact kind of possibilities that we’ll get a good look at in I Shouldn’t Be Alive Season 3, a copy of which Animal Planet sent out for us to review.

I Shouldn’t Be Alive Season 3 confronts us with a whole new set of people in terrible situations who have still managed to survive them, despite lack of gear, deep injury, or sheer ineptitude. You’ll see all manner of strange and frightening situations, of the type that you might very well find yourself in at one point or another. But more importantly, you’ll see how people get out of those very same situations,

Be forewarned, this is very much a niche item. If you’re not into stories of survival, in which people fight for their very lives against unimaginable difficulty, then this is going to be completely lost on you. Because, you see, that’s all it is. There aren’t any laughs here to speak of, there’s a little romance in some parts, but ninety-eight percent of the time this is going to be swimming with people getting trapped or running for their lives. But if you are interested in that, then you’re going to get just over seven hours of it, and it’s really going to impress you.

There is, however, one significant flaw with Animal Planet‘s I Shouldn’t Be Alive: everything that you’re going to see here, no matter how terrifying, no matter how daunting, no matter how insurmountable the challenges seem to be and no matter how the odds are stacked against them, you know exactly how it all will end. It’s right there in the title. They can’t very well call it “I Shouldn’t Be Alive” if it ends with “And then everyone in the hunting party died”, now can they?

And that’s where the issue is. If you want to hear stories of what amounts to near death experiences in the midst of nature at its most downright horrifying, you’re going to be all over this. If not, stay away.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives Animal Planet’s highly niche presentation of I Shouldn’t Be Alive Season Three a seven out of ten–it’s nicely put together, well done overall, but it’s not without some fairly substantial problems.

I’m always a bit concerned when I see something emerge from Tyler Perry. I haven’t had a lot of good experiences with him, but I know how quickly anything can change. I’ve seen movie franchises go completely into the toilet only to recover and bring good times right along side them. Saw IV was terrible, but Saw V kicked off a wonderful three years for me in which I, and the rest of Team Hoffman, could wait for his inevitable victory over the reality-denying punks over on Team Tuck. Friday the 13th didn’t get good until after The Final Chapter. So when the crew out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Tyler Perry’s House Of Payne Volume Seven to review, I took the offer, and hoped for the best.

Tyler Perry’s House of Payne Volume Seven takes us back to the Payne household, where, as is generally the case, a lot is going on. And most of it isn’t good. The first five minutes, in fact, are a recap of the misery journey Calvin and his new wife ran through at the end of the previous series of episodes. So just in case it didn’t suck enough to see it then, you’ll get to see it all over again. And then it will go on from there, through the rest of the Payne clan, C.J and his family, Pops and Ella, and all the rest.

I have to admit, I was astonished. This may well be the first time I’ve actually laughed, and genuinely laughed, at a Tyler Perry product. More, it may be the first time I’ve enjoyed a Tyler Perry product. Sure, most of the problems of a Tyler Perry product are still in attendance–piles and piles of melodrama, for example. Everything horrible that can happen to these people does, and despite the fact that Perry’s actually put a little more funny into this one, he’s also jacked it up with so much horrible screeching melodrama it’s just downright preposterous. And the funny is almost a little uncomfortable–it feels like I’m laughing at the guy who just got his arm cut off by a chainsaw. The dialogue is still stilted and in many places poorly conceived, and the performances do nothing but underscore the melodrama. If they were chewing on the scenery any harder we wouldn’t have another season as they’d have digested all the sets by now.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives House of Payne Volume Seven  a six out of ten for doing better than the previous seasons, but not fixing many of the problems of said seasons. It’s better than a sharp stick in the eye, but only slightly.

We’ve got a big treat for you today, folks, as the crew out at new contact HBO sent us out an advance copy of True Blood: The Complete Third Season for us to review, and I’ll tell you this: if you can’t get enough vampires, Louisiana, or Sookie Stackhouse, then you’re absolutely going to love this when it hits shelves May 31st.

True Blood: The Complete Third Season takes us back down to the bayou for more fun with vampires. But this time, we’re not going to be so focused on Sookie and Bill, but rather a much broader picture of things, as the vamp-blood trade gets more involved, the King of Mississippi make his appearance, werewolves get into the picture, the supernaturals are a little less involved, and we’ll finally find out just who it is that Sookie Stackhouse is sharing genes with. So if you’re a True Blood fan, it’s going to be a big season for you.

And even if you’ve already seen it, well, that’s all the more reason for you to have it all in one place.

Assuming you haven’t seen True Blood yet, well, this is not the place you’ll want to start. You’re going to be abjectly lost by the end of things if you don’t have a good idea of what’s going on going in. But, if you have at least some idea of what’s going on, you’re going to have a grand old time here, make no mistake about that.

But be forewarned, this is an HBO series, which means a lot of the traditional defenses you might expect from a television series. There will be nudity in both directions, profanities of every description, and lots and lots of blood.

And if you can get around the…enhanced…content, you’ll get a surprisingly deep, surprisingly involved vampire story that runs the gamut from romance to action to even a bit of comedy, and that makes this one something really impressive and downright fun to watch. It really blew my mind, because I’ve never been much of a one for vampire stories. And yet, this one is actually pretty good, despite the fact that it’s absolutely thick with Ventrue-style vampires that normally irk me. Maybe it’s the environment, maybe it’s the comedy thrown in, but either way, I like True Blood.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, gives True Blood: The Complete Third Season an eight out of ten. It’s fine stuff, though you’ll have to have some love for the horror genre to really get anywhere with it, and you’ll need to start from the beginning to get the most out of it, but still, for those willing to take the ride, you’ll find a very welcome treat in this package.

Way, way back in the depths of the 1980s–so far back that even I only half-remember it–there was a TV show on NBC (I think it was NBC, anyway) called Highway To Heaven. And in this show, Michael Landon got to once again play the upright sort who went around helping people. And the folks out at A&E got the whole first season together on a huge seven-disc array and sent me out a copy for me to review, and that’s just what we’re doing right now.

Highway to Heaven follows Jonathan Smith, an angel sent down from heaven to do some good things for folks who were in need, and also help improve some of the folks whose souls could stand a bit of shoring up. Smith would go all around, performing these various deeds, and often accompanied by a bitter former police officer. And sometimes, when the situation called for it, Smith has just a little extra angel power in line to get the job done.

Highway to Heaven has a tendency to get a bit schmaltzy at times…okay, maybe a LOT schmaltzy at times…but it’s got an endearing quality, a little bit of an inspirational quality, the kind of uplifting theme that you hardly ever see in television shows today, and the kind of thing that you actually could get from television shows way back in the eighties.

The individual episodes were geared to run an hour each–rather, an hour with commercials, so about forty five minutes–so they do have a tendency to feel a bit over long, wearing out their welcome after a bit. But still, you’ll get that uplifting, feel-good quality out of them, so it’s probably best to take these in small bits, a little at a time, and probably just before bed because these might make you a bit tired, what with wading through all that sentimentality and all. But still, this is some solid work here, and watching it will often make you feel good, which is something that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should when you watch television.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Highway to Heaven Season One a thoroughly angelic seven out of ten. It’s got its drawbacks–pacing is a big one, and the occasionally over the top nature of the plot is a second–but it will often make you feel good, and this dose of retro joy is, as a result, quite worth it.

The folks out at A&E sent over a real doozy for us to review, folks–the complete series of Zorro. It’s a little chunk of history, as well as a really impressive series spanning a whole lot of DVDs, and we’ve got it right here on release day for you!

Zorro follows the legendary masked avenger of wrongs as he storms through Mexico, battling villains of every type and description from insane soldiers to greedy robber barons and everything in between, though his primary foil seems to be the Alcalde of Los Angeles, over the course of fifteen DVDs, and just south of thirty four solid hours.

This is actually the version of Zorro that appeared on The Family Channel, back when there was a Family Channel on which it could appear. It was filmed entirely in Spain, so it’s about as authentic, looks-wise, as it can get, though to be more precise it probably should have been filmed in Mexico as opposed to Spain, but still, about as close as they could get.

And that leaves us basically with the task of evaluating the episodes themselves. Now, in thirty three hours worth of material, you’ll get your high points and your low points. But I think, for the most part, this is a pretty nicely put together show. Naturally, it’s geared toward a family audience–being as it showed on the Family Channel back in the early nineties (this actually ran from 1990 to very nearly 1994) pretty much guarantees it–but it’s not half bad.

Sure, Zorro is maybe a bit too much like some kind of weird 19th century Batman analogue, with an unfathomable amount of science-y stuff going on (I’m sorry, but 19th century Spanish nobility should NOT have hidden crime labs in their houses. That’s just a bit too ludicrous even for me.), but it’s still fairly entertaining.

And here’s the best part–this whopping great DVD package will not only give you the complete series of Zorro, but you’ll also get the original Douglas Fairbanks silent film The Mark of Zorro, the first chapter of the 1939 serial Zorro’s Fighting Legion, trailers for several other serials and the original pilot for the Zorro series, which featured a different actor entirely.

So if you’re fond of Zorro, or simply want some good family entertainment with a little excitement built in, then the Zorro DVD collection will definitely be one to watch.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives the Zorro complete series DVD a nine out of ten–the series may only be moderately good, but the sheer amount of extras involved will make this a truly impressive value.

Once again, the folks out at the History Channel have sent me a beautiful piece to write up for you–the complete Engineering An Empire series. And you’ll find some truly amazing facts here, packaged in a terrific and compelling package.

Engineering an Empire packs fully fourteen DVDs into its box set, and each of those covering two or three different empires, for fully thirty two hours of Imperial marvels.  You’ll see the beginnings of Greece through to Alexander’s day, China, the Goths, the Huns, the Mongols, the Vikings, and many, many more.

And here’s the absolute best part–Robocop himself will show you through it. That’s right–Peter Weller handles the hosting duties here, and he does a terrific job, bringing a historian’s logic together with an actor’s flair. But he won’t be alone here, as experts of every stripe and description will throw in too, so much so that Peter Weller isn’t actually here very long–some episodes more so than others. This is something of a shame, but still.

You’ll get word from historians, architects, military historians; you’ll get word on culture, engineering, military prowess, science of the era, and so on. Seriously, you’re going to get exhaustive studies of just about anything and everything you ever wanted to know about huge portions of the ancient world.

And this is both the problem and the greatest facet of Empires–you will have to have an interest in history to enjoy this. It’s a strict necessity. You will learn so very much about the empires of the world that it will astonish you–but you have to be interested in learning, or you will be utterly lost and see no point here.

For budding historians, and those with a fondness for the history of the world, Empires will be a treat unlike many others. For those without the interest, well, this will be a taxing and painfully dull experience.  Because all it is, you understand, is a historical treatise on the world’s empires. It goes incredibly in-depth on this subject, but since it has no overarching narrative to pay attention to or any kind of other distraction, it’s really little more than a series of facts strung together.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Empires a seven out of ten–it’s a terrific piece, but it’s so niche that a lot of people aren’t going to have a lot of enjoyment here. History buffs take note: you will love this.

So the folks out at Warner Brothers sent me a copy of the complete first season of Vampire Diaries, and as it turns out, it’s very much one for the fans. Very much.  As in, if you’re not already into this show, you likely won’t get into it from the complete first season.

The Vampire Diaries follows brothers Stefan and Damon Salvatore, a pair of vampires who’ve been fighting each other since the mid-1800s, mostly about a woman who died in a Confederate attack on the Virginia town in which they lived.  Fast forward about a hundred and fifty-odd years to the present day, in which the Salvatores once again find themselves fighting over a girl, Elena Gilbert, who’s just lost her parents in a tragic accident. And she’ll find herself thrust in the middle of a war that’s been going on for centuries.

Admittedly, Vampire Diaries has some good points to it.  They’ll make some really interesting plot points, and put some nice humorous twists on it.  Considering this is a Kevin Williamson project, the occasional bits of humor should be expected and are pretty welcome.

But at the same time, the overall plot will move very slowly.  These episodes run about an hour apiece, and they’ll give away the little bits of occasionally interesting in the midst of massive clouds of filler like relationships, drug abuse, abusive boyfriends, and so on down the line.  They’ll even try to whip out a nice Take That on Twilight, but the problem is that Vampire Diaries is too much like an expanded Twilight for its own good.  As much as it mocks Twilight, it’s still working under a lot of those rules.  Vampires that can survive in daylight (Twilight sparkles, Vampire Diaries boasts a protective ring), survive by drinking blood other than that of humans, fast running, high jumping vampires–all Twilight highlights, all found in equal measure in Vampire Diaries.

And so, if you like this kind of thing, then chances are you’re going to enjoy Vampire Diaries.  And if you don’t, well, you may get along all right here, but you’ll want to brace yourself ahead of time for long stretches of dull, preachy and just plain old insipid Teenager Drama Du Jour.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands up a six out of ten for The Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season.  It’s definitely one you’ll want to watch, if you wanted to watch it when it comes out in about two weeks.  Otherwise, you may want to give this one a pass.