10 Movies & TV Shows You Can No Longer Watch
4. Chicago Hope
Despite running for six seasons and 141 episodes, not to mention winning a slew of Emmys, medical drama series Chicago Hope is still a major pain in the ass to watch if you don't already own the ancient DVD boxed sets - which aren't available in North America, by the way.
The show, which ran from 1994 to 2000, faces a rather unique issue where music rights are concerned, because though the series didn't actually feature many needle-drops of iconic pop songs, Mandy Patinkin's Dr. Jeffrey Geiger did enjoy singing show tunes mid-operation.
And because even a playful sing-song requires the original rights holders to be compensated and Broadway songs are infamously expensive to license, it places a massive financial burden on 20th Television ever releasing the series on a new medium.
Considering that the show posted just a fraction of the peak ratings of more successful medical dramas like ER and Grey's Anatomy, it's perhaps not that surprising nobody can be bothered to shell out the dough to bring the series to streaming.
Even so, for the show's many fans, it's infuriating that such an acclaimed piece of work is basically being left to fester, and with each passing year it only becomes less likely that it will be rescued from the doldrums.