One Of Chuck Lorre's Most Important Sitcoms Is Nearly Impossible To Watch Today

Television writer, producer, and creator Chuck Lorre has been pretty prolific over his career, with a whole slew of sitcoms under his belt. He's not only responsible for giving us the catchiest theme song in all of television, but he also created over a dozen sitcoms, including the wildly popular "The Big Bang Theory," "Young Sheldon," and "Two and a Half Men." Lorre is sometimes called the King of Sitcoms and for good reason: he's created quite a few seriously successful ones. One of his earliest successes, however, is nearly impossible to watch unless you want to buy all of the DVDs. 

That show is "Dharma & Greg," which starred Jenna Elfman as the free-spirited Dharma and Thomas Gibson as her straight-laced husband Greg, who married on their first date despite being so deeply different. "Dharma & Greg" ran for five seasons — from 1997 to 2002 — and was fairly popular over those five seasons, with Elfman even taking home a Golden Globe for Best Television Actress in a Musical or Comedy in 1999. The show itself was nominated twice but never won. While "Dharma & Greg" isn't one of the absolute best Chuck Lorre shows, it was formative for him, and fans of his other work should find a lot to love. 

If you want to watch hippie yoga instructor Dharma and slightly uptight lawyer Greg figure out their lives together after getting hitched, you'll have to buy the series, because it's simply not available anywhere on streaming. That's a real bummer, because while the show bears some similarities to other odd couple sitcoms of the era, including the much less hard-to-find "Mad About You," it also has Lorre's creative stamp on it. He unfortunately left the series before its final season, leaving it rudderless at the end, but that taught him a lesson all on its own and helped him stick around to make sure "The Big Bang Theory" went out on the right foot. 

While the streaming era has made it easier for audiences to get access to a wider variety of movies and TV shows than ever before, it also can be limiting because of licensing deals and streaming calendars. Just because something's available today doesn't mean it will be tomorrow, and sometimes shows and movies can feel like they've disappeared forever, especially if they were never released on any kind of physical media. "Dharma & Greg" is just another example of a series that people might want to watch, with connections to other great shows, that's unavailable on streaming and therefore much trickier to watch. Is it weird that I miss the Netflix disc-renting days? 

Oh well, at least there are plenty of other Lorre shows to watch across streaming services, even if "Dharma & Greg" has been relegated to the DVD bin.