Anyone out there itching for an uncomfortably fitting amalgam of The West Wing, 24, and Fox News? Well here it is anyway: Homeland Security -- the failed pilot to a series that never happened which is now gracing your DVD shelves packaged up as a straight direct-to-video-style release.

And don't be fooled by names like Tom Skerritt and Scott Glenn; Homeland Security is a bland and fairly tasteless bullet-point history lesson on how the 9/11 tragedy happened, how a bunch of generic TV characters deal with it, and how many soaring musical strains can be employed while the rah-rah chest-thumping speechifying goes on in front of a flapping American flag.

Perhaps Homeland Security was not picked up as a series because one clear-thinking network executive thought it was "too soon" for material of this nature -- when in fact it was probably the case of someone a little bit smarter saying "forget too soon; this project is too stupid."

It takes only 87 minutes for Homeland Security to turn a recent national tragedy into something intended to wedge in between the soap and toiler paper commercials, but here's what you'll get:

Tom Skerritt as a former admiral who's enlisted to help head up the all-new Department of Homeland Security. He's got a daughter who's got an Arab boyfriend, so you just know the drama's gonna start flowing soon enough. Not at all surprisingly, the boyfriend's pop is detained in a mystery cell while everyone stands around and unleashes platitudes about civil rights this and gestapo tactics that.

Then there's Scott Glenn as a just-retired CIA agent who steps back into the fray as soon as he sees the World Trade Center in ruins. He teams up with Melrose Place's Grant Show and together they (very nobly, of course) set to cleaning all the stock-villainous terrorists out of Afghanistan.

Back home there's a photogenic pair of His & Her FBI agents who get in trouble for pursuing their suspects with a bit too much zeal -- and then it's time for a whole lot of "you didn't follow procedure!" sermonizing.

Oh, and the boyfriend's father hangs himself while being illegally detained. Yeah, all the push-button issues have been included in one amazingly simplistic 86-minute package!

Frankly the whole of Homeland Security filled me with mild disdain and, occasionally, outright disgust. Not only is it an atrocious idea to tell the 9/11 story in this sort of cookie-cutter procedural mode, but Homeland Security also manages to infuriate with its unflinching commitment to overt simplicity, empty gestures, and TV-easy answers. This is 9/11 warmed up in TV-dinner form, and personally I think it stinks.

Whichever network decided to ashcan this sorry experiment was on the right track; someone should have gone a step further and left it sitting on a shelf somewhere.

The DVD

Video: Strange that a network TV movie would be released in a Widescreen format, but that's what you're getting here. Picture quality is uniformly bland and flat; it doesn't look terrible, but it's not much of an eye-popper, either.

Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 all the way, which allows you to hear all the blathering speeches in fine form. Optional subtitles are available in English.

Extras: Nada.

Final Thoughts

I'm guessing it's the presence of respected actors like Skerritt and Glenn that predicated this DVD release, but let's put it this way: If this dry and dingy excuse for a pilot wasn't near good enough to warrant a few follow-up episodes (especially considering the flick ends with a massive cliffhanger!), then how worthy is it of your DVD dollars?