Faced with an Academy Awards shortlist of flicks that haven’t been released here yet, UK DVD rental sites are devoting their special Oscar pages to previous winners. Like Driving Miss Daisy.

Nice touch, Blockbuster. But we’ve got some better solutions to the no-Brokeback-DVD-till-Xmas problem:

1. Watch the first season of ER again, and remember when George Clooney was Dr Ross and not the saviour of civilisation. (I don’t mean to sound sarky. Clooney’s a marvellous thing. And he knows how to frame an argument, unlike Michael Moore. Don’t get me started.)

2. Rent As Time Goes By with Judi Dench, but don’t let it fall into Hollywood hands. They’d give her a bloody award for it.

3. Best Actor nom Philip Seymour Hoffman was in the Law & Order episode, The Violence of Summer. Samuel L Jackson and Chris Noth, aka Mr Big from Sex & the City, were in it too. Give that casting director a fat bonus, and rent the Law & Order season 1 DVD for an early glimpse of PSH.

4. Watch One Day in September, the Oscar-winning doc that’s been buried deep in the TV schedules a few times since its 1999 release. Kevin Mcdonald‘s brilliant film documents the Israeli hostage crisis at the 1972 Olympics – an event whose aftermath is given the compelling Spielberg treatment in Best Film nom, Munich.

5. Check out Johnny Cash in Dr Quinn Medicine Woman. Yup indeed. Before he died and turned into Joaquin Phoenix, he played Kid Cole opposite Jane Seymour. Didn’t put that in your flick, did you Whha-kheeeen?

6. And Columbo. Cash was in that, too.

7. Watch Dawson’s Creek. No, go on. It’s actually very smart in places. It’s also the show that gave the world Michelle Williams, now nommed for playing Heath Ledger‘s wife in Brokeback Mountain. Williams mumbles a bit but she’s an extremely sympathetic actor, and was brilliant in The Station Agent. Katie who?

8. Felicity Huffman has always been the best thing in Desperate Housewives, and she’s now been nommed for playing a pre-op transsexual chap called Bree in Transamerica. Bree! Coincidentamo! Cuh.

9. Peter Sallis is Wallace in Curse of the Were Rabbit. He’s also in Last of the Summer Wine. You can rent it. If you must.

10. The Were Rabbit’s dad, Nick Park, also gave us Creature Comforts. Turn off and onnable.

11. No Oscar broadcast has ever been committed to DVD, an oversight for which Chris Rock must be grateful. But you can catch this year’s host, Jon Stewart, in… Big Daddy. The schmaltz-intolerant should probably stick with The Daily Show.

If you can tear yourself away from the box, have a look at the Blockbuster, ScreenSelect etc websites for loads of ‘Oscar special’ content like guess-the-winner polls, Ultimate Losers lists and 33 non-Capote films with Philip Seymour Hoffman in them. Just don’t get carried away and forget to watch the thing on Sunday.

* The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, More4, tonight at 8.30pm
* 78th Academy Awards, Sky Movies 1, Sunday 5 March, 12.05am (Mon)
* Oscar Highlights, Sky One, Monday 6 March, 10pm