‘Love/Hate’ blows away rivals in DVD stakes

Just like Nidge and Co, Love/Hate is taking out the competition in terms of DVD sales in the run up to Christmas.

More than 75,000 box sets of the award-winning series have been pre-ordered from RTÉ’s online shop, as well as other retailers in the run-up to Christmas.

Both Tesco and HMV, which are stocking the series, said demand from the public has been huge.

Seamus Banim of Tesco said the demand for the series was “phenomenal”, not only for the box set of the first three seasons of the show, but also the DVD of the current season, which ended on RTÉ last week.

“The demand has been huge and has been all week,” said Mr Banim. “The box set of the first three seasons and season three on its own have sold around 10,000 copies this week alone. We expect that over the weekend we could sell in the region of 3,000 or 4,000 more copies of season three. It’s been phenomenal.”

Mr Banim said Love/Hate was by far the biggest seller this year, and was hugely outselling the other big Christmas DVD, Ice Age 4.

“To put it into some context, in a couple of hours this week, Love/Hate sold more than Ice Age 4 has done in the whole week. The demand has been huge,” he said.

HMV spokesperson Gennaro Castaldo said there was a delay getting the series into stores earlier this week but a quantity of stock arrived yesterday morning and were already selling out.

“We’re sorry for any inconvenience to customers, but I’m pleased to say a number of our stores have now had a quantity in time for Christmas, though, of course, it’s selling out very quickly, and, in fact, we understand quite a few retailers are now out of stock of it,” he said.

RTÉ said it would be in a position to produce further copies in the new year if current supplies ran out over Christmas.

Love/Hate, which features the gritty lifestyles of a Dublin-based criminal gang, has received rave reviews since it first aired in 2010.

The final episode in the current series, which aired last Sunday, attracted an average of 953,000 viewers.

The station has confirmed that it has commissioned a fourth series, which will begin production early in 2013.

It is also engaged in preliminary talks about selling it to other stations, including the US.