Murdoch Mysteries – Season 3 (2010/Acorn Blu-ray set) + Man At The Top – The Complete Second Series (1972/Network U.K. DVD Set) +
A Royal Romance: William & Kate
(Inception DVD)
Picture: B-/C/C Sound: B-/C/C Extras: C/D/D Episodes: C+/B-/C+
PLEASE NOTE: Top is an import DVD set in the Region 2/PAL format that can only
be operated on machines capable of that combination and can be ordered
exclusively from our friends at Network U.K. at the links below. The other titles are available in the U.S. market and
beyond.
And now
for some import TV of interest, though two of the releases are from U.S. home video
companies.
Murdoch Mysteries – Season 3 (2010) may seem British, but is
actually a Canadian production in which mysteries are solved at the turn of the
century before the one that just turned.
It also builds its cases on then up and coming technology to make the
audience think and rethink their deductive approaches. We reviewed the first season DVD set at this
link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8650/The+Murdoch+Mysteries+%E2%80%9
This
time, the show has been issued on Blu-ray and I think it is more watchable this
way, as well as more involving. We get
13 episodes over three Blu-ray discs and the show is at least as good as when
it began. The actors have fallen into
their roles nicely and it is a top rate production whose high definition
release makes total sense. I just felt
that once again, the resulting puzzlers worked sometimes, but not in all of the
shows.
Based on
novels by Maureen Jennings, the show stars Yannick Bisson as Murdoch, Helene
Joy, Thomas Craig and Jonny Harris. They
have chemistry and are totally believable in their roles. Whether the show will become a huge growing
hit is unknown, but it is a unique enough series that I can see a growing fan
base and long run for the series, especially from those getting bored with MidSomer Murders. Good show.
Man At The Top – The Complete
Second Series (1972)
is the conclusion of the ambitious, gritty TV series continuation of the story
of Joe Lampton, the classic character from the classic British ‘angry young
man’ film Room At The Top with Laurence
Harvey. Kenneth Haigh has nicely taken
over the part for this series and though we missed the first season, the
writing is smart, made for mature adult audiences. Impressive, they ended it while they were
ahead, unlike the somewhat similar Hadleigh
with Gerald Harper (reviewed elsewhere on this site) which was good at first
then ran on longer than it should have.
These are
the final 13 hour-long shows over 4 DVDs and it is a show that has an edge you
don’t see in most TV we are getting now.
Lampton is not the nicest person, but the world around him is rotten and
he is made to seem like the lesser of two evils at times, though he is also up
to things he should not be. Haigh is
uncompromising in the role and is joined by Zena Walker, Paul Eddington and
Colin Welland. Stephanie Beacham (The Colbys) and George Sewell (Callan: Wet Job) also show up in some
of the episodes. It deserves to be on
DVD.
Finally
we have A Royal Romance: William &
Kate, which is actually a British special interest one-shot show entitled Destiny – An Unauthorized Story On Prince
William. Renamed to capitalize on
the wedding (no one is going to confuse this with anything about say, Destiny’s
Child), it is a good not great look at William and the royal family that is not
risky or very critical of the family, but it is adequate and does show us some
footage we may not have seen before.
There will be plenty more releases like this one, so we’ll see how this
one holds up in the face of those new arrivals.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Murdoch
can look good, but is an HD production and has some motion blur here, some
noise there and some weak spots here and there.
That is still an improvement over the DVDs, which were weaker and the
warm PCM 2.0 Stereo soundtrack has Pro Logic surrounds that are decent. A behind the scenes featurette (9 minutes)
and alternate ending to Episode 13 are the only extras.
The 1.33
X 1 image on Top and anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Royal are
both on the soft and weak side. Top is from dated PAL sources in a show
that was shot on PAL videotape with some outdoor 16mm footage. Royal
has aliasing errors and a mish-mash of all kinds of analog footage to show it
subjects in action leading up to what will be their wedding. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Top also shows its age and can have
some distortion, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 on Royal is barely stereo and usually monophonic with other audio
flaws. Neither have any extras.
As noted
above, you can order the Top DVD import
set exclusively from Network U.K.
at:
http://www.networkdvd.net/
or
www.networkdvd.co.uk
- Nicholas Sheffo
