Detroit 1-8-7 (2011)/No
Ordinary Family (2010)/Running Wilde
– The Complete First Seasons (2010/ABC/Lionsgate DVD Sets)/Vera (2010/Acorn DVD Set)
Picture: C Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: B-/D/C-/B-
Will TV
shows get better outside of cable pay channels tending to have the best
series? Maybe, but it is not always
looking that way. Now we look at four
new shows that run from awful to interesting, all debuting in their first DVD
sets from their TV debuts.
Detroit 1-8-7 – The Complete First
Season (2011) is
a new police drama with multiple storylines going on in each show in the same
world with Michael Imperioli as the lead in this surprisingly smart,
underdiscussed and underseen series that needs and deserves more promotion. 18 hour-long shows are here across four DVDs
and it is worth your time to start form the beginning if interested. Hope this one picks up.
On the
other hand, the would-be superhero genre series No Ordinary Family – The
Complete First Season (2010) is a mess with Fantastic Four alumnus (he will not be back since the movies are
being relaunched supposedly) leading the cast of four family member (mother,
father, sister, brother… oh brother!) as they crash in the Amazon River only to
discover they have superpowers, but the show is like the old British series The Champions for goofs and is horrid
from the first scenes. 20 terrible
episodes are here across four DVDs and this is one of the worst examples of the
genre or comedy or family programming I have ever seen. ‘Nuff said!
Almost as
bad and definitely as unfunny is Running
Wilde – The Complete First Season (2010) wasting Keri Russell (Waitress)
and co-starring Will Arnett as a rich guy who is a moron, so can she help
him? Should she care? Should we care? No! I
was stunned how dumb this was and wondered why this was not cancelled after the
pilot. The makers of Arrested Development are supposedly
behind this, but that was a far better series.
You get 10 awful shows across two DVDs, showing someone is hedging their
bets on this turkey.
Finally
we have Vera (2010), a new police
procedural that is in a bad glut of them, but the show has one thing the others
do not: Brenda Blethyn. As DI Stanhope,
she brings more life to her lead role than even the teleplays could, though the
four telefilms here (Hidden Depths, Telling Tales, The Crow Trap, Little Lazarus)
are well written as mysteries and all based on the books by Ann Cleeves. I liked the show more than expected down to
the supporting cast (David Leon, Wunmi Mosaku, Paul Ritter) that it seems and
feels more real than most of its kind of show.
I hope more seasons/series get made.
The anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image in all four cases is sadly much softer all around than
I could have expected with weak color, motion blur and other image issues, all
shot in HD and not always as well as they could be, though Detroit is stylized and Vera
can be oddly overcast, so they might improve in potential Blu-ray
editions. All but Detroit are here in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, leaving Detroit with Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes
and Ordinary with a Dolby 5.1
variant that is very ordinary. All sound
lossy and the ABC/Lionsgate titles are too much towards the front and center
channels. Ordinary has dull bloopers, but there are no other extras to be
found on any of these sets.
- Nicholas Sheffo