Mildred Pierce (2011 TV Mini-Series/HBO Blu-ray/DVD Set)/Switched At Birth, Volume One (2011/Disney/ABC Family DVD Set)/Underbelly: The Trilogy (2007 – 2010/E1
DVD Box Set)
Picture:
B & C+/C/C+ Sound: B & B-/C+/B- Extras: B-/D/B- Episodes: B
I like
finding really good television and with so much bad TV, the good shows can turn
up in the least expected places as the following have.
Filmmaker
Todd Haynes (Safe, Poison, Far From Heaven) decided to take James M. Cain’s novel Mildred Pierce and make in into a TV Mini-Series
despite its legendary success as a book and the 1945 Michael Curtiz semi-Noir
film with Joan Crawford’s Oscar winning turn in the title role. This 5-episode version has more time to
expound upon the novel and Kate Winslet is one of the only actresses who could
have handled the role today.
For those
unfamiliar, Mildred intends to make her life into something better after a
boyfriend leaves (more shocking back in the day than now) and can really cook,
which will lead to bigger and better things, but bad things keep happening to
her and she focuses on trying to help her daughter Veda. However, the story takes its share of twists
and turns. When all is said and done, it
is different than the film and goes into some different directions, but makes
for interesting viewing whether you have seen the film or read the book before,
or not though it is further from Noir than the older versions. Guy Pearce, Melissa Leo, Evan Rachel Wood,
James LeGros, Mare Winningham and Hope Davis round out a great cast, but I
still felt this version drifted into camp like the Crawford classic and that Carol
Burnett spoof now offers all new laughs.
A few audio commentary tracks with Haynes (et al) to be heard after
seeing the series is the only extra, though HBO has once again come up with
superior packaging.
New up is
Switched At Birth, Volume One
(2011), a series that should have been on ABC (where they were too busy
fighting a losing battle to revive Charlie’s
Angels) and shockingly comes form the lite ABC Family channel. The story of two female children mixed up at
a hospital picks up when the two (Katie Leclerc, Vanessa Marano) have become
teenagers when the error has finally come to the surface. Bay (Marano) lives with her moneyed parents
(a great combination of the underrated D.W. Moffett and ever-enduring Lea
Thompson) and Daphne (Leclerc) is with her divorced mother whose father walked
out on them. Daphne is also deaf, buy
the makers use this as leverage to bring us into the world of deaf living in a
way long, long overdue and lands up being groundbreaking while the potentially
lame soap opera aspects are mowed over by fine performances, amazing chemistry
in the casting and solid character development.
Far more
than Glee, I think this is the show
that should be seen as at least a minor classic and along with How To Make It In America the best U.S.
TV show since Big Bang Theory. It also showcases more than a few other
actors who may be on the path to even more success (including Constance Marie,
Sean Berdy, Lucas Grabeel, Austin Butler, Blair Redford, Charles Michael Davis,
Ivonne Coll) and Marlee Matlin also has an amazing turn here that is just icing
on the cake. Go out of your way to catch
this one.
Last but
not least is Underbelly: The Trilogy,
an amazing Australian Gangster television series as bloody and brutal as The Sopranos was. No doubt inspired by that success, the only
show since with as much commercial and critical success has been the New Zealand hit Outrageous Fortune (reviewed elsewhere on this site as an import),
but that series never made it to the U.S., but Underbelly has. Still
running on TV, this set has the first three seasons of the show covering the
organized crime scene Down Under from 1975 – 2006, but not in a way you might
expect.
Though
each season takes place in the same world, we get a different multi-layered
story every season that takes us from start to finish, showing us the ins and
outs of the crime, criminals and a less glamorous side of Australia that is now,
recent, today and like their Westerns add greatly to the idea of how a genre
functions, works and what you can do with it.
With Gangster film and TV shows a played-out, cliché-ridden joke from
Hollywood and the U.S., Underbelly
pulls no punches and is a phenomenal success the way Number 96 (reviewed elsewhere on this site) was decades ago.
A Tale Of Two Cities season covers the early years and
is the most brutal, The Golden Mile season switches to the
seedy title location and the power struggle that goes on there and the War
On The Streets season deals with police corruption (The Red Riding Hood Trilogy from the
U.K. might come to mind) all adding up to the kind of realism you might also
recall from the likes of the U.S. anthology series Police Story (finally on DVD in the U.S.). Any serious fan of Gangster tales in general
will want to go out of their way for this set and I hope it finds an
audience. It also demonstrates how
extremely talented and underrated the film and TV making community in Australia
is, yet again.
Extras
include two Making Of featurettes on the first and third sets, plus a
documentary on one of the big criminals from the third Streets story arc in real life.
This is a great show and I hope we get the fourth season and it is suddenly
discovered as it should be.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Mildred
is easily the best-looking and best performing of all the releases here, shot
on Super 16mm film and stylized nicely to look like the period without
degrading the image into a joke. The
makers got as much out of their low budget as possible and it looks and feels
like the period all the way. The anamorphically
enhanced DVD version is softer than I expected, but still good enough for the
format and on par with the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image throughout
all three Underbelly seasons. That leaves the anamorphically enhanced 1.78
X 1 image on Birth softer than any
of them, though I bet it and Underbelly would greatly benefit from Blu-ray
releases.
The DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Mildred
is also easily the best sounding of all the releases on the list with warm,
consistent recording throughout and the use of music (and old hit records) is a
plus. The DVD version and other DVD sets
here all have lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes and in the case of Mildred, it
cannot compete with the DTS-MA on the Blu-ray.
Underbelly is about on par
it, but Birth (even with its own
clever sound design moments) is too much towards the front speakers and that
holds back its performance overall.
Disney overuses the center channel too much and that happens more here
than it should, but don’t let that stop you from getting this set.
- Nicholas Sheffo
