Californication – The Fourth Season (2010/Showtime/CBS DVD)/Kojak: The Complete Movie Collection (1973 – 1990/Shout! Factory
DVD Set)/New Tricks – Season Six (2009/Acorn
DVD Set)/thirtysomething… - Season One,
Volume Two (1988/Mill Creek DVD)
Picture: C+/C+/C+/C Sound: B-/C+/C+/C Extras: C/C+/C/D Episodes/Telefilms: C+/B/B-/C
Up next
are four “quality television” releases for your consideration…
The David
Duchovny cable hit Californication – The
Fourth Season (2010) holds steady as a very watchable show as his character
gets into more trouble than even he may have expected, making this cliffhanger
somewhat like a nighttime soap opera, but amusing and more so if you have seen
earlier seasons like the prior one we covered at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10590/Californication+%E2%80%93+The+T
There are
12 half-hours again making up the season and he becomes the show’s de facto
anti-hero, but the arc of his character makes perfect sense just the same and
Duchovny does a fine job with his lead role and is more than capable of
carrying a show as we already know. It
is best to start with the debut season and watch forward chronologically, but
this is not bad on its old watching it cold.
Extras are six episodes from three other Showtime series: Gigolos, Episodes and The Borgias.
Though
only the Third Season DVD set is just around the corner, Universal and Shout!
Factory have decided to issue Kojak: The
Complete Movie Collection (1973 – 1990) which begins with the still-amazing
original TV movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders which remains a TV movie classic and
then jumps to long after the original show was cancelled for seven more
telefilms starting in 1987 that marked a successful revival of the character
with Telly Savalas picking up where he left off with no problems at all.
Those
later telefilms are The Belarus File (1985), The Price Of Justice (1987), Ariana
(1988), Fatal Flaw (1989), Flowers For Matty (1990), It’s
Always Something (1990) and None So Blind (1990), which are all
amusing and watchable (holding up better than you might think), but they were
never quite as gritty as the original show, but were professionally done (more
so than much of the same kind of show we see today) and are at least
entertaining. This includes some new
transfers of the films too, but more on that in a moment. The telefilms have synopsis inside the cover
sleeve and a nice extra in a cast/crew/family interviews featurette was a very
pleasant surprise.
It has
been a while since I viewed a season of the British TV hit New Tricks, a crime drama with some comedy, but Season Six (2009) is as good as Season
Three and the cast has only improved on their chemistry. For those unfamiliar with the show, here is
our coverage of the last three seasons:
Three
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10795/Capture+Of+The+Green+River+Killer
Four
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11102/New+Tricks+-+Season+Four+(2007/A
Five
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11206/New+Tricks+-+Season+Five+(2008/A
This new
set opens with one of the team going to rehab, but even there, trouble is not
far away, but that is forgotten by the next show and the series resumes being
the smart-and-pleasant-but-safe series I remembered. However, I was surprised that it had not worn
thin or become boring as I expected it might from the weekly TV grind, to the
credit of the makers and cast. We get
eight nearly-hour-long shows on 3 DVDs and a 19-minutes-long behind-the-scenes
featurette as our only extras. Though
you might want to start from the beginning, you can pick up here and still
enjoy this one.
thirtysomething… - Season One,
Volume Two (1988)
is simply Mill Creek reissuing the other half of the Shout! Factory full Season One set we already covered at
this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8927/thirtysomething+%E2%80%93+The+C
This one
has no extras.
The anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Californication
and Tricks look as good as anything
here as they should for being the newest productions, but they are still a
little softer than I would have liked and know these would look better on
Blu-ray. The 1.33 X 1 on thirtysomething is the weakest here as
Mill Creek squeezes more episodes on each DVD than Shout! Factory did.
The Kojak
set was expected to be 1.33 X 1 all the way, but as early as telefilm four, Ariana
we get the rest of the TV movies in anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1
presentations that are likely debuts for most of them and will surprise fans
and no fans alike for looking so good.
No, they are not always perfect, but I hope more later TV movies get this
kind of treatment where applicable. Too
bad the DVD case does not explain this clearly, only noting in general both
aspect ratios exist, but some might expect this only to apply to the last two
or three telefilms.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 5.1 on Californication
is the only multi-channel presentation here and it is better than the other
DVDs offered and above the also-lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo alternate option
on the same shows. The 5.1 soundfield is
not bad ands well recorded. Tricks has lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo that is nicely recorded, but limited at times, while the same on thirtysomething is the weakest sound
here being barely stereo and its limited dynamic range is a generation down
from the Shout! Factory DVD version. The
Kojak set starts with Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono on the original TV movie and it sounds really good for its age, while
the latter telefilms are Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo that sometimes have faint Pro
Logic-type surrounds.
- Nicholas Sheffo