Ancient Aliens: Season Three/Frozen
World: The Story Of The Ice Age/King
Arthur & Medieval Britain/Storage
Wars: Volume Two (all 2011/A&E DVD Sets)
Picture: C+/C/C/C+ Sound: B-/C+/C+/C+ Extras: D Episodes: C (Frozen: B-)
A&E
continues its drive towards mixing reality TV and history in their own original
programming that they split between themselves and sister station The History
Channel. It is odd at times and does not
always work, but some have found ratings.
Ancient Aliens: Season Three continues the increasingly
hard-for-me-to-buy show speculating on if extra-terrestrials visited us
centuries ago. Our previous coverage has
made the case for the show not working…
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10550/Ancient+Aliens+%E2%80%93+Seaso
…as well
as the show working…
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11042/Ancient+Aliens:+Season+Two+(Histor
I lean
towards my coverage of the first season, but feel this has become increasingly
thin and am amazed it is still on the air.
This is a 4 DVD (!!!) set with 16 episodes that all seem longer than
they should. If you must watch, you
don’t have to start from the beginning as these are all interchangeable, but I
was more bored than ever. There are no
extras.
Frozen World: The Story Of The Ice
Age was more like
it, four episodes over two discs speculating and investigating the rise and
fall of an Ice Age we can be certain happened many centuries ago. Though not perfect, it is a well done show,
but it also shows its age and there are no extras here either. Episodes (in 1.33 X 1 framing) are Clash Of The Cavemen, Volcanic Winter, Journey To 10,000 B.C. and Mega
Freeze.
King Arthur & Medieval Britain is a dated look at the legend
from an older TV production (the Quest
episode is letterboxed 1.78 X 1, the rest 1.33 X 1) that seems like a
half-enthused effort and the subject has been covered too much at this point,
as this
link to King Arthur’s Britain
shows:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2803/King+Arthur%27s+Britain
I did not
learn anything new here and this even seemed cheap. See it only if you are an Arthur
fanatic. There are no extras, but the
episodes are Quest For King Arthur, King Arthur: His Life & Legend, Ancient Mysteries: Camelot, Knights & Armor and Quest For The Holy Grail.
Last and
as boring surprisingly is Storage Wars:
Volume Two with a group of fortune hunters who are a bad mix, have awful
chemistry and make this the poorest season of any such collectibles shows the
network has produced to date. It is a far
cry from the debut season we covered at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11222/America:+The+Story+Of+Us+Collecti
14
episodes under a half-hour are here over 2 DVDs and they were middling at best,
though at least the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image looks as good as
anything here, but editing and stylized work is more overdone than usual. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on all four
releases hold up well overall for such programs, but Ancient seems to have some Pro Logic surrounds.
- Nicholas Sheffo
