A Most Wanted Man (2014/Lionsgate Blu-ray)/The Honorable Woman (2014)/Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: Volume One (Joan Hickson/1984 - 1986/BBC Blu-ray Set)/Silent Witness: The Complete Season One (1996) + Complete Season Seventeen (2014/BBC DVD Sets)

Picture: B-/C+/B/C/C+ Sound: B/C+/B-/C+/C+ Extras: C/C/C+/D/D Episodes: B-/B/B-/B-/C+

A spy mystery feature film, plus four similar, yet different new mystery/thriller shows have been issued by the BBC in their continued parade of high quality TV on home video sets.

We start with Anton Corbjin's A Most Wanted Man (2014) is one of the better feature film adaptations of a novel by legendary spy thriller author John le Carre, including recent entries like The Constant Gardner (mixed), The Russia House (problematic), Tailor Of Panama (not bad) and Tinker Sailor Solider Spy (in the shadow of the TV mini-series). Corbijn himself has a great rack record of various short films Music Videos and the like, but has also been building an impressive track record in feature films including Control (reviewed elsewhere on this site; his 2007 film about the band Joy Division) and The American (2010, an underrated George Clooney thriller meant for intelligent adults). Therefore, bringing the two together seems like a good idea and it turns out it was.

However, there is even more synergy here, albeit sad, since the lead German spy trying to juggle a potential terrorism plot, is the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman in the last lead role of his career. Before his awful passing, he was on a roll with great turns in Moneyball, The Master, A Late Quartet and God's Pocket, plus making those silly Hunger Games films slightly more watchable and profitable. As Gunther Bachmann, he is an older spy whose been around the espionage block more than a few times, has a tenuous relationship with the CIA and a track-record that is flawed. All the more reason he intends to find out about an alleged torture victim (Grigoriy Dobrygin) who has suddenly showed up in Hamburg, with the additional oddity that he has a special package waiting for him at a bank run by its co-founder (Willem Dafoe). When it turns out to be a huge amount of money, Gunther feels he has intercepted a big plot to fund terrorism.

However, the victim has a lawyer in a young woman (Rachel McAdams) who wants to sincerely help him out and wants to believe he is innocent of any activities to hurt or kill anyone, especially after he shows her his many wound marks. Even she is a bit cynical and every character here is in a bit of an isolated position, with a smartly written script, especially in its dialogue. This gives the fine cast, including Nina Hoss and Robin Wright as agents with different agendas and points of view. Despite being a bit predictable and familiar, I really enjoyed seeing such rich talent having the chance to tackle rich material from a filmmaker who is an unacknowledged heavyweight. It is one of the years gems and you should definitely catch it as soon as you can.

Extras include two featurettes: a Making Of piece and Spymaster: John le Carre in Hamburg. For more on Corbijn's work, we strongly recommend the compilation of his short films and superior Music Videos in the Work Of Anton Corbijn from the underrated Directors Label series:

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2731/Work+Of+Anton+Corbijn+(Directors+Label

Next is the surprisingly strong The Honorable Woman (2014), similar in dealing with terrorism to Man above and is the best BBC mini-series since the great surprise of The Hour a few years ago that landed up having a second season. Maggie Gyllenhaal as a wealthy British/Jewish woman trying to being peace to The Middle East through a project that would bring wireless service to both sides of the split region, but many think she is not going to get far. Even worse, there are some darker things happening, only some of which she knows.

Her family is very respected in the UK (Gyllenhaal pulls off a flawless accent) but they still have some opposition among powerful friends and those vying for the contract to build the fiber-optic network to deliver this bridge, symbolic and actual. She has her brother who seems supportive, but all is not totally well with them, including his wife (Katharine Parkinson of the great U.K. comedy The IT Crowd, more than holding her own in a purely dramatic role) and murder is in the mix.

Turns out several intelligence agencies are also interested in all this good will, but they are at odds with each other, leaving MI-5 to get an older operative (Stephen Rea) to do a special investigation of his own. This runs 8 episode and though I though the first show had some issues, the ones that follow manage to overcome what might have been narrative implosion and this turns out to be much better, smarter and more suspenseful than you would expect. Predictability is limited and there are some very brave, graphic, bold and stark moments throughout that put this above the usual genre formula and expect what you might see from an HBO show in that respect. Definitely recommended!

The only extras is the Behind The Scenes featurette entitled Deconstructing The Lies.

Even more explicitly a mystery entry, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: Volume One is not a Blu-ray upgrade of the more recent series Acorn issued on DVD, but the older, well respected Joan Hickson series from the 1980s. There have been many Christie TV adaptations (you'll find many of them elsewhere on this site) and a few feature films like the Margaret Rutherford trilogy of MGM films from the 1960s (also on this site) and several Hercule Poirot films then and later. While we got a trilogy of still-talked about Poirot films (Murder On the Orient Express, Death On The Nile, the underrated Evil Under The Sun), only one feature film came out of the same producers in The Mirror Crack'd.

While Poirot continued in feature films, then TV movies, Marple was picked up by the BBC and the Hickson series was launched. Fans of the books tend to feel they are as close as any filmed (or taped) versions of the classic novels and this set has four solid entries:

The Murder At The Vicarage (book originally written 1930 as Marple’s debut) - When a prominent Colonel (Robert Lang) is found shot to death in the Vicar's study, the murderer makes the mistake of committing the murder at St. Mary Mead. Though he was not well liked, Miss Marple is going to find his killer if it is the last thing she does. Polly Adams, Cheryl Campbell, James Hazeldine, Paul Eddington and David Horovich also star.

The Body In The Library (1942) - An 18-year-old dancer turns up dead in the Library at St. Mary Mead, so Miss Marple goes out to find the why, the connection to dance and has more suspects than usual to sort through as a result. Friend Dolly Bantry (Gwen Watford) helps her out on this one and this one also stars the great frederick Jaeger, Debbie Arnold and Anthony Smee.

The Moving Finger (1942) - Poison pen letters abound when anyone moves to Little Furze. When a few targets of those letters turn up dead, Miss Marple is finally called in to investigate in another clever tale of murder also starring Sabrina Franklin and Andrew Bricknell.

A Murder Is Announced (1950) - When a newspaper ad tells everyone a murder will take place at Chipping Cleghorn, Miss Marple skips afternoon tea to take the trip to join the woman who lives there, Letitia Blacklock (Ursula Howells) who is as shocked as anyone that murder is coming to her home uninvited! When a dead body turns up, it runs out to be the man who placed the ad! Now, Jane has to find out what he might have known and was running from. Renee Asherson and Kevin Whatley also star.

I enjoyed them and has not seen them in eons, but their only drawback is sometimes they are not as suspenseful as I would like them to be, though Hickson holds her own without being showy and I think the humor in The Mirror Crack'd not working out may have caused a slight backlash in how this show was done. Helen Hayes did a separate Marple telefilm in 1985 unconnected to this show. Can't wait to revisit more. Part One of a documentary mini-series A Very British Murder: A New Taste For Blood is the only extra, hosted by Lucy Worsley and runs just over 50 minutes.

Last but not least is the long-running police drama Silent Witness, which initially made a big splash showing up on A&E in the U.S. to raves, as well as a hit in its native U.K. where it continued to be more popular. I was not aware it was still in production, but now we have Silent Witness: The Complete Season One (1996) and Complete Season Seventeen (2014) to see and compare. Unfortunately, it does not bode well for the later seasons, if not making them as bad as the endless seasons of MidSomer Murders.

Reflecting the changes in such dramas on both sides of the Atlantic, the debut season is bold, gritty, violent and pulls no punches in delivering top-rate crime drama with Amanda Burton (Bronson, TV's The Commander), William Armstrong (Dark Knight), Sam Parks, Ruth McCabe (Philomena, My Left Foot) and Ruth Gemmell (Good, Fever Pitch) making up the original cast which had great chemistry and made all of the stark storytelling very honest, palpable and convincing where the police work has a very real sense of mortality. There are only four episodes at TV movie length, but they are as effective as if they came out of the 1970s.

18 years later, the original cast is sadly gone, replaced with a new cast including Emilia Fox (The Pianist), Richard Lintern (The Bank Job, Syriana), David Caves and Liz Carr. They are not bad together, but do not gel as well, yet the biggest issue is that the show is now a cleaner, flatter, comparatively more generic police procedural that is the opposite of what it started out as. This results is a dulling of the suspense, realism and impact of its 5 episodes. Now you can judge for yourself, but it definitely is only on as a series now out of habit and name. The character is gone.

There are no extras on either season set.

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Wanted is the only real HD presentation of the newest entries here production-wise and shot in HD, looks very consistent throughout with minimal styling and a smart use of composition and color. The 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image on the 16mm-shot Marple telefilms look fine for their age and though they have some minor flaws, some of which is from the BBC slightly overdoing the cleaning of the frames (ala their Space: 1999 (for A&E) and classic Dr. Who TV Blu-rays) but all offering some great shots that show yet again how great 16mm can look when shot and transferred correctly.

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Wanted is well mixed and presented, sometimes with exceptional clarity as expected form a Corbijn film, but other moments are quiet and refined as expected from a genre of such suspense. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 2.0 Mono mixes on the Marple episodes can display some impressive clarity, fullness and warmth for their age, sounding as good as they ever will.

The 1.33 X 1 image on Witness One may be a little softer transfer-wise on this DVD, but it has as much character as the slightly clearer, anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image presentations on the other DVD sets shots in HD. Color is good in all cases, though we get slight motion blur in all cases, especially the newer productions. All three DVD sets offer lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound and are on par with each other, which is impressive on the Witness One set since it is an older production.

- Nicholas Sheffo