Waking the Dead

Waking the Dead: Series 1, Episodes 1 and 2: Burn Out

Written by Peter Jukes; Directed by Edward Bennett

The series proper begins, and the various alterations made after the pilot had aired are firmly in case. The status of Boyd's son now conforms with the established canon, although the fact that it is stated that he would be 25 now (i.e. 2001) is somewhat at odds with the depiction of the character seven years later in the recently aired Series 7, in which the actor playing the re-emergent Luke Boyd couldn't have been much more than that age. Still, that's a complaint for my Series 7 reviews, which I'll no doubt get on to at some point.

In any event, this first episode dwells to a considerable extent on the degree to which the loss of Boyd's son is playing on his mind. The specifics of his disappearance are not elaborated on at this stage, with it simply being made clear that he is missing, presumed dead. Fitting, therefore, that, on what would be his son's 25th birthday, he encounters a young woman, Marina Coleman, whose father supposedly burned to death in a car crash nine years ago, who is haunted by the man's memory and believes that there is more to the case than either suicide or accidental death. Badgered into taking on the case by Marina, Boyd, who initially tells her that he doesn't accept cases on request, becomes increasingly driven to solve this mystery, much to the annoyance of his team, who are being leaned on by Detective Assistant Commissioner Christie (Simon Kunz) to produce results.

Marina, by the way, is played by Angela Griffin, who portrayed nurse Jasmine Hopkins throughout the first three series of Holby City. Several other names crop up on both sides of the camera related to it and its parent show, Casualty, beyond the obvious example of series creator Barbara Machin, and Claire Goose (who, immediately prior to Waking the Dead, played nurse Tina Seabrook for three years in Casualty), and if I can remember I'll point them out as they occur.

This episode's greatest strength, the straightforwardness of the mystery, is also its greatest weakness. On the one hand, the pool of suspects is fairly small and the script doesn't throw in any unreasonable twists out of left field, which means that, unlike some of the later episodes, you can actually make sense of this one on the first viewing. On the downside, I guessed what was going on a few minutes into the second hour, after which point it became slightly frustrating having to watch the team going around in circles. Boyd is remarkably slow to catch on to all of this - "I don't understand," he says at one point. Well, it's not exactly rocket science, and if I was DAC Christie I wouldn't consider the amount of time it took the case to be solved as much of an incentive to keep the Cold Case Unit afloat.

In addition to laying much of the groundwork as regards Boyd's son, we also get something of a hint of the sheer nastiness of which the character is capable when he tells a suspect, with some glee, that the team is about to exhume his brother's body, and then proceeds, with total calm, to tear him to pieces by completely stripping him of his worth. In many ways, this earlier, calmer Boyd is actually more disturbing than the later one who rants and raves and throws his weight about, because he is so deceptively polite.

At the other end of the spectrum, though, I really enjoy the interaction between the team, and the sense of camaraderie that exists between them - something which is almost completely absent in the more recent episodes, where no-one seems to have a sense of humour. The jubilation they experience over cracking a particularly tough case is quite infectious, and the dinner scene between Boyd and Grace is very nice too. All in all, a good start to the series, if an unspectacular one.

Waking the Dead: Pilot

Written by Barbara Machin; Directed by Martin Hutchings

The two-part pilot episode aired almost a year before the series itself, and feels very much like a dry run. Not in the sense that it's inferior to what followed, but because it clearly serves as an opportunity to test the waters by experimenting with the various parameters. Several elements were changed between the pilot and the first episode of Series 1: among them, fairly minor details like Mel's surname (Silverman in the pilot, Silver in the series) and the music and title sequence, the familiar Joe Campbell composition not having yet been adopted. More significantly, elements of the characters' lives shown in this episode directly contradict what we learn in the series itself. This is particularly true of Boyd, who, in the pilot, is still with his wife, with whom he has a baby, Matt. (In the series, Boyd and his wife are separated, and their son, Luke, is considerably older and is missing presumed dead. Actually, if you want, an argument could be made that Boyd does in fact have two sons, but I'm not sure how theoretically possible that would be.)

The pilot sets the tone by dealing with a case which has personal significance for Boyd. Several years ago, he was the investigating officer in the kidnap of a teenage girl. The girl was raped and then murdered, and the press announcement that Boyd has re-opened the case prompts the original attacker, Jimmy Marshall (Finbar Lynch), to abduct another girl, Jodie Whitemoor (Amelia Warner). By cross-cutting between scenes with Jimmy and Jodie, and the investigation itself, a considerable amount of tension is built up, exacerbated by our knowledge of how the previous case, the obvious template for this one, ended. To a degree, Boyd's personal involvement feels ever so slightly contrived, but it's an effective way to introduce the characters and the formula, and, in the second part, when it becomes clear that Marshall's plans for Boyd go far beyond making him relive his previous failure, things (without giving too much away for first-timers) become even more personal.

Interestingly enough, Boyd, who, in the series, clearly believes in the "he who shouts loudest" mantra, is quite an understated presence here, quiet and contemplative, and actually diffusing rather than causing any arguments that break out among the team. Most of the conflict comes from the protocol-obsessed Frankie and her dealings with Spence, who is more concerned with the feelings of the dead girl's relatives than with following the book. (Their opposing attitudes towards an exhumation raise some interesting moral and ethical dilemmas.) In later episodes, Boyd would become Frankie's sparring partner, which in a sense is a shame, because I always felt Spence was the least interesting of the core cast, and confrontations such as the ones he has with Frankie in the pilot hint at a more interesting personality than we would end up with as the series progressed.

Holby connections: the director, Martin Hutchings, has helmed episodes of all three Holby shows, including the pilot episodes of both Holby City and Holby Blue. Additionally, David Sterne (Mac in Holby Blue) has a very brief appearance in this episode as a shopkeeper.

The Waking the Dead Project

I've mentioned once or twice already that I was going to do a Waking the Dead project, similar to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer project I did a couple of years back and which nearly broke my will and sanity. 144 episodes of any television programme is a lot, but the number seems particularly high when you consider that the final two seasons, 44 episodes' worth of material, were at times pretty appalling. Luckily, Waking the Dead has two things in its favour. Number one, there have, to date, been only 74 episodes (including the two-part pilot). Number two, while the later series have, in my opinion, not been of the same standard as the earlier ones, the show has never plumbed the same depths as Buffy at its worst.

The main failing of my Buffy project was the perspective from which I wrote it. Essentially, I wrote as a fan talking to other fans, and therefore didn't take account of the fact that not everyone reading my ramblings would be as intimately familiar with the series, characters and storylines as I was. I didn't make it easy for people to understand what I was talking about, and I suspect I probably didn't convince anyone unfamiliar with the show to check it out either. It would be a shame if I didn't persuade anyone to give Waking the Dead a whirl - I think it's a very good series, and if I thought otherwise I wouldn't be attempting this project - so right off the bat I'm going to do my best to make things a bit more accessible this time round.

To briefly explain what this is all about, Waking the Dead is the creation of a writer named Barbara Machin. Hers is not exactly a household name, but it's one with which I'm familiar because it appeared at the beginning of many an episode of Casualty between 1990 and 1998. The episodes she wrote for the medical drama stand out as being among the best, often due to her seeming fascination with mental disorders and her attempts to get inside the minds of those so afflicted.

Waking the Dead's concept is that of "cold cases", i.e. police investigations that have been shelved or thought to have been closed but which have been opened up due to new evidence coming to light, or because it is thought that the advanced forensic and profiling systems available in the 21st century may shed new light on old material. The idea is not necessarily groundbreaking, and seems even less so when you consider the existence of American-originated shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Cold Case (both of which, I feel compelled to point out, came along after Waking the Dead), but it's a good one, I think, because it allows the programme's writers to cherry-pick from virtually any period in recent history. Each investigation tends to challenge the viewer's ability to keep track of the various ongoing strands and suspects, although it has at times drawn criticism (from people including myself) for being overly convoluted for its own sake.

What, for me, however, makes the early episodes of this show so enjoyable is the interaction between the Cold Case Unit. There are five core members of the team, three of whom have been present for all (so far) seven series. The man at the centre is Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd (Trevor Eve), a driven, moody and at times baffling man who, taking a page right out of the Detective Clichés Handbook, sometimes breaks the rules or acts like a jerk but gets results. Working under him are DS (later DI) Spencer Jordan (Wil Johnson) and DC (later DS) Amelia "Mel" Silver (Claire Goose), who find their boss' behaviour strange and a bit alarming at times, but grit their teeth and put up with his mood swings because they know from experience that his slightly unorthodox methods work. Joining them is Dr. Grace Foley (Sue Johnston), a psychological profiler who, it has been suggested to me, is the audience's main point of identification because she is the level-headed one who often diffuses Boyd's temper tantrums and smoothes out discord within the team. (She also happens to be my favourite character for reasons that I'm sure to discuss in my episode reviews.) The final player is Dr. Frankie Wharton (Holly Aird), a forensic scientist and someone who is somewhat on the periphery of the team, something which is emphasised fairly often in the earlier episodes by portraying her as feeling marginalised and out of the loop. Frankie is every bit as obsessive about her work as Boyd, spending seemingly every waking hour in her lab, but she is able to keep her head in a way that Boyd isn't.

The format of the series stays more or less the same, generally opening with a crime taking place or a new piece of evidence being discovered. From then on, the team and the audience are introduced to the evidence and an array of suspects, with the investigation being teased out over the course of two one-hour episodes. Each two-parter tells a self-contained story, although in the last couple of years some attempted has been made to thread either a similar theme or an ongoing story arc throughout each series. Sometimes the episodes take the form of a whodunit; on other occasions, the audience is in on the culprit's identity while the team is in the dark. Occasionally, there is an obvious suspect and the storyline consists of the team building the case against him/her. What does, for the most part, remain consistent is that, broadly speaking, we only see the team in the context of their job. There have been exceptions, particularly in the pilot and in the most recent series, but Waking the Dead is, by and large, devoid of soap opera, which is definitely appreciated given the TV crime drama genre's tendency to combine the professional with the private.

Without further ado, it's time for me to crack on with the first review...

DVDs I bought or received in the month of May

• 30 Days of Night (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Enchanted (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Golden Compass (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Mrs. Doubtfire (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Orphanage (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• Waking the Dead: Series 6 (R2 UK, DVD)

Definitely a very Blu month for me, which I have no complaints about whatsoever. I was going to post a bit about the various titles listed above, but for some reason I only managed to get an hour and a half of sleep last night, and as a result I'm absolutely knackered. Therefore, I'm off to get some serious shut-eye now, if I can. Laters.

Thoughts on Kiss of Death

Last night saw the screening, on BBC1, of Barbara Machin's latest venture, a 90-minute crime drama entitled Kiss of Death. It probably wouldn't be too much of a stretch for me to say that I think Machin is one of the best writers working in television at the moment. She wrote my all-time favourite episode of Casualty, Perfect Blue (as well as two other episodes in my personal top ten - an impressive feat, given that she's not exactly prolific), and created Waking the Dead, for which I am forever grateful to her. She also wrote the only episode of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman worth a damn, and has continued to demonstrate a refusal to be governed by the constraints normally imposed on the genres with which she works. Two Christmases ago, she turned Casualty on its head by adopting a Rashômon-like structure to tell a gritty medical thriller story, and Kiss of Death applies much the same format to the police procedural.

On paper, Kiss of Death is not all that different from Waking the Dead. Most of the same personalities are present and correct: we have the haunted senior police officer, the slightly oddball forensic scientist, the over-eager junior female detective who worked hard to get out of uniform, and so on and so forth. The programme's uniqueness came not from its characters or the situation in which they found themselves but from the fragmented manner in which the story was told. Whereas the Casualty episode Killing Me Softly used the unprecedented (at least in Casualty) but fairly straightforward concept of showing the events of a day consecutively from the perspective of three different characters (each shift being indicated by flashing the character's name up on the screen), Kiss of Death ups the number of available points of view to at least nine characters and continually jumps back and forth between them, also going both forwards and backwards in time. That I managed to keep up with what was going on is, I think, a testament to Machin's writing and the directing of her old colleague, Casualty co-creator Paul Unwin, but I can imagine many viewers finding this very frustrating. Credit where credit's due, therefore, to the often lowest-common-denominator BBC for commissioning and airing in a prime time-slot (9 PM on a weekday night) something that actually set out to challenge its audience's expectations and intelligence. It's just too bad it had the misfortune of airing directly after a highly sensationalised and tabloidish Panorama investigation into child molesters who use the Internet to prey on their victims.

Last night's screening was billed as a one-off drama, much in the same manner as Waking the Dead when its two-part pilot episode aired back in 2000. It eventually returned for a full series in 2001, after certain stylistic elements and character backgrounds had been retooled, and I'd like to think that, in much the same manner, Kiss of Death has its own series to look forward to. However, I very much doubt that it could continue as anything but a one-off in its present form, given the extent to which the events depicted relied on the personal involvement of its protagonists. In what is becoming increasingly typical of television dramas, most of the main characters had a Dark Past, many of them interconnected. Our main detective, Kay Rousseau (played rather well by former CSI star Louise Lombard, this time sporting her native English accent with only an occasional Transatlantic vowel sound), had only recently returned to work after being convicted and later acquitted of the death of her baby, and it was implied that her being let off the hook was due mainly to work done behind the scenes by her ex-husband Miles (Ace Bhatti), who ensured that the "right people" worked on her case. Kay also had a History (with a capital "H") with both her profiler, Clive (Shaun Parkes) and her forensic scientist, George (Lyndsey Marshal), the latter having helped put together the case against Kay during the investigation into her child's death. George, it is also revealed, has or had a serious drink problem, and an action on her part in a previous case may or may not be connected to the murder that the team is presently investigating. Finally, Kay's second-in-command, Costello, is played by Danny Dyer, which is enough of a defect in itself without giving the character any additional problems.

That probably all sounds a bit contrived, and, in a sense, I suppose it was. The structure was such that I didn't really get to care a great deal for any of the main characters, apart from George, who I've come to the conclusion is my favourite, mainly thanks to her uncharacteristically enthusiastic reaction to the blood and guts that her job brings her into contact with. Seriously, the look on her face as she examines the contents of a murder victim's bowel (see the image below) would put many a gore movie fan to shame. The rest of the characters, however, seemed a bit too distant or flawed to really care about them, and I suspect that a lot of this was a result of the unconventional narrative structure that had been adopted. With the episodes of Casualty in which Machin first began to experiment with this method of storytelling, this was considerably less of a problem, given that the audience had already established a relationship with the characters that she was using to tell her story, in the case of the likes of Josh and Charlie going back 15-20 years. Here, however, I found myself thrust into an extremely disorientating world populated by characters that I was getting to know only via brief snippets of information delivered in non-chronological order.

This probably sounds like I'm coming down rather hard on Kiss of Death, which is not the case at all. On the contrary, I really enjoyed it... if "enjoyed" is the right word, given the bleak tone and often gruesome imagery on display. The programme worked as an experiment first and a piece of storytelling second, and it required me to invest effort in it to get the most out of it, but I suspect that's no bad thing. On the whole, I feel that the Casualty two-parter I've already mentioned was more satisfying as a piece of drama, mainly because I didn't feel there that the structure was hampering my ability to connect with the characters, but Kiss of Death was a gripping, challenging piece of television and a more than welcome antidote to an often formulaic and predictable schedule.

Dead rising

My copy of the DVD release of the sixth series of Waking the Dead arrived on Tuesday, coincidentally on the same day that the twelfth and final episode of seventh series aired on BBC1. Series 6 stands out to me as by far the weakest of the bunch, for a number of reasons, but it's been over a year since I last saw it and I'm genuinely curious to see if it plays better on a second viewing. The thing about Waking the Dead is that the plots are often so convoluted that they require two or three viewings to work out what's actually going on and simply enjoy the drama on its own merits.

In any event, Series 7, on the whole, constituted a definite step up from Series 6. It shared the same core cast of characters, the same producer, Colin Wratten, and the same head writer, Declan Croghan, but this time round, all but one of the six two-part storylines was at least worth a watch, even if the overall standard varied wildly from episode to episode. The stand-out, this time round, was Skin, a storyline involving a group of neo-Nazis connected with the murder of a gay Jewish man. The twist, which I'll spoil here given that the episode in question has now aired, was that their victim had in fact infiltrated their group by posing as a skinhead himself, and has succeeded in infecting all of them with the AIDS virus by mixing his own blood into the pigment he then used to give them tattoos. It was a unique concept, and exceedingly well-told too, and I'm quite pleased with myself for managing to work out what was going on a good five minutes before it was revealed in the programme itself, which I think speaks well for its refusal to cheat the audience by throwing in a massive twist out of left field.

Unfortunately, Skin, and the first part of the final storyline, Pietà, were the only ones that I felt were up to the standards of the earlier series. It doesn't speak well of the second two-parter that I actually had to look up LocateTV to remind myself what it had been about. On the other hand, the fifth storyline, Wounds, sticks in my mind for all the wrong reasons. Gimmicky in the extreme and confusing for its own sake, it was more along the lines of the previous series with its pseudo-mysticism, muddy structure and overuse of flashbacks. I also continue to be less than impressed by forensic pathologist Eve (Tara Fitzgerald), who joined the team last year and has so far been a less than riveting replacement for Holly Aird and Esther Hall. Part of the problem stems from the fact that she never seems to alter her facial expression or manner of delivery, to the extent that, when she actually gives a slight half-smile in the final episode, it's something of a shock to discover that her mouth can actually make that shape.

In my review of Series 5, I criticised the increasingly exaggerated and unrealistic behaviour of the central character, Detective Superintendent Boyd (Trevor Eve), who would repeatedly bully his colleagues and extract confessions from suspects under duress. This behaviour escalated throughout the previous series to the extent that it became a running joke, so it was something of a relief that Series 7 went in the opposite direction, giving us an older, quieter, wearier Boyd than the one we're used to seeing. The writers certainly reined in the character's temper tantrums in this series, and likewise, Trevor Eve toned down his scenery-chewing in favour of brooding and scowling. He also, to the best of my knowledge, didn't assault anyone this year, preferring instead to leave the strong-arming to his sergeant, Stella (Félicité Du Jeu).

This uncharacteristic calmness seems particularly strange when you consider that this was the very series in which Boyd might have been considered justified in flying off the handle, in that a storyline that has been lurking on the sidelines since the very beginning of the show, the disappearance of his son, was finally resolved. At the beginning of this series, his son, Luke (who I'm fairly sure was actually named Joe in Series 1), re-appeared, a homeless drug addict who Boyd spent the rest of the series intermittently running away from and trying to help. In some respects, I thought this storyline was quite effective, providing a reason for Boyd's bizarre behaviour and also helping to tie what would have been six disparate storylines together, but at the same time I feel that it breaks the programme's crucual tenet of never allowing us to see anything of the main characters' personal lives.

The Luke storyline also created a far bigger problem for the rest of the series, because the writers seemed to insist on drawing parallels between Boyd's relationship with his son and most of the cases the team were investigating. This led to a sense of repetition, not least with the continual emphasis on missing children and fathers' dysfunctional relationships with their sons. It also meant that four of the six storylines involved a suspect, victim or witness who either was or was suggested to be gay: it is implied, at the end of the second storyline, that Luke is gay, or possibly working as a rent-boy to feed his drugs habit (the specifics of what we see are infuriatingly unclear), and, reading between the lines, I wonder to what extent we are meant to suspect that this in some way led to his estrangement from his father. The thing is, though, that Boyd may have been shown to be many things, but homophobic has never been one of them; actually, his views towards most aspects of humanity have always been characterised as fairly liberal. In the end, I don't know what to think.

On the whole, though, what we got was an improvement on the previous year's clumsy, wishy-washy series. I wouldn't characterise any of it as essential viewing, except perhaps the Skin two-parter, but it proved to be an engaging enough distraction on Monday and Tuesday evenings for six weeks, and only two of the twelve hours I devoted to it (the Wounds two-parter) are ones that I consider to have been wasted.

Creator Barbara Machin's newest project, another crime series under the title of Kiss of Death, airs next Monday, by the way. It's being billed as a one-off 90-minute drama, although Waking the Dead started out very much in the same way, airing its two-part pilot episode in 2000 before returning for a full series in 2001. The advance buzz suggests that Machin is continuing her interest in non-linear storytelling, using an approach similar to that of the Casualty episodes she wrote for Christmas 2006.

So many discs, so little time

The last few days have heralded a shed-load of DVD and Blu-ray releases pouring through my letterbox, most of which I've scarcely had time to give more than a cursory glance. Most of them were free review copies, and a good thing too as I recently had to pay off my Graduate Endowment, so my coffers are looking a little empty at the moment.

First up, and one that I did pay for, was Sony Pictures' UK Blu-ray release of Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It looks to feature a decent transfer for a catalogue title: detail is, on the whole, very good, but the tell-tale signs of grain reduction are consistently evident. At the moment, I'd peg it as being slightly better than the re-release of The Fifth Element, also from Sony, but more investigation will be needed.

Next up, on Saturday, Shameless Screen Entertainment's UK DVD release of Piero Schivazappa's trippy 60s shocker The Frightened Woman (a.k.a. Femina Ridens). As a nice surprise, they sent me a fully boxed copy rather than the "DVD in a paper wallet" affair that most of the UK studios favour, so I can savour the tacky artwork in all its, erm, glory.

Unfortunately, I can't say anything particularly positive about the transfer. Yes, it looks considerably better than my old VHS dupe, but that's not a fair or particularly realistic comparison. A more valid counterpoint would be Severin Films' release of The Psychic, which had similarly poor image quality, with a lack of detail and what looked like a dodgy scaling job, manifesting itself in the form of jagged diagonal lines. I wonder what caused this. Perhaps both films were acquired from the same licensor, or perhaps both companies used the same (incorrectly set up) encoder? Either way, if I'd paid for a company to encode my film and it came back looking like this, I would have rejected it outright. In case anyone gets the wrong idea, this is nothing to do with the quality of the source materials, which, barring some tape-based inserts for scenes which wouldn't be sourced from a print, appears to be in great shape. This issue here has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the way it has been treated at the authoring stage. Not impressed.

Also in the package was the 2-disc release of the first series of Holby Blue, from 2 Entertain (the BBC's front for commercial exploitation via optical disc). This is interesting, because I recorded the entire series directly to my computer via my USB TV stick back when it first aired, so I had a point of comparison to refer to when examining the image quality. The results, which you can see by clicking the smaller images below, are quite surprising:

Example 1
(Left: Commercial DVD; Right: My recording from DTV)

Example 2
(Left: Commercial DVD; Right: My recording from DTV)

Example 3
(Left: Commercial DVD; Right: My recording from DTV)

That's right: the DVD release is considerably more filtered than what was broadcast on BBC1. Obviously, there are considerably more compression artefacts in the captures taken from my off-air recordings - that's not surprising, given the notoriously shoddy standard of BBC's encoding (BBC1 has a fixed 6 Mbps bit rate to play around with, so there's really no excuse). I am, however, surprised, by how much more detailed my recordings are. A further black mark against the DVD release is that 2 Entertain have unceremoniously lopped off the "Previously" and "Next week" segments at the start and end of each episode, sometimes incredibly badly: the music has noticeable jump cuts and generally reeks of shoddiness. Is it so unreasonable to expect a complete package when you shell out your hard-earned cash for a TV series that you already helped pay for with your robber baron tax? (Ignoring the fact that I got the DVD for free, and, not being a home-owner, don't pay the robber baron tax.)

The final disc in this package of joy was Optimum's UK release of Dario Argento's Mother of Tears. Audio options are Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 English, with no subtitles, while the only extra is the trailer. Image quality (and I'm aware of sounding increasingly like a broken record here) is not too bad, but not too great either. There's plenty of evidence of ringing as a result of brick wall filtering, and also a massive amount of noise reduction which robs the image of its natural grain. A couple of people who got advance copies of this disc mentioned that the film looked as if it had been shot on digital video, and I see what they mean. I wonder if Medusa's Italian release (which doesn't have any English audio options) looks any better?

This morning, I received an order from DVD Pacific containing the US release of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. This was an ITV adaptation of P.D. James' novel of the same name (which I'm reading at the moment), starring Helen Baxendale and Annette Crosbie, and the DVD contains all four three-part episodes. My interest was piqued when I discovered that one of the three-parters was written by Barbara Machin, creator of Waking the Dead (the seventh series of which incidentally started tonight), so I decided to pick up this DVD set, fully aware that all four episodes feature standards converted transfers. This is, unfortunately, as far as I'm aware the only release of this programme on DVD, and beggars can't be choosers. I won't start watching till I've finished reading the book, though.

Finally - and this is where my luck with image quality finally changes - I also received a review copy of the US Blu-ray release of Juno. My good friend Peter M. Bracke opines that this is "a fairly good-looking presentation", but as usual I beg to differ. This is definitely the best high definition transfer I've seen from 20th Century Fox so far, bearing in mind that I own fewer of their films than any of the other major studios. The source material is such that it won't make you leap out of your seat, marvelling at all the detail on display, but even so it's an excellent presentation of a fairly low-key, muted-looking film.

Expect full reviews of The Frightened Woman, Holby Blue, Mother of Tears and Juno at DVD Times before very much longer.

DVD review: Waking the Dead: Series 5

Waking the Dead's fifth series is, on the whole, not up to the standard established by its predecessors, although it does offer some real gems of entertainment at various points throughout its 12-episode run. Like Boyd, the programme may not live in the real world and may at times baffle with its seemingly nonsensical twists and tangents, but, when it's firing on all cylinders, the journey, however convoluted, is always an engaging one.

Waking the Dead's seventh series begins airing tonight on BBC1, and, to coincide, I've reviewed 2 Entertain's DVD box set of Series 5, containing all 12 episodes on six discs.

Apparently they sell DVDs in shops now

As you probably know, I buy most of my DVDs online. Not only does it usually work out far cheaper than shopping for them on the high street, it's also considerably more convenient too. Since getting a job in the centre of town, however, I've often found myself wandering around the nearby shops during my lunch break, without much else to do, and have come across the odd bargain or two.

One such quite unexpected find came last Wednesday, when I decided to have a peek inside the shop that used to be called Virgin Megastore but was recently rebranded under the utterly ridiculous name of "Zaavi" and as a result is now often as quiet as the grave. They were doing a "2 for £10" deal on selected television series box sets, one of which, the first series of Lewis, I'd been meaning to pick up for a while. (To put this into perspective, it currently goes for a whopping £24.99 just up the street at the local Borders.) There weren't really any other titles in the offer that piqued my interest (why is that always the way?), so I eventually settled on a somewhat battered-looking copy of the Series 1 and 2 box set of Sugar Rush. I saw a few episodes of its second series when it was airing on TV a couple of years back, and while they weren't exactly masterpieces (ex-Casualty writer Bryan Elsley's Skins is, for my money, by far the better of Channel 4's "stroppy teenagers screwing each other and getting wasted" dramedies), I can think of worse ways of spending an evening. Besides, it was only a fiver.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of TV DVD sets, Waking the Dead's sixth series is being released on May 19th, with the seventh series supposedly to begin airing a month or so ahead of that. Series 6 was, for my money, the weakest of the bunch (I said as much when it finished airing last February), but I would welcome the opportunity to see them again and re-evaluate them. Often, with Waking the Dead, an optimal two viewings or more is required in order to work out precisely what is supposed to be happening, and seemingly weaker episodes have a habit of transforming themselves once you've had a chance to actually figure out the plot.

Mater Lacrimarum revisited

Today, I had the opportunity to watch the English version of Dario Argento's Mother of Tears. This was my second viewing of the concluding part in the Three Mothers trilogy, after watching it in Italian on Christmas Day. The viewing conditions weren't ideal (the version I saw was cropped from its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio to 1.78:1), but overall the quality was better than my Italian copy. (A Russian DVD appears to be available now, but it seems to have been the source of the cropped version I saw, so I would recommend holding out for a different release. Medusa will be releasing it in Italy on April 9th, while Optimum are supposedly putting it out in the UK on April 28th.)

In most respects, the English version improves things somewhat, although Asia Argento's performance is still uneven, closer to Trauma than to The Stendhal Syndrome. With the benefit of the English audio, Valeria Cavalli (Marta) definitely emerges as the best actor of the group, giving a strong and believable performance (the monkey is still great, though). Adam James (who has previously appeared in Casualty and Waking the Dead) is, like Asia, uneven. In some scenes he is quite effective (his final scene is quite chilling), but in others, such as when he is going nuts after his son has disappeared, he comes across as quite weak. Oh, and I don't really see the big deal about Udo Kier's performance. A lot of people described it as hammy, but it didn't strike me as problematic in any way.

On the downside, Moran Atias (Mater Lacrimarum) is awful, and I mean awful. She looks ridiculous and can't act her way out of a paper bag. She really made me yearn for Ania Pieroni. Her bald, male lackey is also hamstrung by some really atrocious dubbing, and the gothic witches continue to make me cringe. Actually, if anything, they came across as worse rather than better on a second viewing. I knew they were coming this time, but it didn't make the experience any less painful. Really, Dario, what were you thinking?

On a related note, watching the film again revealed all sorts of squandered opportunities to throw in some of the bravura colours and lighting from the first two instalments. I can only imagine how much more magical moments like Sarah lighting the fire in Michael's apartment and Marta summoning the spirits would have been had Argento used them as an excuse to unleash some Technicolor brilliance. And what happened to the idea of Mater Lacrimarum's jewel-studded robe casting primary colours on the faces of her grovelling followers? All we get now is a red T-shirt with glitter writing on it.

My original rating of 7/10 still stands. It's not a bad little film, but, as a conclusion to what was started in Suspiria and Inferno, it's a let-down. I never expected it to be on the same level as them, so I can't claim to be disappointed, but it remains a middle of the road entry in Argento's filmography - better than Trauma and The Phantom of the Opera but weaker than all his other theatrical ventures (it's better than his three recent TV projects, though, especially those embarrassing Masters of Horror episodes).

DVDs I bought or received in the month of September

• 300 (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Black Book (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• Dawn of the Dead (remake) (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• House of 1000 Corpses (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• The Lives of Others (RA USA, Blu-ray)
• Silent Hill (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Underworld (R0 Germany, HD DVD)
• Waking the Dead: Series 5 (R2 UK, DVD)
• Zodiac (R2 UK, DVD)

Another month with high definition content in a dominating position. I've essentially stopped buying standard definition material unless it (a) stands no chance of being released in HD or (b) wouldn't benefit from being in HD (e.g. TV series shot and/or edited in standard definition). Zodiac, the anomaly, was a free review copy.

Death on my mind

Well, I'm back from the research students' induction meeting - it was essentially just nibbles, drinkies and a blather - and it occurred to me that I hadn't mentioned either of my recent acquisitions.

On Tuesday, I received my copy of the Blu-ray release of House of 1000 Corpses from DVD Pacific. It features a decent but not outstanding transfer, with a VC-1 encode (intriguing, given that all of Lions Gate's previous releases have been MPEG2 or AVC). Detail is very good, and the compression is well-handled (the disc is a single layer BD25), but there is noticeable edge enhancement, and the image has been quite severely noise reduced. I haven't noticed any visible smearing, but the frozen grain in the backgrounds looks decidedly unnatural and unfilmlike, making this transfer a 7/10 for me at best. Oh, and, much to my disappointment, they haven't maintained the hilarious menus from the DVD release, which featured various members of the Firefly family instructing the viewer on menu choices. Obviously, since this material was shot in standard definition, it would have been somewhat problematic to port over, but it's too bad the footage couldn't have been incorporated into a standalone reel, because a lot of it really was very funny. "Pick a feature!!!"

I also picked up a copy of the fifth series of Waking the Dead. I was originally hoping to receive a review copy, but BBC's home video distribution division, 2 Entertain, seem to be rather inconsistent when it comes to sourcing check discs. With Casualty, I was able to get review copies of Series 1 and 3 but not 2, whereas with Waking the Dead, I got copies of Series 2 and 4 but not 1, 3 or 5. Anyway, I'm quite looking forward to seeing this series again, which aired at around this time two years ago (for some reason, there were no episodes in 2006, with the rather disappointing sixth series airing in early 2007). My memory of it is that it takes a while to find its footing, having to cope with the departure of two key cast members, but eventually turns itself around with some very strong episodes in the second half.

Incidentally, this six-disc set, just released this month, has an RRP of £34.99, but I was able to find it at DVD.co.uk for a mere £17.95 - definitely worth considering if you're planning on picking up this title.

DVD review: Waking the Dead: Series 4

Waking the Dead is one of these shows that can rub people the wrong way. Many viewers dislike the character of Boyd and his temper tantrums, and the manner in which Trevor Eve portrays him (although, in comparison with the most recent series, he is an absolute saint here). Others find it confusing for the sake of being confusing (again, this may be true of later series, but the cases presented here are for the most part, logical). I consider it an excellent series, however, and one which, at least at this stage in its life, could be relied on to deliver solid entertainment week in, week out. It may be resembling CSI more and more with every year that passes (there's always something slightly painful about an older child aping its younger siblings), but it's nice to see a home-grown crime series which doesn't insist on insulting its audience's intelligence.

With the sixth series of Waking the Dead having recently drawn to a close, I've taken a look at the Cold Case Squad's fourth series, released on DVD by 2 Entertain.

Burying the dead

After some delay, I finally managed to finish making my way through the fourth series of Waking the Dead this evening, a full review of which is forthcoming at DVD Times. As it happens, the sixth series finished airing on TV last Monday, and the difference between the two could not have been more pronounced. I've always liked Waking the Dead: its creator, Barbara Machin, is an excellent writer, and one capable of crafting interesting characters with believable foibles. For the first four years, the show focused on the same core five characters, but much changed at the end of the fourth series, with the departure of co-stars Holly Aird and Claire Goose (and executive producer Alexei de Keyser, who died shortly before the final episode of Series 4 was screened). The replacements drafted in to replace them have never quite managed to convince (in fact, Aird's replacement, Esther Hall, disappeared without any mention after a single series and was herself replaced by Tara FitzGerald), while the notoriously convoluted plots have become baffling in the extreme, with the writers clearly assuming that it doesn't have to make a blind bit of sense provided you include copious references to DNA and have the character of Boyd have at least three temper tantrums per episode.

Speaking of Boyd, what have they done to this character? He was always an irritable old so-and-so, an egomaniac with a belief that he who shouts the loudest will ultimately get his way, but his behaviour this year has verged on ridiculous. In the past, his outbursts were occasional and often used by the writers to make jokes at the character's expense, but the sixth series has reduced him to a slavering, screaming moron who behaves like a petulant child. Furthermore, Series 6 was so filled with blithering and moronic, incomprehensible storylines that I actually gave up mid-way through the fifth two-parter (out of six), Double Bind - something I rarely do, and never with a series of which I consider myself a regular follower. Only the final episode, Yahrzeit, which focused on an old case being investigated by Goose's character, Mel, succeeded in coming even close to matching the quality of the earlier episodes, and even then I found it a little confused as to the adopted Amelia "Mel" Silver, whose birth name was the decidedly Anglican Mary Smith, could have been trying to track down her Jewish ancestors (to be an ancestor, you surely have to be related by blood).

I really am pretty miffed by this turn of events. This show's decline has been quite staggering - the fifth series wasn't exactly brilliant, but it did have a couple of solid episodes among the dreck - and, for the first time, I'm not exactly bothered about whether or not another series will be commissioned. (In contrast, the most recent series of ITV's Trial & Retribution, which aired at the same time on the same nights as this series of Waking the Dead, and which has in the past typically been the more variable of the two shows, was consistently excellent.) Perhaps Barbara Machin needs to come back and write an episode or two, like she did for Casualty during Christmas 2006. Then again, after her two episodes of that show had aired, it promptly went back to its now-customary banality. I don't know - maybe it's just time to call it a day.

So much to see, so little time

It looks as if this is going to be quite a busy month for me as far as reviews are concerned. In addition to Brokeback Mountain (HD DVD) and Waking the Dead: Series 4 (DVD), which are hold-overs from January that I still need to complete (and I really should also do a write-up on last year's Waking the Dead: Series 3, for the sake of completeness), I've also put in reservations for this month's upcoming releases of Lucio Fulci's Perversion Story (personally, I prefer its more literal translation title of One on Top of the Other), and Dario Argento's episode for the second season of Masters of Horror, Pelts. Having already seen both, albeit not in the most ideal form, I'm expecting to lavish praise on the former and deliver a more lukewarm appraisal to the latter, although I am looking forward to seeing them both again.

I've also managed to snag a chance to review Paramount's upcoming (February 20th) HD DVD of Babel, the latest film by Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose previous film, 21 Grams, I thought was excellent. Incidentally, it's nice to see Paramount finally releasing something in high definition, even if its arrival does little more than to highlight how threadbare their slate of titles is: barring this, Failure to Launch and Payback are the only titles they have announced for 2007 so far. Oh, and interestingly enough, for Babel they would appear to have abandoned VC-1 as their HD DVD codec in favour of AVC (the Blu-ray variant is MPEG2, because Sony handles their HD release on the Blu front).

Oh, and I finally got fed up waiting for Amazon.fr to ship my copy of Beatrice Cenci, and ordered it instead from Fnac, who actually have it in stock. In the past, I've found Amazon (.fr, .co.uk, .com - you name it) to be irritatingly slow for deliveries. Basically, unless it says "Usually dispatched within 24 hours", it's more or less a foregone conclusion that it won't actually ship for weeks, if at all. The same is true of the recently released Grande Collection edition of Asterix and the Goths, which I also cancelled from Amazon and ordered from Fnac (its partner in the February release schedule, Asterix and Obelix All at Sea, did, however, leave Amazon in a reasonably timely fashion). Amazon.co.uk did, however, dispatch my copy of the score to The Iron Giant, which I ordered last night, in less than 12 hours. Luckily, I should be able to afford all these expenses, given that I punted my Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on to a friend for £130 today.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of January

• Brokeback Mountain (R0 USA, HD DVD/SD DVD combo)
• The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (R0 Germany, SD DVD)
• A Lizard in a Woman's Skin: Remastered Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• The Mephisto Waltz (R2 Spain, SD DVD)
• Waking the Dead: Series 4 (R2 UK, SD DVD)

DVD and HD DVD purchases this month were somewhat overshadowed by the ordering of a Playstation 3 and some Blu-ray discs to play on it. Look for impressions on these some time in early February.

Digging up missing discs

This morning, I received check discs of the fourth series of Waking the Dead for review from 2 Entertain. Well, to be slightly more accurate, I received check discs last Friday, but, for some reason, the four discs included in the package contained only the first eight (out of a total of twelve) episodes. To make matters doubly baffling, the press release that came with the discs referred to this being a three-disc set...? The problem was rectified this morning, however, with the arrival of another package, this one containing six discs, which means that all the episodes are now accounted for. Presumably this means that the commercially available package will be comprised of three dual-sided DVDs. That's the only reason I can come up with for this bizarre discrepancy.

Silent night, Holby night...

Many of you probably know that I am something of a fan of the British medical drama series Casualty. These days, the show is sometimes so bad that I wonder why I don't pack it in, but the two-part Christmas special that ran last night and tonight reminded me why I still tune in every week. These episodes were written by Barbara Machin, the creator of the excellent Waking the Dead and one of the show's regular writers when it was at its peak, and she managed to deliver something that I'd thought the show was no longer capable of: cutting-edge, intense drama (as opposed to the soap we tend to be served up). It was like stepping into a time machine and going back a decade or so to when the show was of a consistently high standard and something that was unmissable television rather than the schedule-filler it so often seems to be now.

The concept itself is something that I'm sure has been done before in countless other shows, but nonetheless felt fresh and unique. Essentially, it told the same story from the perspective of three different characters, one after the other, with the focus shifting each time it was replayed, allowing the audience to see things that hadn't been apparent before. Obviously, having every episode play like this would be pointless, which is what what really pleased me was the quality of the drama itself. Characters who had, for months or years, been stuck in the background or were written completely out of character, came to the forefront and seemed like their old selves again. I never expected this show to ever again amaze me and have me absolutely gripped, but I have no happily been proved wrong. This was not just the best episode of Casualty in years but one of the finest television programmes I've seen all year. I am, quite literally, stunned.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of October

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Corpse Bride (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Enemy of the State: Special Extended Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• The Fox and the Hound: 25th Anniversary Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• The Machinist (R0 Japan, HD DVD)
• Waking the Dead: Series 3 (R2 UK, SD DVD)

Wow! For the first time, the number of HD DVDs coming into the house exceeded the number of standard definition DVDs.

Oh, and Happy Halloween!