Top of the Lake (BBC, DVD) is another exhibit in the case that TV is the new cinema. It’s created and written by Oscar nominated filmmaker Jane Campion with Gerard Lee and Campion directs or co-directs almost every episode, including the opening episodes. A coproduction between BBC, Screen Australia, Screen NWW, ARTE and The Sundance Channel, it’s an international project set in rural New Zealand with performers from the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and it made its American debut at the Sundance Film Festival before going to the Sundance Channel and Netflix, (The six-hour production was presented over seven episodes on the Sundance Channel and Netflix and six episodes at the Sundance Film Festival; the disc features the six-episode version).
This is an original novel for television, a dark drama built around the mystery of a pregnant 12-year-old girl lake who goes missing and a young outsider detective specializing in adolescent victims (Elisabeth Moss with a variable accent) who is technically on vacation but actually there to look after her mother, who is dying of cancer. The mystery hangs over the entire six hours but the story revolves around the characters and the unsettling atmosphere of the community as she churns up the uneasy frontier existence with her investigation.
Peter Mullan is (no surprise) intimidating as the girl’s father, a feudal mountain patriarch who runs his mountain spread like a duchy outside of police jurisdiction and a feared landowner who uses unspoken threats and unrepentent violence to keep his power and manage his independence. Holly Hunter is odd and fascinating as an American self-help guru in a makeshift commune of damaged women, and David Wenham is unreliable as the closest thing this community has to an enlightened authority figure, and it’s not very close.
My only complaint is that there is no Blu-ray edition and no supplements. The setting, the atmosphere, the sense of isolation and haunting beauty is a defining element of the production. The disc looks fine but it deserves a superior presentation. And maybe an interview with Campion. I’d like to know more about where this came from. Six episodes on two discs, no supplements.
The Following: The Complete First Season (Warner, Blu-ray Combo, DVD) was created by Kevin Williamson as Fox’s entry into the dark serialized serial killer drama. Following the cable model, it launched in January with a shorter season than the standard network order (15 episodes) and a story designed to wrap a complete arc by the season finale. Kevin Bacon stars as a veteran FBI agent called back into service when serial killer Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) escapes from Death Row and begins a new killing spree, helped by a network of devoted followers. The agent’s family, of course, is high on their list of targets. Natalie Zea, Shawn Ashmore, and Annie Parisse co-star.
15 episodes on Blu-ray and DVD, with an interactive “Maximum Episode Mode” commentary on the pilot episode with the executive producers, commentary on the season finale, six featurettes and deleted scenes. The Blu-ray edition also includes a DVD and UltraViolet Digital HD edition of the complete season. The new season begins on January 19.
Pride and Prejudice: Keepsake Edition (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD), the 1995 co-production between the BBC and the American cable channel A&E, is still considered by Jane Austen fans to be the definitive adaptation of Austen’s most famous novel and her work in general. Jennifer Ehle is the smart and sensible and thoroughly independent heroine Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth’s brittle performance as the brooding, class-conscious Mr. D’Arcy has become the defining screen incarnation, something that productions from Bridget Jones’ Diary to Lost in Austen have all commented upon. Scripted by Andrew Davies and shot on location in the castles and countrysides of England, it’s a grandly handsome production that sets off but never upstages the story, and the generous running time allows plenty of time for character development and side stories to play out at a strolling pace.
It’s been on disc in multiple editions over the years, including a first-ever widescreen release a few years ago (it was shot widescreen but originally shown 1.33:1 in the U.S.). This new edition includes four exclusive new featurettes along with the previously available hour-long retrospective documentary “Lasting Impressions” and additional featurettes.
Star Trek: Enterprise – Season Three (Paramount, Blu-ray), the prequel series set on the original Enterprise launched from Earth way back in 2151, plays with the increasingly tense relations between the Earthlings and the Vulcans as humans cross paths with the warlike Andorians and the feral Klingons while intergalactic war with the Xindi heats up and the future of mankind rests on a race to find a super-weapon trained on Earth. Scott Bakula makes a likable Captain Jonathan Archer and Jolene Blalock, Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating, Anthony Montgomery, Linda Park and John Billingsley fill out the crew. 24 episodes plus the new three-part documentary “In a Time of War,” the new featurette “Temporal Cold War: Declassified” and four new commentary tracks, in addition to commentary tracks, featurettes, and deleted scenes carried over from the previous DVD release.
And here’s another pair of releases that are sure to find their place on the shelves of fans.
Archer: The Complete Fourth Season (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD) isn’t the end of the series, but it’s the last season of the animated farce to feature the team at ISIS, the private spy agency where Sterling Archer works as the top agent and his mother runs the business. The season kicks off with a bizarre Bob’s Burgers cross-over (sort of) and features Timothy Olyphant as a guest voice in the second episode. It’s still the funniest show on FX, as much a workplace comedy as a spy show parody. 13 episodes plus the original short “Fisherman’s Daughter” and “Archer Live!,” a 2013 appearance by the voice cast in New York.
Copper: Season Two (BBC, Blu-ray, DVD), the BBC America original series set in Civil War-era New York City, specifically the Five Points slum populated by Irish immigrants, gets a boost this season with Donal Logue, who joins the cast as a war veteran returned to take charge of Tammany Hall politics and reinstate control over the squalid 6th Ward. It’s an improvement over the first season, with a much more complex view of the inner workings of 19th Century urban America, a land of immigrants, political graft and racial conflict. 13 episodes plus featurettes.
More releases:
House of Lies: Season Two (Showtime, DVD)
Being Human: The Complete Third Season (U.S.) (eOne, Blu-ray+DVD Combo)
Duck Dynasty: Season 4 (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD)
Last of the Summer Wine: Vintage 2001 (BBC, DVD)
Kavanagh Q.C.: Complete Collector’s Edition (BFS, DVD)
Listening is an Act of Love: A Storycorps Special (PBS, DVD)
Red Metal: The Copper Country Strike of 1913 (PBS, DVD)
American Masters: Marvin Hamlisch – What He Did For Love (PBS, DVD)
Joanna Lumley’s Greek Odyssey (Athena, DVD)
Secrets of Ancient Egypt (Athena, DVD)
Bad Dog! Season 1 (Animal Planet, DVD)
Frankenstein: The Real Story (History, DVD)
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD