Lovejoy – The Complete Season One (BBC)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: C-     Episodes: B-

 

 

Before getting acclaim for his work on Deadwood and being one of the pleasant surprises of We Are Marshall, long-time veteran actor Ian McShane scored a big hit overseas with the comic detective series Lovejoy.  He plays an antiques dealer who sometimes plays detective in the middle of unusual happenings.  This ran for six seasons and the first ten episodes (including a two parter finishing the season) is here in The Complete Season One from BBC Home Video.  The episodes are:

 

1)     The Firefly Cage

2)     The Axeman Cometh

3)     The Sting

4)     Friends, Romans & Enemies

5)     The Judas Pair

6)     To Sleep No More

7)     The Real Thing

8)     The March Of Time

9)     Death & Venice (two parts)

 

 

McShane’s energy is one of the reasons the show works, recalling Roger Moore on The Saint.  The shows are maybe more comedy than this critic would like, but you can plainly see why this was a hit in the middle of 1990s TV, where so many shows were so bad, but this would have worked when such shows peaked in the 1970s and that it took this long for the show to hit DVD has shocked some people.  Now, all can see for themselves what a good show this is.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is very soft for a filmed show, suggesting a recycling of older analog masters.  It is hard to tell if the editing was finished this way, but these are going to need to be redone for HD and the shoots deserve the treatment from how good some of this footage is.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono has constant background hiss and is not as clean or clear as it should be.  BBC needs top go back to the original sound stems and fix the sound too.  The only extra is an interview with McShane.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo