River Somewhere, A-Series One (1997)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1997
Running Time	160:21 (Case: 158)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Tom Gleisner Rob Sitch
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Tom Gleisner Rob Sitch
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	Box	Music	Liam Bradley

    First airing on the ABC in 1997, A River Somewhere - Series One sees Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch, two of the members of the creative team behind Frontline, The Castle and television's The Panel, head off to several far flung destinations in pursuit of their passion - fly fishing. Filmed in much the same vein as a travel series, the actual angling exploits often take a back seat to the stunning scenery, interesting and quirky towns and equally quirky people the two come across. The boys love their sport and are keen to share this passion with the viewers. Also, originally being in the comedy business, they are quick to dispense with a few well-chosen one liners about the various locales and people they meet. Often these are quite amusing, but sometimes they seem a little cheesy some eight years after this series first went to air. Cheese aside, this is still a pretty entertaining series, and if you don't want to give fly fishing a try after watching this, you must either be vegetarian or an animal liberationist.

    There are six episodes in series one, with another seven episodes contained in series two. Series one consists of:

    Episode 1: The Howqua River, Victoria, Australia (25:21)

    Tom and Rob's "local" river, this is where they learnt to fly-fish and as such it holds a special place for them. Some stunning Australian bush scenery (and not a bush poem in sight!) make up the bulk of this episode as the boys hunt for the elusive trout.

    Episode 2: Altnahara, Scotland (26:52)

    River fishing in the United Kingdom is so different with the lads first encountering a stream that is privately owned in the Cotswold region. Escaping the crowds of England, they head to the far north reaches of Scotland where they will try their luck in several lochs and streams near the small town of Altnahara.

    Episode 3: The D'Urville River, New Zealand (25:56)

    The boys are spoilt in this episode when the travel to the South Island of New Zealand and stay in the luxurious confines of one of the well equipment luxury fishing lodges specifically created for travelling fly fishermen. The D'Urville River also contains some of the best fly fishing in the world so it looks like the lads will win on both fronts.

    Episode 4: The Chamberlain River, Western Australia (27:41)

    A move away from the prized trout in this episode as the boys head to the remote Kimberley to hunt for the even more prized barramundi. Half the fun of this episode is the journey from Melbourne to the far north of Western Australia as the boys fly themselves in a light aircraft over the desolate plains of the Australian interior.

    Episode 5: Los Roques, Venezuela (27:58)

    This is the most exotic location the lads will travel to in this series. Los Roques is a series of tiny coral islands off the north coast of South America which are home to the legendary bonefish. These fish are not particularly good eating but the fight they put up when hooked more than makes up for the lack of culinary excellence. This is a virtually undiscovered gem of a location in probably the furthest point the lads could get away from their hometown of Melbourne.

    Episode 6: Courmayeur, Italy (26:33)

    Tucked away at the foot of the Alps in northern Italy, Rob and Tom search once more for that elusive trout, even though they aren't quite sure any exist in this interesting location. With the fly-fishing appearing tough, the resultant method they are reduced to in order to get a feed will make you laugh out loud.

Video

    Anyone expecting a pristine visual treat is going to be disappointed with this effort as it contains a couple of rather good examples of the video artefact brought about by excessive noise reduction.

    The video is presented in the original television aspect ratio of 1.29:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The level of clarity and sharpness is overall barely average, with the source material obviously not being that high quality to start with. Shadow detail is fine and while grain is present it doesn't overburden the picture like the lack of clarity does. There is also some low level noise throughout.

    Colours are average without being overly vivid.

    There are no compression artefacts, thought it's doubtful you would see them in amongst the fuzz and the excessive noise reduction artefacts. This disc is easily the worst I have ever encountered for the consistency of the dreaded noise reduction artefact. This manifests itself as what could colloquially be called "floating face" or "floating backgrounds". Parts of the image, usually in the background, appear to be moving on an alternative plane to the rest of the image, usually to what is occurring in the foreground. Episode two contains probably the worst examples of this artefact with cottage windows moving all over the place at 0:24, a stone wall appearing to shift sideways while the rest of the image is static at 0:26, and the entire country estate building shaking like an earthquake is rumbling at 0:42. All of these examples occur even before the credits start. The problems then occur throughout the episode, alternating between slight and downright obnoxious. The other episodes are not quite as bad, but this problem does affect all six episodes at some stage.

    Sadly there are no subtitles.

    This is a dual layered disc with the layer change occurring between episodes.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There's a fairly basic audio selection on this disc, with an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack as the only option.

    Dialogue is consistent across all the episodes, with much of the commentary obviously recorded in the studio after the lads made it back to Australia. Sound recorded on location exhibits a little more noise than usual, which is as expected given the remote locations they were in. There are also no audio sync issues.

    Liam Bradley's score is quite unique to this series and plays across the opening titles and regularly throughout each episode. The individual episodes also feature their own unique score. These tracks are also featured on the bonus CD that is contained in the two disc box set.

    There is no surround or subwoofer use at all.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu Audio

    Aside from a little menu audio there are no extras on this disc.

    This disc is not available in Region 1.

    A River Somewhere Series One is an entertaining, if perhaps a little cheesy, travel series featuring Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch trekking to several exotic fly fishing locations in the search for the elusive trout or other prized species.

    The quality of the video is hugely disappointing with excessive noise reduction artefacts abounding.

    The audio is nothing spectacular but handles the job required with ease.

    There are effectively no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall