Cold Feet-Complete 4th Series (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Menu Animation & Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	408:10 (Case: 454)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (25:02) Multi Disc Set (3)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Tim Whitby Ciaran Donnelly
Studio Distributor	Shock Entertainment	Starring	Helen Baxendale James Nesbitt John Thomson Fay Ripley Robert Bathurst Hermione Norris Kimberly Joseph
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Dual
RPI	?	Music	Mark Russell

    This very popular television series, which started in the 90s, has had a slightly strange history on DVD. This first series was originally released 4 years ago by Universal. The review from then can be found  here.  At the time many were annoyed by the fact that subsequent series were not released. Now the first series has been re-released by Shock/Time Life along with the other four series. An excellent summation of the concept and characters can be found at the link above, so I won't go into that in detail here.

    This fourth season was made in 2001/2 and continues the fine quality established during the previous seasons. This season probably has more marital/relationship strife that the previous ones with quite a number of affairs and break-ups along with the usual dramas and comedic touches. This season also features the first new major character since the series began and sees one major character disappear. The new character is Jo Ellison (Kimberley Joseph), an Australian girl who works with Rachel. There are 8 episodes (one of which is a 70 minute extended episode) included in the season spread over three discs. The episodes are:

1. (47:47 ) - David & Karen's relationship is on the rocks and Karen is drinking heavily. Rachel tries her hand at amateur dramatics. Jenny is faced with a big decision and a new problem. Jo is introduced.
2. (47:59 ) - Rachel & Adam consider adoption but Adam's old flame from Ireland turns up in Manchester. David decides to see a therapist and Jenny makes a big decision.
3. (48:16 ) - David moves in with Pete as Karen's drinking and partying gets worse. Adam & Rachel are arguing.
4. (47:26 ) - Rachel gets annoyed with all three of the men and Pete's mother turns up to stay. Karen recovering.
5. (47:36 ) - Rachel gets a big surprise. Jo moves into Pete's house and Karen gets a job offer.
6. (47:42 ) - Rachel visit's Jenny. David buys Karen a race horse and Pete buys a new car. Adam does something silly.
7. (48:24 ) - Rachel is back but Adam gets freaked by the size of her tummy. David under pressure at work. Jo & Pete get serious & Karen starts the new job.
8. (73:00 ) - Another wedding episode. Full of drama and major turning points for all the couples. Gary Sweet guests as Jo's father. Set in Sydney.

    Another high quality season of a very good English comedy drama. Recommended.

Video

    The video quality is quite good, however it has obviously been cropped to fit a 4x3 screen, probably for analogue TV broadcast.

    The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, non-16x9 enhanced, which is not the original aspect ratio. I believe that would have been 1.78:1. As per our site policy I will deduct one star for this. The cropping can be quite obvious.

    The picture was reasonably sharp. There is some light grain throughout which is worse in some passages, occasionally becoming macro-blocking. The shadow detail is decent but not great. I didn't see any particular examples of low level noise.

    The colour was quite good but there was some minor bleeding..

    Aliasing was a bit more prominent in this compared to previous seasons, but not terrible. There was also some edge enhancement.

    There are no subtitles.

    The layer changes are quite obvious and occur during episodes on all three discs.
    

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The audio quality is decent.

    This DVD contains an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo soundtrack encoded at 192 Kb/s. The sound is generally quite front and centre focused except for music which uses the front speakers.

    Dialogue was mostly clear and easy to understand and there was no problem with audio sync.

    The score of this series is by Mark Russell which is reminiscent of the era without being overly dated. It includes a catchy theme song.

    The surround speakers added some mild atmosphere when played with Pro Logic II.

     The subwoofer was not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    None.

Menu

    The menu included music and motion plus the ability to select episodes and scenes.

    This series is available in Region 2 in two different versions and the recent one is the same as our original local release. A previous Region 2 release which is still available (at least on amazon.co.uk) was in 16x9 enhanced widescreen and included an extra called 'Cold Feet Backstage'. This older version seems to be the version of choice. It has not been released in Region 1.

    The video quality is good, but has been cropped from the original widescreen.

    The audio quality is decent.

    No extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall