Cold Feet-Complete 5th Series (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Featurette-Locations, Bloopers Interviews-Cast-John Thomson Interviews-Cast & Crew-Producers
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	293:47 (Case: 300)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Declan Lowney Simon Delaney Jon Jones Nigel Cole
Studio Distributor	Time Life	Starring	Helen Baxendale James Nesbitt John Thomson Fay Ripley Robert Bathurst Hermione Norris Kimberly Joseph
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Dual
RPI	?	Music	Gillian Gilbert Stephen Morris Mark Russell

    This is the last season of this excellent show and what a great season it is. This certainly is at the same high quality as previous seasons and has a emotional quality to it that raises it to a new level, at least on that score. The acting is of a high quality as usual, however, I think special mention should be made of the performance of James Nesbitt as Adam. His deeply believable acting in this season is a cut above normal television acting. After watching all five seasons of this show in quite quick succession, I can honestly say that I found the happenings in this season hard to bear due to my affinity with the characters, especially Adam.

    This very popular television series which started in the 1990s 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 fifth season was made in 2002. There is much more drama both relationship and otherwise in this season and the comedy touches are more in the background. There are 6 episodes (of approximately 50 minutes each) included in the season spread over two discs. The episodes are:

1. (53:44 ) - Pete & Jo arrive home from their honeymoon. David is living on his own and he and Karen are trying for an 'amicable' divorce. Pete's mother moves in with Pete & Jo. Rachel is getting freaky about the baby.
2. (45:59 ) - The divorce is getting less 'amicable'. Adam & Rachel are fighting. The immigration department decide to investigate Pete & Jo's marriage. Adam has a major problem and David starts a new relationship.
3. (49:52 ) - David cuts off Karen's credit cards. Adam is at home looking after the baby and Rachel goes back to work. Karen's relationship with Mark is getting difficult.
4. (47:13 ) - The house Adam & Rachel rent is being sold and they start looking for a new house. Adam's estranged father turns up and Adam refuses to speak to him. Pete & Jo are having troubles.
5. (48:34 ) - This excellent episode includes a major shock. Can't really say any more without spoiling it for those who haven't seen it. Very emotional and dramatic.
6. (48:25 ) - Fallout from previous events and a fitting finale to an excellent show.

    The final season of this great show. Highly Recommended.

Video

    The video quality is quite good, however it has obviously been cropped to fit a 4x3 screen, probably for analogue TV broadcast. This is made especially annoying by the fact that the extras are 16x9 enhanced widescreen and include footage from the show in the same aspect ratio!

    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 reasonable but there was some minor bleeding and in some sections the colours did not look overly solid, probably due to low bitrate.

    Aliasing was present but not terrible. There was also some edge enhancement.

    There are no subtitles.

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 128 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 by Mark Russell is cool and funky. 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

    This set is the first of the five to have any extras at all.

Menu

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

Making Of

    This is a submenu which includes six featurettes as follows

• Locations (21:11) - John Thomson who plays Pete Gifford takes us on a tour of the locations used in Manchester.
• Bloopers (2:48) - Unfortunately not bloopers from the show, this is bloopers from the previous extra.
• Locations, Locations, Locations (2:05) - Boring section on the hotel used for Rome & Sydney (in Manchester).
• Being Pete (9:00) - John Thomson talking about playing Pete. Nothing special.
• Andy Harries (35:51) - Interesting interview with producer Andy Harries. Padded out with lots of scenes.
• Spencer Campbell (23:43) - Interesting interview with producer Spencer Campbell.

    This series is available in Region 2 in two different versions. A previous Region 2 release which is still available (at least on amazon.co.uk) was in 16x9 enhanced widescreen. This older version seems to be the version of choice. The new one seems to be the same as our new one. It has not been released in Region 1.

    The video quality is reasonable but cropped from the original widescreen.

    The audio quality is decent.

    There are six featurettes as extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall