Foyle's War-The Complete First Season (Blu-ray) (2002) |
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General | Extras | ||
Category | Drama | None | |
Rating | |||
Year Of Production | 2002 | ||
Running Time | 389:51 | ||
RSDL / Flipper |
No/No Dual Disc Set |
Cast & Crew | |
Start Up | Menu | ||
Region Coding | 4 | Directed By |
Jeremy Silberston Gavin Millar Giles Foster |
Studio
Distributor |
Icon Entertainment | Starring |
Michael Kitchen Honeysuckle Weeks Anthony Howell Julian Overden Geoffrey Freshwater James McEvoy David Tennant |
Case | ? | ||
RPI | $69.95 | Music | Jim Parker |
Video | Audio | ||
Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English DTS HD Master Audio 2.0 English Dolby TrueHD 2.0 |
|
Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | ||
16x9 Enhancement | Unknown | ||
Video Format | 1080i | ||
Original Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | Miscellaneous | |
Jacket Pictures | No | ||
Subtitles | English for the Hearing Impaired | Smoking | Yes |
Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
Action In or After Credits | No |
This series is set during 1940 and follows the cases of Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen), an English coastal town's police chief and a frustrated man who would rather be more directly involved in the war effort. He is a veteran of the First World War and an honest, composed and dogged detective who investigates crimes such as sabotage, murder, racketeering and treason. His team consists of his driver, Samantha 'Sam' Stuart (Honeysuckle Weeks), a young woman who has been transferred from another women's unit to be his driver and Detective Sergeant Paul Milner (Anthony Howell), a badly injured war hero who is slowly coming to terms with his missing leg. Sam starts out as being just his driver but soon gets involved in solving the crimes and sometimes working undercover. Another important recurring character is Foyle's son Andrew (Julian Ovenden), a fighter pilot.
The stories are woven around real life events from history such as the Luftwaffe raids over England and the rescue from France of British soldiers by small boats.
This first series consists of four movie-length episodes over two Blu-ray discs. I previously reviewed this first series on DVD which you can find here. In total, 22 episodes have been made over seven seasons. All are being released to Blu-ray over the coming months. The series was written by long-term English mystery television script writer Anthony Horowitz, who has written episodes of Poirot and Midsomer Murders. In this series, however, he created the stories and characters from scratch and wrote the screenplays. The casting and acting are both fantastic especially Michael Kitchen in the lead role.
The four episodes are:
An excellent season of a subtle and different English mystery series.
.
The video quality is an improvement over the DVDs but certainly not the best transfer you will see on Blu-ray.
The feature is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio which is the original aspect ratio. It is encoded using the MPEG4 AVC codec. According to the Icon website it has been upscaled to 1080i.
The picture was fairly clear and sharp throughout without being crisp. Outdoor scenes looked the best from a sharpness and clarity perspective. Shadow detail is better than the DVDs (which were poor) but certainly nothing special. The picture exhibited regular grain especially in shadows.
The colour was very good accurately representing the fairly dull wartime colour scheme of khakis, greys and browns.
There were some white spots here and there and some edge enhancement. There was some motion blur during fast movement possibly due to the interlaced transfer.
There are subtitles in English for the Hearing Impaired. They are in multiple colours and aligned to the character speaking. This is a significant step up from the DVDs which did not have subtitles.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain/Pixelization | |
Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
The audio quality is very good and a huge improvement on the DVDs.
This DVDs contain two audio options, an English DTS HD-MA 2.0 stereo soundtrack and an English Dolby Digital TrueHD 2.0 stereo soundtrack. The DTS is the pick of the soundtracks being fuller and richer than the Dolby Digital. Both are significantly better than the DVD.
Dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout, significantly better than the DVD.
The score of this series is by Jim Parker and includes a nicely done theme plus some other incidental music. The music really leaps out on the Blu-ray when compared to the DVD.
The surround speakers are not used.
The subwoofer adds some bass to the music, however this is a function of bass management rather than the soundtrack.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
No extras.
The menu is still and silent, allowing for episode selection and setup.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
Currently our local Region B release is the only one available globally of this series. Unfortunately, I cannot be certain of the Region Coding of the discs other than that they work in a Region B player.
The video quality is an improvement over the DVD but still not without issues. The audio quality is very good, significantly better than the DVDs.
No extras.
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
Review Equipment | |
DVD | SONY BDP-S760 Blu-ray, using HDMI output |
Display | LG Scarlet 42LG61YD 106cm Full HD LCD. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 1080p. |
Audio Decoder | Built into BD player. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. |
Amplification | Pioneer VSX-511 |
Speakers | Monitor Audio Bronze 2 (Front), Bronze Centre & Bronze FX (Rears) + Sony SAW2500M Subwoofer |