As previously noted, season one of US drama The Event comes to DVD and Blu-ray on October 3rd. You can read out interview with series star Jason Ritter here.
We’ve been treated to an advance look at the DVD edition courtesy of Universal Pictures UK.
As with any series, the boxset will primarily appeal to those who’ve already seen and like the show.
Given I’ll have seen the episodes for free and they’ll inevitably be repeated at some point, when I’m buying a DVD boxset I look to the extras package to provide added value.
So, as always with TV shows, this review will focus on the extras and what they bring to the package.
The bulk of the extras package comprises commentaries on about half a dozen episodes as well as documentaries looking at the show’s visual effects. There’s also the usual deleted scenes packages, photo gallery and episode recaps.
Sadly the docus were a bit of a disappointment. They tend to be quite shallow and largely fail to impart the level of knowledge I suspect most people who watch these sort of extras want from them.
The lack of any detail, combined with near-identical introductions also means the special/visual effects docus feel pretty repetitive.
The best of the bunch, because it actually explains things, is one in which showrunner Evan Katz explains the decision to tone down and then eliminate the use of flashbacks once it became clear they were “difficult to follow and not particularly fun for the audience”.
This is the sort of detail level I’d expect as standard on all extras on a Sci-Fi TV series.
Overall the extras package just about passes the ‘value added’ test, largely on the strength of the commentaries and the Evan Katz feature cited above, but a lot of the content feels distinctly like filler.
A decent enough release but one which could have been – and probably deserved to be – a lot better.
You can pre-order The Event from Amazon.co.uk and HMV.com.