Waking the Dead Series 1-9 Box Set [DVD]

Wow. A great summer holiday would be to watch all nine seasons of this great series non-stop and for the first time. All other crime dramas pale in comparison. It is what Cold Case and the CSI series want to be when they grow up, get better writing, less commercials, etc. I started watching this series way back when it showed in the States on BBC America. Unfortunately it only showed for a couple seasons but was avaiable for rental. Then--unfortunately again--the more recent series (after 2005) never seemed to be available and so it wasn't until 2007 and I was forced to buy a region free DVD player to watch another British drama series (Bad Girls) that I finally ordered the series from Amazon. Every year I'd eagerly await the arrival of the new season and every year I buy it and try to "ration" my viewing so that I didn't see all of the episodes over one night. Very tough to do.
The writing, acting and interplay between all of the cast members are exemplary. The story and plot lines are both fascinating and compelling. Even as cast members left (Amelia and the first forensic scientist Frankie) and were replaced by new members the level of acting and the plots remained superb.
The interplay between the Trevor Eve and Sue Johnstone characters alone was far superior to most of the inane banter between characters on other shows. If you haven't seen this series or only have seen a couple of the episodes get it and watch them. You won't be sory!!

After watching all but the last four double-episodes of this immense work, this viewer is still mesmerised. Trevor Eve stars as Peter Boyd, the deeply troubled boss of a unit assigned to solve long-closed murders. His foil is Grace, a contracted psychological profiler whose portrayal by Sue Johnston is seamless, a wonder to observe.

Wil Johnson plays the tough guy with a soft center, somehow chained by loyalty to Boyd, quite possibly the ultimate boss from Hades. This is not the token black guy in the team, but a strong character that provides continuity, balance and muscle - all the other characters are women - strong in their own right, but they can't out-run a fleeing suspect and tackle him on a stairwell.

Boyd is generally unfeeling, driven, angry at God and all His creations, frequently erupting into the kind of illegal behavior that leads people to call the police animals with snouts and curly tails. He is haunted by the loss of his son to the streets, to drugs and the filth of what the son must do to support his lifestyle - never truly accepting that it is almost certainly from Boyd the boy fled, terrorized by the rage of the man just beneath the surface of the skin.

And yet - Boyd is occasionally tender, supportive, even kind, and you wonder if there is the possibility of redemption, maybe in the next episode he will mellow, will see the Light, the error of his ways.

But no, half-way into the next episode, he resorts yet again to violent, criminal psychological torture of a suspect, or even to rage and physical abuse, despite warnings from his cohorts that what he is about to do is wrong, illegal, immoral, whatever. All in the effort to solve the latest mind-twisting murder from the past, which sometimes leads to more murder in the present by malevolent characters whose ruthlessness is frightening.

This is not the sweet delicacy of Poirot's little grey cells unwinding Agatha's creations, or Morse's endeavors to expose the guilty whilst sipping fine bitter and trying to seduce his fellow denizens of Oxford, all to the strains of Mozart and Puccini et al. Little old ladies will require their smelling salts to get through some of the dialogue, some of the grue, many of the interrogations, and a lot of the forensic evidence of the bodies, which have the disadvantage of having decayed, dessicated, disintegrated, been disembowled, dismembered, dissolved, or otherwise rendered truly horrific. All, of course, lovingly photographed with all the gore, grease, guts and grit that the brilliant make-up artists can create. Skeletons are more common than rats, and seeing a pathologist plunge her hand into the gore of a body to see how many generations of maggots have dined is not for the faint of heart.

Dialogue is tense, terse and true in tone, and the actors deliver their lines with almost uncanny precision and inflection - the directors (and there are many - I suspect each episode is so draining that a new steed is needed regularly until the director recovers enough to do another) wring stellar performances from some of the finest British actors (and a few interlopers) whose roles are often far more demanding than those they have played with Frost, Foyle, Barnaby, Allen, Morse or Lewis. How Trevor Eve and his fellow team-mates can keep up the level of performance to such a high standard without a breakdown is a question one might well ask. There are a few drop-outs along the way - one literally.

The Achilles' Heel of the series is the implausibility of some of the plots. the team of five does all the investigating, the site visits, interviews, the arrests, everything. Villains somehow manage to accomplish deeds that mere mortals could not, like the slight woman managing to hoist hundreds of pounds of medical equipment five floors up in a warehouse just hours after escaping from a top-security prison for the criminally insane, or some such, and little anachronisms are rife - but this is, after all, fiction - thank the stars! If this were a true story, we'd just watch a bunch of cops pouring over documents and computer files and never getting out of the office because that's a real policeman's job . . .

Also, it seems like half the episodes end up with more loose ends than Mama Mia's spaghetti, and the following episode of course never addresses them. Boyd is investigated for unprofessional conduct that would see a real-life copper either in the dock the next day or the slammer tomorrow, but the investigation seems to evaporate between episodes. Can't have the star behind bars, can we? And what about that time that Boyd and his team knowingly permitted - nay, encouraged - a murder? What's that you say? Ethics? Brutality? Complicity? You'll have to judge for yourself.

You won't like Boyd - he's an s.o.b. most of the time - but you won't be able to lock him out. You may get disgusted after one particular episode and say "no more" - but it won't be long before you're taking out another disc to watch because it's so much better than the insipid crap on telly tonight, and you just can't get Waking the Dead out of your mind.

So, gentle reader, I advise you not to plonk down your hard-earned lunch money for this set. Unless you have a very strong stomach, know that not all the characters are warm and cuddly, have an appreciation of the crafts of acting and directing, and accept that the series does, indeed, come to an end.

If buy it you do, despite all the warnings, prepare yourself for being mesmerized.

And then, before you know it, you'd be just like me - anticipating with dread the end of the series, just a few discs left, wondering how you're ever going to find another incredible series that grabs your attention, immerses you in plots and characters that make your heart pound and your mind race with the action, keeps your curiosity level up ("now just how did he do that?"), have you imagining the solutions to one or another sub-plot that wasn't completely resolved, dreading what will come in the next scene.

Sigh.

If you're a fan of the series then this is the box set for you. A fraction of the cost of buying the sets individually. The nine series are slotted neatly into a sturdy box and will give hours of viewing enjoyment.