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Indian Summers: Series 2 (TV)
R2 - United Kingdom - Acorn Media Review written by and copyright: Rick Curzon (25th May 2016). |
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The Show
 ***This is an A/V and Extras review only. For reviews on the show from various critics, we recommend visiting HERE.*** It’s back to the British Raj and the hill of Simla as the colonial period drama returns with another 10 full length episodes. We rejoin the guests of Royal Simla Club in the summer of 1935, where Cynthia (Julie Walters) will be entertaining new characters played by Rachel Griffiths, Art Malik, James Fleet, Sugandha Garg, Arjun Mathur and Blake Ritson.
Video
Disc 1 (Play All - 232'33"): Episode One: Indian Man, British Suit - 48'25" Episode Two: Black Kite - 45'39" Episode Three: White Gods - 45'34" Episode Four: The Empty Chair - 46'10" Episode Five: Hide and Seek - 47'09" Disc 2 (Play All - 230'09"): Episode Six: A Gift for the King - 46'01" Episode Seven: The Proposal - 46'32" Episode Eight: The Birthday Party - 46'49" Episode Nine: Winner Takes All - 45'51" Episode Ten: Leaving Home - 45'19" Acorn in the UK Have released this lush, seemingly big budget chunk of period drama. The kind of production we used to get back in the 1980s like The Jewel in the Crown (1984) and The Far Pavilions (1983). Tales of colonisation and of ex-pats living abroad in momentous times. This series is set in the 1930s in Simla (Little India) and the air is rife with revolution. This is compared to the lives of Brits and locals and the internecine bits of business between them. The first series was broadcast in 2015 on Channel 4 in the UK and the second (under discussion here) in 2016. This is a very slick production with plenty of visual style; hot colour schemes and cinema quality photography, as we've come to expect from event television....indeed all dramatic presentations on telly these days. We've come a long way from studio multi-camera productions with 16mm inserts. That said there is a pristine quality to modern productions that sets them apart from traditional film and this is obvious in this transfer. This HD lensed production looks fabulous on Acorn's DVD with plenty of detail, rich use of colour and and deep, luxurious black levels. I could see no signs of compression artefacts such as pixelisation, aliasing or other issues. Exterior scenes benefit especially well being naturally brighter and the digital colour correction enhances the tropical ambiance (it was shot in Malaysia standing in for India). However, there is a softness typical of standard definition transfers of HD material and on that score I can only lament the lack of a Blu-ray release here in the UK. Fans who care will import the American PBS Blu-ray which presents the series in it's full HD glory; a sad state of affairs that many a UK collector is only too aware of. That many UK productions only get DVD release in their country of origin and our neighbours on the continent, in Australia, the USA and elsewhere get our productions in their full HD splendour. That said, this DVD is set Is no disgrace and seems to have been encoded well although four discs would have made a fair amount of difference with far less compression. 1.78:1 / PAL / 462'42"
Audio
English Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround English subtitles The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo soundtrack is the original as broadcast and like the image reflects the standard of modern, big budget television production. The sound field is well used with plenty of ambient sounds in crowd and exterior scenes, and music is very prominent and never overwhelms the dialogue. During interior dialogue scenes there are less dynamics and use of the surrounds becomes more low key. However compared to an older television production like Nature Boy (2000, recently reviewed) it's practically of blockbuster standard and yet obviously Indian Summers' sound design can't hold a candle to cinema productions. It's a shame we haven't been granted a 5.1 upgrade along with a Blu-ray with lossless sound. To sum up we have a more than acceptable, robust 2.0 soundtrack typical of barebones releases of modern television productions; it's active and atmospheric. But, it would have benefited greatly from a 5.1 upgrade and even more from lossless DTS-HD Master Audio on a Blu-ray release.
Extras
Indian Summers: The Making of Series 2 - 44'42" The usual reasonably absorbing puff piece designed to be broadcast as promotion. Plenty of talking heads interviews, behind the scenes footage, anecdotes from the set and on the history behind the series. Bizarrely, presented 2.35:1 with English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound although the surrounds are rarely used. Picture Gallery - 3'00" Decent picture gallery with some nice stills. However, they could be screen grabs but they are decent enough.
Overall
A very recent TV production for Channel 4 and PBS gets a very agreeable 2-disc DVD set from Acorn in the UK. Picture and sound are decent and par for the course for an HD production released in standard definition although it could have been improved a bit by using three or four discs to hold the ten episodes. We get a substantial on message puff piece about the making of series two and a still gallery by way of extras. Decent but not Earth shattering; I'm sure that there were many other promotional items that could have been unearthed; commentaries could have been commissioned etcetera. However, this is reasonably priced and looks and sounds very good for standard definition.
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