Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Dig: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Read before you dig. You dig it?

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 7, 2015

USA pushed Dig hard. It seemed every commercial break during Monday Night RAW, for example, highlighted the show, each one prominently featuring the #digdeeper Twitter promotional hashtag. The show appeared to promise a complex web of end-times prophecy, highlight reel action, and intrigue, all intricately woven through precisely molded characters and set in one of the world's greatest and most storied cities but also the city most likely to erupt in violence and serve as the epicenter of armageddon. And, to its credit, Dig does incorporate all of that, and more. The problem is that the show is too fractured, too frazzled, too unkempt. It's a classic "kitchen sink" show in which there's too much going on and too little explanation, particularly in the early goings. It asks the viewer to jump into one of the most tangled webs ever constructed for television, and it's simply an overload of over-amped and under-developed goings-on that, even as the series progresses, never quite settles into the rhythmic comfort zone it needs to both establish and explore its world and satisfy its many arcing story lines and the tangents that grow from them.

Who is she?

FBI Special Agent Peter Connelly (Jason Isaacs) is a wounded man, suffering through the loss of his daughter. He's left his wife behind and shares a bed in Jerusalem, where he's now stationed, with colleague Lynn Monahan (Anne Heche). On a case, he catches a glimpse of a mystery redhead (Alison Sudol) whom he later meets and discovers that she's an archaeology student working to unearth the Ark of the Covenant. She later turns up murdered, an event which leads Peter down a path towards brewing Biblical armageddon. A group is working behind the scenes to recreate Biblical prophecy involving a red heifer born in Norway and on its way to Jerusalem, a young boy groomed for big things in an isolated New Mexico compound, and a frantic search for gemstones meant to complete a Biblical breastplate of great power.

"Dig" represents both a literal and metaphorical title for the show, and not always in the way the creators intended. While the series challenges audiences to explore beyond the surface, much as the characters are challenged to do the same, it also invites the notion of blindly searching, of going through the show not in a controlled manner but rather in a frantic sort of way, hoping to find something that's ultimately not there, or not there in an approachable, sometimes even agreeable, manner. The show piles on with new themes, avenues of exploration, plot devices, characters, and general happenings. The struggle to put them all together on the audience's end is very real, and so too is the struggle on the show's end to make sense of it. Dig simply cannot balance everything it has on tap. Its complexity overwhelms on both sides, both production and end viewership. That complexity should be like a breadcrumb trail -- mouthwatering morsels meant to whet the appetite -- but more often than not they're stale and sour or, maybe even worse, seem to lead nowhere. Watching Dig often feels like an exercise in futility. It's too much to keep up with and the reward is too little. The challenge is to get deep into the show, but even then, and while it begins to pull together, those critical first episodes are just too scattered to hold interest.

The show suffers from that same problem in its more intimate contexts. The story basics are certainly a challenge to decipher, but it also leaves its characters superficial and, sometimes, confounding. The show toys with a lot of interesting ideas with its roster. It strives to paint Peter Connelly, for example, as a some sort of conflicted, complicated character who is far less than perfect but more than capable of performing his job. But his various relationships leave more questions than answers and the show's action scenes are so frenetically cockeyed that even then it's a challenge to figure him out when he's in the field. Dig's characters -- even its main players -- always feel more like manufactured cornerstones and less like organic and evolving pieces. The show is content to allow them to follow routine, even when they appear to break off. Like the rest of the show, character details are presented quickly and sometimes without much context, or at least context that doesn't make much sense. And again as with the rest of the show, the eventual payoff doesn't seem worth the initial effort. Dig is simply a classic case of too much and too little. It nobly efforts to throw everything it can into one grand narrative with endlessly moving parts but it does so at the expense of the bigger picture. It jumps around from one tentacle to the next, slinging audiences rather than gracefully maneuvering them. And when the picture clears enough to see it all, will there be anyone left to notice?

Dig: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Universal unearths Dig: Season One with a decent 1080p transfer. The digital shoot is a hit-or-miss affair. At times -- particularly early on -- the image proves pasty and unreliably detailed. Rough stonework throughout Jerusalem, for example, lacks fine detailing and, in fact, can appear rather smeary and soft. Faces and clothes, likewise, struggle to find more than cursory definition, but the image tightens up and impresses, for the most part, in the later goings. Crispness and textural nuance enjoy a nice uptick, still flat and somewhat glossy under the constraints of digital but showcasing more in the way or tactile texturing than is evident in the early goings. The color palette is all over the map, too. Much of the program takes on a decidedly yellow tint but still manages to present nicely enough, particularly in brightly lit exteriors where more colorful splashes clash with the earthy shades. New Mexico scenes take on a deep blue tint. Black levels range from acceptably deep to murky and mildly crushed. Flesh tones, like the palette, are scattered, ranging from neutral to pasty and rosy. Mild banding, noise, and blocking are evident in small spurts throughout.

Dig: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dig: Season One arrives on Blu-ray with a good quality DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Music is healthy and detailed, presenting with a naturally wide stage -- largely across the front -- and offering a balanced low end support. Atmospherics are rich and impressive whether light background humming in the New Mexico compound, mild street-level din in Jerusalem, or more chaotic crowd elements heard during protests and other rowdy bits. Other effects impress as well, including a chilly Norwegian wind or the distant reverberation of a gunshot. Heavier action effects, like car flips and crashes, are suitably robust and detailed in the chaos; crunching metal, flying debris, and other assorted elements present very well. Dialogue, however, remains the focal point, and the spoken word enjoys natural center placement and effortless lifelike clarity.

Dig: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Dig: Season One contains supplements on both discs.

Disc One:

• Pilot (International Version) (1080p, DTS-HD MA 5.1, 1:20:21): An alternate cut of the pilot episode. It runs about 15 minutes longer than the U.S. version.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Catch You Later (0:31), Meet the Rosenbergs (0:33), and Prayer of David (4:40).

Disc Two:

• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Emma Wilson's Father (3:31), The Well of Souls (0:46), Sisters of Dinah (0:43), and Armageddon Protocol (4:11).
• Dig: Unearthing the Mystery (1080p, 12:53): A look at the show's story specifics and the real conspiracies that define it, themes, timeliness, characters and performances, story ambiguity on the show and on set, setting and shooting locations, visuals, and more.

Dig: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Dig would probably work better as a novel, where deeper character details, more intimately thoughtful insights, broader story details, and finer plot points could be better defined. Even at ten episodes strong, Dig feels too crammed, too forceful in pushing the narrative forward that it never settles into the developmental rhythm necessary to propel it forward in the linear fashion necessary to sort out its tangled tentacles of stuff that litters the screen in every episode. While the show works in its broad narrative arc, it's a struggle getting there and the real shame is that the many good -- great -- ideas at play never evolve to satisfaction, never really push limits, never fully engage the audience. It's not a surprise the show was cancelled after a single season, but at the same time it's a shame it doesn't have a mulligan in its pocket because there's something worthwhile here just yearning to be unearthed and properly put together. Dig: Season One features decent video, good audio, and a few supplements. Skip it.