Greenleaf: Season One Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Greenleaf: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Forgive them their sins.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 5, 2016

Churches are typically seen as refuges, sanctuaries where the holy is exalted and the petty trivialities of human existence are subsumed within a supposed Divine order, but as anyone who has ever worked for a church can tell you (and I’ve worked for plenty of churches and synagogues as a music director throughout my adult life), the “backstage” intrigues at various religious establishments can often be positively Biblical in terms of drama, subterfuge and scheming. That perhaps slightly unseemly aspect to religious organizations, if not to outright religion, is the backdrop of the sudsy but entertaining Greenleaf, a series from Oprah Winfrey Network which not so coincidentally offers a pretty colorful supporting role to Ms. Winfrey herself. The Greenleaf family is headed by Bishop James Greenleaf (Keith David), who, along with his wife Lady Mae (Lynn Whitfield), are the faces of Greenleaf World Ministries, one of those so-called megachurches, one with so many congregants that the Bishop himself confesses early on he knows fewer than half of the people attending his services. The series begins with the return of prodigal daughter Grace (Merle Dandridge), who also goes by the nickname Gigi. A former pastor herself, and evidently a legendary preacher back in the day, Grace is returning after decades away from her family under (initially at least) somewhat mysterious circumstances. When she asks her driver to stop before they’ve arrived at the sprawling Greenleaf mansion, and she and her daughter Sophia (Desiree Ross) get out and survey a lake on the property, there’s a palpable feeling of melancholy. When Sophia begins but never finishes question about whether the lake is the location where someone named Faith supposedly expired, it’s obvious that there’s been some sort of tragedy in the family. It turns out that Faith was Grace’s sister, and she has indeed died, though whether it was an accident or suicide is left as a troubling subplot.

There’s an almost breathtaking amount of dysfunction that erupts across the screen in Greenleaf from the very first episode, and in fact the series might be accused of having a bit too much in the roiling plot dynamics department, unless (heaven forfend) this really is an accurate portrayal of an African American family running a megachurch. As soon as Grace sets foot beyond the huge gates isolating her family’s estate from what is perhaps ironically a safer world, it’s obvious that she can not in fact go home again, to purloin a famous Thomas Wolfe quote. While James seems more than pleased to see her, Lady Mae is obviously much less favorably inclined, and sister-in-law Kerissa (Kim Hawthorne) is downright antagonistic.

Without getting into some of the minutiae that gives Greenleaf its rather distinctive flavor, there’s really not one character who doesn’t have some secret or trauma he or she is protecting or denying or just plain attempting to live with. This gives the series a generally overwrought quality that soap opera fans are sure to love, but those wanting a more even keeled drama may find less tolerable. Suffice it to say that Faith’s death may have something to do with sexual abuse (abuse which is an ongoing “problem” for the perpetrator), Kerissa’s husband and Grace’s brother Jacob (Lamman Rucker) isn’t especially circumspect about carrying on extramarital affairs, and younger sister Charity (Deborah Joy Winans) might be thought of as the Jan Brady of this particular bunch, always calling out figuratively, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,” about other and supposedly better loved siblings. The dramatic pile on isn’t relegated solely to this generation (perhaps sadly), with Grace’s daughter Sophia also getting wrapped up in various problems, including get peer pressured into sharing drug use by Zora (Lovie Simone), the daughter of Jacob and Kerissa.

This brief summary barely touches the tip of this particular iceberg, for aside from the family dynamics, the authorities may be getting involved in auditing Greenleaf World Ministries’ tax exempt status. As should hopefully be clear by this point, there’s virtually no dramatic upheaval that this series won’t exploit, and therefore audience members need to be prepared for an often pretty hyperbolic journey through the various peaks and valleys of the various interrelationships. What tends to make the series work, despite its florid propensities, is the solid work of a really excellent cast. For those who think Cookie in Empire: The Complete First Season is the very model of a modern machinating mother, Lady Mae easily gives her a run for her money, albeit in a completely different and ostensibly more cultured form. David, an actor whose sonorous voice and patrician manner makes him pretty perfectly cast as a father figure minister, is both ingratiating if just a little scary at times. Dandridge’s Grace is obviously meant to be the audience’s “perspective character” on the whole simmering morass, but she’s perhaps too troubled (in one way or the other) for some viewers to fully resonate with. Oprah is fun if a bit on the showy side as exuberant and all knowing Aunt Mavis, the sort of apparently “normal” character Greenleaf arguably needs a few more of.

Greenleaf: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Greenleaf: Season One is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is an often exceptionally handsome looking production, one that (according to the IMDb) was shot with Red Epic Dragon cameras. Detail and fine detail levels are uniformly excellent across the board, with the only deficits understandably occurring in some dimly lit interior sequences (several steamy and/or contentious interludes take place in underlit bedrooms and the like). When the show ventures outside onto the vast grounds of the Greenleaf estate, or even in brightly lit moments in the church, the palette looks natural and warm and even in midrange shots detail levels on things like fabrics are very good to excellent.

Greenleaf: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Greenleaf: Season One features a nicely expressive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, one which really springs to life in both its use of source cues as well as some of the musical elements that inform some of the church scenes or sequences at Mavis' blues club. But even quieter dialogue scenes, especially those on the grounds of the Greenleaf estate, come replete with nicely placed ambient environmental sounds. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range rather wide for "just" a dramatic series, again courtesy of some of the musical elements.

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

Disc Two

• The Oprah Winfrey Conversations (1080i; 29:19) gets Oprah back into her accustomed role as an interviewer.


• Music Sessions: Greenleaf (1080p 3:14) is a brief look at the series' music.

Disc Three

• Creating Greenleaf (1080p; 10:21) contains some interesting interviews with Oprah Winfrey and Craig Wright, though Oprah's comments that she wanted to have a show about normal people doing normal things might seem like wishful thinking, given the shenanigans that go on in Greenleaf. Her appropriation of a famous Martin Luther King, Jr., might seem a little gratuitous, at least in the context of a television soap opera.


• Gag Reel (1080p; 2:32)

Note: The only supposed supplements on the first disc of this three disc set are Bookmarks and Trailers for other Lionsgate releases.

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

There's a fantastically funny little moment in the old film version of Paint Your Wagon where ne-er-do-well Ben Rumson contributes to the delinquency of a minor by taking a young Mormon lad to a house of ill repute, where he has an assignation with a prositute named Grace. When Ben and the boy get back to the boy's family for dinner and the father asks the boy if he wants to handle grace, Ben comments something like, "He sure handled Grace pretty well this afternoon." Greenleaf has to handle a lot more than simply its version of Grace, and that's both the boon and the bust of this series. Maybe as things progress in the second year, things won't seem so overloaded with trauma and tragedy as they often do in this introductory year. Lovers of soap operas and especially those with some sort of connection to African American faith communities will probably want to flock to Greenleaf in droves. Technical merits are strong, and Greenleaf comes Recommended.